The Insider Issue: A (Younger) Missionary’s Reflections

Amazonian Wednesdays 🌴

Written May ’04 — twenty years ago! 
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Each month as I get ready to compose our newsletter, the Holy Spirit drops into my heart what I am to write about. This month I feel He would like me to share with you, along personal lines, what He has been doing in my heart this year.

One December afternoon in 2003, I was looking for a certain webpage on the Internet. I stumbled upon a whole series of pages that I found rather fascinating related to Internet marketing strategies. Before I knew it, I had spent several hours pouring over the information presented and signing up for an innumerable quantity of e-mail lists. I also wasted a considerable portion of the following day doing the same. As a result, I began spending at least two hours each evening reading the e-mails that were sent to me.

Meanwhile, my prayer life was suffering somewhat. Ever since my daughter Ester was born in August, I had not felt quite myself spiritually, in spite of the tremendous joy that her presence had brought into our lives. Being consumed with the care of a newborn, I had not had the time I used to have to shut myself up in my room and seek the Lord for uninterrupted hours. I felt like my communion with Him had reached a dry spot. I knew He did not condemn me, but I longed for the time when I could get back to extended times alone with Him. And now the Internet was competing with Him as well.

The Lord was missing me too. In January, He called Israel and me to a week of special prayer. I cancelled all other duties that might have required my time that week (including the Internet!), allowed our Christian housekeeper to baby-sit Ester for several hours each day, and, with much delight, shut myself in my room to be with Him. As He is always faithful to do when we draw near to Him, He came and refreshed me deeply and spoke new vision into my heart. He also asked me to cancel my membership with the great majority of the lists I had signed up for. I did so immediately, longing for more of Him in my life.

To be transparent, the Lord actually had been tugging at my heart all along to cancel those memberships. I, however, was driven by an impulse to continue reading those e-mails, and did not “have it in me” to cancel them. During my week of special prayer, I asked the Lord to work in my heart deeply so that my desire for Him would greatly supercede all other impulses. He did so! I felt great joy as I obeyed Him in taking that step to free up more of my daily time to seek Him.

When I took that step, the Lord came and met me. He brought me into a place of spiritual refreshing once again that has not let up until now. He also used that experience to teach me a lesson: that I cannot produce change in my own heart. Only He can. When something else competes for the throne in my heart, only He can remove it as I ask Him to. He is so faithful! Truly, it is He who works in us to will and to act according to His good purpose. Amen.