Dear friend,
I hope that you are well and that you had a memorable Easter weekend celebrating all that has been made possible for us through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
I smile as I think of God's goodness and the wonderful things he continues to do for me and all those treasures of insight and wisdom that he gives to those who humbly ask for it. Have you ever had a question that kept nagging you and so you kept searching for the answer but you were never satisfied with what you found. You asked people time and time again but it just wasn't enough and then one day you found the answer. (Claps hands) Yes hallelujah! I am so glad I didn't let this one go by and I am going to share it with you because it is so humbly glorious!
So in my limited time of being a missionary I have had questions asked and statements made to me and as much as I knew what the answers were I didn't know how to best relate what I was experiencing in logical phrases. One such question was, "Leah, how is THE WORK" ? and one of the comments made was," Oh, what you are doing (learning the language and culture) is just TRAINING and a PRELIMINARY to the REAL WORK". Many missionaries have heard these questions time and time again without truly trying to bring people who lack fulltime cross- cultural experience into the understanding of why we do things the way we do. They rightly do so since most likely you will not fully get it because it is something you would have to experience personally to truly know what it is like. Nevertheless, I feel the need to at least mention it.
So, the work, language learning and culture learning are not separate things to be completed at different stages but they are all intertwined, increasing gradually together and there will never be a day where you have fully arrived. What I am doing can be called the Growing Redemptive Participator Approach. God's desire is that the whole earth should be filled with His glory. How do I participate in bringing this to pass with the people I am with? I do so by taking on a position of humility, by entering this people group as a "nobody", as someone who has no understanding of their world and no capability of communicating effectively. I take the lower stance of someone who needs to be nurtured and is first willing to be taught instead of charging in as the authority, wanting to heard without any real relationships, connection and true understanding of their ways or mindset. Can I just say that we live in a world of self-promotion and self-glorification. It's all about what 'I' bring to the table, how 'I' can showcase my talents and bringing in the 'results'. God calls us to be clay pots holding great treasure which is him. Allowing myself to experience this loss of identity (all that I was in my home country and all that I am admired for) and humiliation prepares the way for what is to be received and his name is Jesus, not me! As I become more knowable, Christ becomes more knowable. What a great privilege to become lesser so that Christ can be greater! So it is never about learning language or the culture as though they were things on my to do list to be acquired so that I can then do the REAL things but about participating in a new world and becoming a new person (Paul talks about becoming all things to all men so that he may win some) while allowing God's glory to be made manifest through my presence. All of life whether experienced on the mountaintop or in the valley is seen as a whole and you can never say that you were less alive when you were in the valley or what you experienced there is of lesser importance than when you were on the mountain top. As I become less of a foreigner and more like them, the possibilities will expand and develop in what teaching and discipleship looks like.
I can personally say now having a go at this a second time that 1) This approach is long lasting and life transforming. 2) People can never deny what they have experienced with you, they can refuse your words but never the experience of Christ's love. 3) There is nothing more puzzling to the unbeliever than a person who abandons all that is familiar to take on a life of suffering and sacrifice. They cannot comprehend why someone would be willing to take on the position of humiliation with no personal benefit!
I can assure you in my limited time here that I have had the million dollar questions asked, "why would you ever choose to live here and what are you doing with your life?" They always search for a logical reason but there is none to be found except that God's love compels me. I am so excited to see their lives transformed, to see the light gradually appear on their faces as truth begins to be revealed to them. I am also equally excited to see the transforming work that God continues to do in my life as he chips away at those things which are temporary and fragile and replaces them with his eternal word. Oh what glorious humility, what joy and freedom to know that I am not the treasure nor the standard of perfection. I am just the human bearer of the eternal! God will continue to build his church and neither the gates of hell nor our human limitations shall prevail against it.
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