Everybody needs a reason (or a couple dozen) to keep at the work that they do. Spiritual leaders included. Those reasons come in the form of conversations where people explain how their faith is developing, periodic check ins when a guy says something about God that sticks in you, an email where a woman says how she’s praying for you, and a host of other reminders that the work you do matters.
And then there are those moments when you get a reason for the work you do while, at the same time, being reminded of the overall point of your work. The point, for instance, of a pastor’s work is not for that pastor to feel any particular way about his or her work. That pastor’s work is entirely about the explicit and continued lifting up of Someone else while he himself (in my case) is changed by that Someone.
I read Ashley Moy-Wooten’s testimony a few weeks ago. Then, she passed it to me and a few folks in our church after she posted it on Undocumented.tv, a blog focusing on how immigration is a missional opportunity for churches. I hope Ashley’s words can remind you that God can use people that you’re around, people you’re working with and for, to reach you. She has echoed parts of my heart in her testimony. The faith community of God’s church has been for me how she’s describing people in her work. God can remind you, perhaps, through her words, that there is an overall point to what you do.
When identifying that her relationships with immigrants were ways that God reached her, Ashley says,
I would have never guessed that the people I felt I was fighting for would actually end up being the biggest blessing to me that I would ever receive in my lifetime—the gift of faith and encounter with God.
She goes on to say,
What continues to astound me every day, though, is how powerful our God is, and how easily He can turn a top on the other side as it continues to spin. What many of the people I’ve worked with will never know is just how indebted I am to them.
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