So it has taken me about two weeks to piece together my experience, and with good cause. God has shown me the purpose of my trip, and taught me some very important lessons that will undoubtedly leave an impact on my life forever. In this blog, I'm going to talk about the biggest lesson I learned of all - humility.
"More of You, less of me"
The first night of Adoration in Honduras, I prayed a very simple prayer: "Lord, show me why I'm here." Simple enough isn't it? Throughout that hour, the phrase above kept coming to mind. "More of You, less of me".... I wasn't quite sure what it meant. Certainly I had read similar statements in Scripture, particularly John the Baptist saying "He must increase, I must decrease" but I wasn't sure how it was going to be applied to the experience. I carried that prayer in my heart throughout the mission, and beautiful things happened because of it.
So, one of the big questions I've been asked is "What did you do down there?". Well, a big majority of our mission work was door-to-door evangelization. Yes, I said it. DOOR-TO-DOOR! Talk about stepping out of the American comfort zone of privacy and being left alone. When first hearing that this is what we were going to do, to mention that we were to do this entirely in Spanish, I admit I was unabashedly nervous. To make matters "worse", Jeremy and I were in a group with no translator because we apparently "spoke the most Spanish". When embarking on our home visits that day, I realized that since my gift of speech had been taken away that I wasn't going to be able to talk about Jesus...therefore, I was going to need to BE Jesus to these people. I promised the Lord that day that I was going to love His people like He did, and bring them the joy that He had gifted me with. I had to put aside my fear, my worry, and my uncertainty, and just fill myself with His Spirit and love. "More of You, less of me"
Throughout our mission work, we were asked to keep our English speaking to a minimum to be respectful of the fact that we were guests in the Hondurans' native land. There were often times that my head literally hurt after translating (and attempting to translate) all the things being spoken around me. One night, I honestly prayed God for the gift of understanding Spanish - needless to say He didn't bestow that upon me. What a humbling experience it was to have to rely completely upon another person simply to communicate. And as most of you know, boy do I love talking. It initially seemed to be a curse...not being able to speak and get a message across, but by the grace of God I was gifted with amazing friends in Christ, some who were able to translate, and some who, despite the language barrier, were still able to communicate with me.
Mi amigo Juan Carlos, for example, was the leader of the evangelization team that Jeremy and I were a part of. Juan Carlos speaks pretty much no English, yet someway, somehow, we were able to communicate with him using the little and broken Spanish we spoke. There were a lot of moments where conversation would come to a literal standstill (we have some on video, it's actually pretty funny), but the Holy Spirit would always intercede and we would have a break through and be able to continue on. I realize now that as limited as our abilities were in speaking the other's language, the barrier was overcome by a genuine yearning to understand one another. The love for Christ that we had, and our desire to communicate our experiences with Him compensated where we were lacking. "More of You, less of me"
As the week proceeded forth, "More of You, less of me" began to make more sense. I was breaking free of my need for control and predictability, and instead broke free and opened myself up to moving in the Spirit in a way that I had never known. Sure, I thought I had previously had a "let go and let God" mentality. What my experiences in Honduras showed me, however, was that before I was only letting go when I couldn't hold anymore. After I was tired, worn out, and stressed, THEN I was letting go and letting God work.
On mission, it was a completely different sense of letting go. Instead of taking control only to lose it, I was instead giving God the go ahead from the start. Waking up every morning, I was able to pray and tell God, "Whatever You need from me today, Lord, I'm ready." For the first time in a long time I was letting go...not of things, events, choices, but letting go of MYSELF. "More of You, less of me."
So, here I am, back home, and about a week and a half ago, Jeremy and I were having a conversation pretty much unrelated to our experience. In fact, I do recall that, being the philosophy majors that we are, it was about logical contradictions and we jokingly remarked that Jesus had a lot of "A and ~A" moments. I brought up a particular one, that being Matthew 16:25 in which Jesus says "whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it." We joked about how that pretty much fit an A and ~A logical form.
It was then that I had an epiphany. I remember saying something to the effect of "Oh my gosh, Jeremy, I get it!" at this moment. "More of You, less of me" meant me needing to stop thinking about myself and start thinking about the will of God, yes, that was apparent. But it was so much deeper than that. It was me needing to LOSE myself completely, to abandon everything that I knew about myself, every dream, every wish, and every yearning I have ever had and known, and immerse, fill, and surround myself with Jesus and His wonderfulness. This was losing my life, and saving it.
I literally lost my life on the mission. It wasn't about me at all anymore. It was about spreading the love of God, and that was enough for me. Strangely enough, that was more than enough for me than anything else had ever been at that point. Waking up each morning and deciding to lose myself brought me to know who I am truly meant to be in God's plan. "More of You, less of me"
Jesus said, "whoever loses his life for my sake will find it..."
Well, I lost mine....and I sure as heck found it.
GRACIAS A TI, SENOR!!
