Does God Still Work in Chaos? – WAITING

There is an overwhelming sense of urgency to get to the field for many people coming out of training.  They are filing paperwork, raising the last bit of funds, and looking at plane tickets to make the long journey abroad.  But when the pandemic struck, everything was halted –  borders closed, flights stopped, and visa applications stalled.  They were forced to wait. However, it is what God allowed them to participate in pre-COVID as they waited that is a testament that He is working.  Here is what Caleb and Lucy shared with us.

“What if we never get to go to an unreached people group?” I can’t remember if my wife-to-be asked me this question or if I had asked her.  We were a few weeks from finishing missionary training and only three months out from our wedding. We knew that we had a time of waiting ahead of us before we launched to Southeast Asia, so the way that we answered this question had a lot of bearing on our lives.

We resolved that, no matter where we were in the world, our lives would be about the completion of the Great Commission. We set our focus on winning others to the same cause of seeing His glory covering the earth as the waters cover the sea (Hab 2:14) and to see people who would never hear the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ have access to the Word of God and believe in Him.  If we hadn’t committed ourselves to be about God’s work from home as we waited, we might not have continued on that path overseas.

After getting married, we both got full-time jobs and set about connecting with local college ministries and Bible studies to mentor student leaders in our spare time.  We helped encourage and mobilize the next generation of goers.  And we “earnestly prayed” (Mt. 9:38 for a dozen career missionaries to come out of our time of waiting here in the states.  This may be a lofty goal, but God has been faithful in answering this prayer since then.

This year our church is sending four new missionary candidates to Radius International, and another three college students from neighboring states decided to go as well. Others we interacted with are yet undecided on what their role in reaching the world’s least-reached peoples will be.  If I could sum up this time of transition, I would say, He has been gracious in the waiting.

Inevitably we will all face times of waiting.  The COVID chaos has put us all in holding patterns of some sort.  It can feel uncomfortable, but when we resolve ourselves to focus on God and His purposes, these times of waiting will never be in vain.  They can be used for His glory.

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