WHO Before DO

I'm guessing there are fewer and fewer people encouraging others with, "Well, when we get back to normal ..." in the ongoing graphic changes the coronavirus pandemic featured all around the world.  Instead, most people, in a host of various venues, are looking for ways to adapt to the now normal of life.

Next Generation Ministries did not escape the need to adapt.  Changes and changing have become a normal way of life. International travel restrictions changed the landscape of our work in Uganda.  Without the assistance of short term missionaries and reduced finances, the NGM staff has diligently and effectively carried out the work all year long.  It's been a great year of impact, but has the main thing remained the main thing?

Thomas Merton, in his classic autobiography, wrote, "the Hindus are not looking for us to send them men who will build schools and hospitals, although those things are good and useful in themselves ... and perhaps very badly needed in India: they want to know if we have any saints to sent them."

The activity of mission work can too easily become a substitute for the mission.  Simply put: WHO BEFORE DO.  Always. What the world needs is a visible sample of the kind of transforming work God does in changing sinners into saints.  In contrast my culture places a high value on production and performance accompanied by the ease of looking the other way when it comes to character.

If I were a mission board member evaluating me as a candidate to send as a missionary to Uganda I would have second thoughts about sending such a person.  But, God delights in choosing men and women who fall below the standards of employers and transforms them into representatives of His grace.  Transforming sinners into saints.

Who I am becoming is far more important than what I can do.  This is the primary lesson God is teaching me this year.  And I realize as I tap out these words on my keyboard that the target audience of this blog is not the reader but primarily me and secondarily the NGM staff.

This is a foundation stone in the work of Next Generation Ministries.  The work that God is doing in me/us is far more important than the work we are doing for God.  Who I am becoming takes precedent over what I do.

2020 and the arrival of the cornavirus pandemic was a blessing in disguise for me personally.  Having my return flights to Uganda cancelled in April and then August resulted in not being where I wanted to be this year.  I begrudgingly accepted what was beyond my control.  The blessing was discovered when I became aware that God was more interested in intimacy with me than my service for Him in Africa.

It is encouraging to realize that the story God is writing with our lives is written one word, one sentence, one paragraph, and one chapter at a time.  Where the story ends should be quite different from where it begins.

For years I applied this description of God's supernatural work to what He could do THROUGH me ... more than I could ask or imagine.  However, I discovered it comes after the Apostle Paul's prayer for to God to work IN us ... accomplishing more than we could ever ask or imagine.

May the grace of God keep me, the NGM staff, and, yes, you focused more on His transforming work in who we are.  Each of us need to be saints who don't contradict what we say with our mouths and what we do in our work.

WHO before DO will be our reality if we give Him space to be the Author of our story.