I can hear some people, saying now, "but that is a mission field." Yes, I know. That's what I told myself. I'll be a missionary to those in the inner city. It all sounded great. The problem is that God and I both knew that I was just afraid to go any where else. Going somewhere unsafe in my home country is a whole lot different than living in another all together. I kept trying to convince myself that I was called to stay here, in the U.S., Everything seemed so right; don't you think so?
But, over the past year God has been changing my heart and mind about missions. I now have absolutely no idea where God is calling me to go or what I am to do. Maybe he wants me to stay here and just wanted to make sure my heart was right and I was willing to go anywhere. Or maybe he wants me to go somewhere else. I do not know.
What I do know is that now I want to go somewhere else and live. I want to teach still, but I want to teach outside the U.S. There are inner city schools in every country. So maybe, God will combine the two and I will go an inner city school in a foreign country. I think that would be totally awesome, especially if it were a middle eastern country!
“If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you . . .” (John 15:7)— that is the way to keep going. Where we are placed is then a matter of indifference to us, because God sovereignly engineers our goings. -Oswald Chambers Though I think it would be awesome to go to the Middle East; I will gladly go or stay where ever God places me.
I say all of that to say this. Give up now thinking that you know yourself. Only God knows us and we are fools to believe we think we know ourselves. I have thought many times I knew even something as small as a like or dislike, only for it to change. I thought I knew my strengths. I thought I was good at working with at risk kids. And I didn't think I'd like living alone in another country, but now the thought excites me.
Reevaluate your motives. Does your "calling" have any impure motives linked to it? My "calling" does. I didn't trust God and I really didn't want to give up my comforts. Now, I am having the opposite problem. I want to live without these comforts, but fear having to keep them.
And finally, I leave you with this thought by, my favorite, Oswald Chambers.
“Go therefore . . . .” To “go” simply means to live. Acts 1:8 is the description of how to go. Jesus did not say in this verse, “Go into Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria,” but, “. . . you shall be witnesses to Me in [all these places].” He takes upon Himself the work of sending us.