[greater things are still to be done in this city]

I'm in. I don't know what it means. I don't know when. I don't know where. I don't know anything, but I want to be a part of God's plan to take the gospel where it's never been heard before, and I was told this weekend that if I don't tell people it means I have a plan B, a second option in case this missions thing doesn't work out. No plan B though. I'm scratching my multiple ones out.

Six weeks ago I came out here more interested in helping bring social justice to the world, and I thought that would be enough. Yeah I wanted to share the gospel, but I figured I could do that through building schools, developing education programs, running after school programs, helping refugees and whatnot. I was broken of that pretty fast, though, and for the first time in my life, I want to go overseas for the purpose of spreading the gospel rather than trying to right every injustice.

William Wilberforce, the politician famous for helping abolish the British slave trade, once said, "Having heard all of this you may choose to look the other way, but you may never again say that you did not know." And in so many ways, I feel like that's the story of everything we've been learning and doing. I can't go home knowing all that we've learned and do nothing. Sure there are plenty of other ways to serve the Lord in comfortable places, but our speaker this past weekend really challenged us on a whole new level. "Bust through the fear. Bust through the excuses. Bust through the fog," he said. "It's not sin that will keep you from going overseas. It's distractions like 'this is good too. This is needed too.'"

But I want to be obedient to God's command to share the gospel with the world that has never even had a chance to hear. I was born in a place where there are churches on every corner and Bibles in almost every house, but God doesn't love me any more than the person who's born where those things aren't. And I find no contentment or peace in understanding that and doing nothing about it.

The cross has been magnified this summer like never before, and I'm continually broken by my increasing need for forgiveness, grace and mercy. Even though I don't have all the answers and am extremely unqualified to go, I want to be used anyway to spread the message of salvation, and I know God can only use willing hearts.

Philippians 3:12-14 says, "Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do - forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus."

And I the thing that always hits me is the word 'straining' that Paul uses. He doesn't have all the answers, and he's not perfect, yet he's pressing on with what he does have. Not speed walking. Not jogging. Straining. Running with his all in obedience to the gospel of Christ, and that's how I want to run this race called life. There are always plenty of good things to take up my time and my energy, and I know they're not bad things. But God has a more urgent need - to save a lost world from their sin - and I want to help spread the news of salvation that has been shared with me.

"Greater things have yet to come, and greater things are still to be done in this city." [Chris Tomlin]