God taught me a great lesson this month. I have been praying for my next step a lot. I felt that I obeyed what God told me to do, but He hadn’t opened the door for me to move forward. I was frustrated on the morning of June 28. God then told me to read my devotional book, so I turned to the page June 28. I was shocked when I read the title: After obedience – what? Every word on that page poked at my heart. God’s purpose is that I depend on Him and on His power now. “His end is the process.” We have nothing to do with the afterward of obedience. After I finished the reading, I found that I was on the date of July 28. God made me turned to the wrong page in order to answer my question. If I can stay in the middle of the turmoil calmed and unperplexed, that is the end of the purpose of God.
There are two highlights that I want to share with you.
“I want to do the same thing as you do”
I often find it difficult to tell people what I do in Columbus. It’s like when I told people I mastered in linguistics. The following question would be “How many languages do you speak?” Honghu is the girl who came to Christ through studying the Bible with me. She didn’t really know what I did in the US. She (many people) thought that I was still a student at OSU. Honghu finally asked, “what do you do here?” I told her that I was an event planner with IFI, and I liked to share the good news with people. Honghu responded excitedly, “I want to do the same thing as you do!” I then asked her “Do you want to tell people about God?” I wanted to make sure that I understood her correctly. Honghu said, “yes, but I don’t know how to do it.” I said, “Okay, I will give you a task this week.” Honghu seemed to be very excited, “What task?” I said, “You need to share today’s story with a person who doesn’t know God.” Honghu was a little disappointed that I only gave her a “small task.” I told her that this would be her first step, and I would give her more challenges and training later. Also, Honghu has been very involved in a Christian community and often brought her husband to church.
Two different perspectives
On June 23, Rich gave a sermon on hospitality in a Baptist church, and he invited me to share my stories on hospitality. The church is very big, and they have three services. Rich and I were amazed that we only got one response after the first service. The first service only had about 30 people, but we were still shocked that only one lady signed up for hosting international students/airport pickup. So, we prayed together before the second service started. When we finished the third service, we got about 15 people responded in volunteering to host internationals. When we were packing up, a church leader walked up to us and said: “Wow, you guys got a great response!” Rich and I were “amazed” again and looked at each other. The leader told us that there would be no response usually. We all laughed! It’s funny that we had such two different perspectives.