The Hopeful Series: Faith

This is Part One of a four-part series.

This blog kicks off a new series called The Hopeful Series—four honest reflections from our life as missionaries, each centered around a theme that has anchored us through the highs and lows. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be sharing stories of Faith, Redemption, Obedience, and Joy—not because we’ve mastered them, but because we’ve learned (and are still learning!) how deeply they shape this life we’ve been called into. Part One starts where our journey really began: learning to trust God when things felt unstable, unclear, and just a little bit wild.

I never wanted to be a missionary. I felt a deep calling to be rich and comfortable, ha!

All jokes aside, I didn’t have a calling from when I was a young girl to leave my homeland and go share the gospel with foreigners somewhere. My callings were challenging in their own way, but always home-based and always with a semi-secure pay check attached.

This life of missions is the most unstable I’ve ever had. It’s amazing how much structure of our lives comes from employers and their expectations. When that becomes a little more fluid, persistence comes down to a calling you feel you have and how consistently you can work towards that on a day-to-day basis with the world swirling around you.

Most of us understand the rhythm and natural laws around becoming a master at something, whether it’s an instrument or another skill. Practice and exercise enables us to become slowly but surely better at a thing. Faith is no different. It needs exercising. God knows this and he wants the best for us, and so he usually leads us into situations where practicing faith is necessary. We can lean in or step back, and either way God will be with us, but perhaps our skill level will remain beginner if we never take the opportunities to lean in.

This season of missions has definitely given us room to practice our faith! There have been many moments in our journey where we didn’t have the capability of pulling all the strings together. Actually, we never do. But this was even more pronounced in our preparation to get here. Among other things, visas, finances, and business plans are not as reliable as they usually are. But God has proven himself to be faithful. Even before we left New Zealand, people followed the prompting of God and financially supported us, even though we didn’t have any experience as missionaries. Covid restrictions never affected our plans, and visas have always been approved right when we needed them. There were many times when we were asked to be obedient, and when we were, God came through in really amazing ways. Let me share one of those stories here now.

Glyn and I were about one year into our fundraising/preparation journey. We had been told by our organisation that we may need one year of cross-cultural study before leaving for the field. Try as we had over the year, we hadn’t been able to remove this one requirement from our to-do list. To be honest, I thought it was an unnecessary and expensive undertaking for not much benefit. It seemed very unwise to get a Student Loan right before leaving the country.

However in November 2019, it became quickly apparent that all our efforts to bypass this study hadn’t worked and we would be required to do a year of study. The new school semester was going to start early February 2020, so if we wanted to get the year done, we would need to make a decision very quickly. So we begrudgingly decided to go. There were a few things that needed to happen for us to start this process, but one of the big ones was that Glyn needed to hand in his notice at his work. Most manual labour jobs in New Zealand shut down for three weeks over Christmas/New Years, so we would need to finish up his job right before that, and try and make it til February when our student allowances would kick in and support us for the year. It was going to be a stretch. We decided on a Saturday night, and Glyn headed into work on Monday morning, ready to hand in his notice.

Glyn all geared up for the water as part of his job as an underwater construction worker.

Before the workday started, the boss asked for a full company meeting, not a usual Monday morning schedule. That morning notice was given that the company would be shutting down, and everyone would be paid out three months of full wages at the end of the week.

What timing! Had Glyn handed in his notice even a few hours earlier, he wouldn’t have received this payout, but once again God provided through timing and financial provision. And in the end, that cross-cultural year of study was one of the best things we did to prepare.

This story is only one of many that paved our way here to Europe. We had to learn that even though decisions were being made that were out of our control, God is always in control. God is always directing, pivoting, and clearing ways for us when there seems to be no way, using painful situations to bring out that deep character that comes from abiding in Him.

I hope to share more of these stories, but in this moment, can I encourage you to also lean into faith in this season? When things don’t seem to be going your way, trust that God has the best intentions for you. Trust that he knows what he’s doing, and even when things seem to be going badly, he is with you and he loves you. Exercise your faith, choose to trust in him. Choose to take things to him, even the small things.

Let me leave you with this verse:

“May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do it.” 1 Thessalonians 5:23-24

Yes we must choose, but the work is the Lord’s.

Lean in.