Do you ever wake up and forget where you are?
This happens to me often, particularly when I find myself doing crazy things, things I never thought I would have the time, finances, or abilities to do. I'll think, “What am I doing here?” “How did I get here...ME...here doing this right now?!?”
Sharing my testimony in India to a village of incredibly sweet brothers and sisters, hearing a stranger's wild life-story in Mexico City as he lets me play his didgeridoo, distributing Bibles on streets and in villages all over Greece (and nearly getting arrested), baptizing students in the Zambezi river, riding water buffalos in the Philippines, experiencing Good Morning America in New York, having hundreds of coffee shop conversations in Kosovo, delivering valentines during a blizzard in New Hampshire, and doing open air worship in the red light district in Germany are all snap shots of the over arching work God is unfolding in my life.
NONE of this would have been possible on my own; I couldn't have dreamed this big if I had tried.
Seven years ago I was just getting out of high school and had no idea what life had to offer. Surrendering my life to Christ has never stopped surprising me. Surrendering my life to Christ has made the impossible possible, the unthinkable reality, and my small life extraordinary.
However, the snapshots of my life can make it really easy to romanticize missions or misrepresent surrendering your life to Christ to appear as some perfect, easy, simple clean adventure. It is not. It can be messy, demanding, and forbearing, but when you find yourself doing things you never thought possible, you wake up to find a life that is truly not your own, and I count it such a blessing to live for the Lord.
“For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.” Matthew 16:25
Many times in a moment like this one pictured above, where I'm sharing my testimony in a village in India, I ask myself, “How did I get here?” Then I feel extremely blessed by where God has led me and how he has used my life to do bigger and greater things than I could have ever imagined.
I have no clue where I would be if I wasn’t following God, and honestly I don’t care to know. I don’t know what other adventures lay ahead, but I am so excited to continue to follow the Lord through life.
Don’t make life complicated love God and love people.
Guest Author ~ Johnny Murphy, faithful DTS and SOE school staff