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For the month of August we are taking a break from our usual schedule. Instead we invite you to be part of a challenge we hope will make an impact in your life and along the Silk Road.

 Before even beginning the Dying Out Loud journal, something caught my attention. Scrolling through the opening pages, I paused on a short prayer from Stan’s journal.

“God, raise up men and women who are so desperate to reach [Turks]that they feel as if they were going to die if they don’t.”

That makes sense, I thought. Stan, I am officially ruined for good, by an answer to your prayer.

This year God has planted a rapidly growing passion in my heart for the unreached, for Muslims, for Central Eurasia, and especially Turkey. My heart is exploding out of my chest with the desire to go to them and to get to know them and love them. I spend every free moment I get studying the language and culture.

I have no dreams left to abandon because the call to serve Jesus with my whole life has taken over and transformed my every dream.

I’ve laid on my floor crying from my gut telling Jesus He’s worth the suffering I may face on this road. In my eyes, I’m all ready and all in, so what else is there? My dream is whatever He wants for me. But what He wants for me runs even deeper than all this.

Make Me Useable

We may be aware that there’s a process of preparation before we step in to certain seasons of our lives where we expect to be used by God, but let’s face it. It always takes longer and looks differently than we expect. How quickly we forget that we are just clay in the hands of a Master Potter. Only He really knows what He’s doing. Only He knows what we need to be properly equipped for however He wants to use us. As I wait and struggle to be content in finishing this preparation season, I think,

I’m eager to go wherever Jesus is going, but am I willing to go the way He’s going?

I’m having a bit of “senioritis.”I just want to be done already and go do what He’s been readying me for. I’m tempted to slack off and spend my time dreaming about the future, but I constantly remind myself of the importance of the preparation. When you say you want to follow Jesus, you may be looking at the dream, the ministry, or the mission, but following Him means sticking with Him on the road to get there.

No shortcuts.

If He’s going up a steep mountain, will you follow Him? If He’s trekking through a humid, buggy jungle, will you follow Him? The path He takes to get you where He wants you is where you become useable. This is where most people give up. When medical school is hard, you might question whether you want to become a doctor. When excessive hours of training are brutal, you might question whether you want to go for the Olympic team. When God does things on His time and not your own, when He keeps teaching you patience by putting you with loud kids who don’t listen to you, when He keeps drilling you with lessons that don’t lighten up, you might really count the cost of what you asked for.

Because if you’re all in, you’re all in for every part of it.

Every grueling, boring, scary, tedious part of the adventure.

I don’t believe God ever completely stops the shaping process, but its not up to us to determine how it happens. We just have to let Him do it. If you’re willing to go to prison for Him, to be beaten for Him, and even die for Him, ask yourself,

Am I also willing to be patient for Him and walk in obedience to His lessons in the not-so-exciting parts of the journey?

Remember Jesus had a life before the years of ministry discussed in the Gospels- a life of learning and obedience and monotony. He listened to His parents, He worked, He grew, He waited. Following Him means following His whole life example, because He was made useable by the same process.

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