welcome to the story.

At 7:22 last night, God really kick started something that He has been doing in my heart for about the past 6 months. And I'm not sure exactly what it is, but I know the last time I got this feeling, was when I got called to ministry. I think it really started at OneDay at the commissioning service, and its been rolling around in my spirit since then. Like I said, I'm not sure what it is, I just know that He is stirring in me a real desire for mission work. I'm not sure in what capacity and what exactly that entails as it fits alongside my calling to pastor. But thoughts of overseas missions have been coming to me lately. Its really weird too because its all coming at once. It of course started at OneDay and then my friend Katie and I have been talking about "mission" stuff lately. She gave me a book to read about Jim Elliott and his friends who were missionaries in Ecuador. And I've been reading it and its just moved me. It really feels like God is just blowing wind into this passion. I also have a summer mentor out here at church and we were talking yesterday, and he tells me how he did missionary work for a while and how that all came to be. And he did the same thing that Nate Saint (one of the guys in the book that I'm reading) did and I had just got finished reading about it the night before. And he asked me about how I felt called to ministry and I started talking with him about the process that I went through. I described how in the beginning my sole passion was to do student ministry for the rest of my life and how since then God has widened that passion to pastoring and planting a church and then even within the past 6 months, God has widened it even more to include short term overseas missionary work. Last night, for the first time ever, everything seemed like rubbish in comparison to my eternal prize. My car, my relationships, my goals for the future (including my wife and family), my reputation, my ministry, they all last night seemed very trivial in the grand scheme of things. So we'll see. I'm not sure where God is leading me, but I know He's doing something in my life that I haven't felt in a long, long time. So I'm waiting patiently for clarity to come. "God, thank you so much for the refreshment that is found in You. When You work in my heart, it gives me hope and lets me know that You're not done with me yet. I don't know what You're calling me to do. I don't know the details. I can't even put my finger on the rough details because I don't even know those. I just know that You're stirring in me something big. Give me the patience not to jump the gun. Give me the wisdom to see clearly and listen carefully to your voice. Don't let me read my desires and dreams and visions into what You're speaking. Sharpen my focus. Narrow the road that I'm traveling and help me zone out the peripherals. Give me the power to put my feet behind the words that I sing. My life behind my worship. I'm sorry for letting my words be empty and shallow, void of the very things that they mean. Hear my heart and don't give up on me. Help me sort and process Your voice. As ignorant and with as many impure motives that I have, I still want to do what You would have for me. May I live to that end."