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Pondering My Life Purpose at 38,000 Feet Above Sea-Level
Posted by Ronnie Worsham
As I fly at over 600 miles per hour over the Atlantic Ocean, sitting in an adjustable seat, light and a/c vent overhead, I've been pondering the world I live in and my purpose for living in it. I read in my Bible about the Apostle Paul who traveled on foot and by ship, suffering all kinds of ills and discomforts. I read recently about Francis of Assisi's miserable trip across the Mediterranean Sea to represent Christians to the Muslims in Egypt. And, I ride in great comfort to do my ministry work, and some, even myself at times, might consider it a sacrifice.
Frankly, I'm not sure what sacrifice looks like for most Americans. I suppose significant time away from one's mate and children and friends could be considered a sacrifice. But, then again, that presupposes that one has been blessed with such. Jesus and Paul and Francis had no wives or children. I suppose riding on a plane at 38,000 feet and hitting turbulence and having that eerie feeling that maybe this is my “time to go” is a sacrifice. But it surely could not compare to death by beheading or stoning. I suppose losing some sleep, staying in a strange room in a strange country, and feeling quite “foreign” might be a sacrifice. But, then again, as a Christian, I'm already a sojourner and foreigner here. As the old song goes, “This world is not my home, I'm just a passin' through. My treasures are laid up somewhere beyond the blue. The angels beckon me from heaven's open door, and I can't feel at home in this world anymore."
I know that I have tried to sacrifice for God all these years. Yet, he so out-gives me that I feel my sacrifices, in fact, are just additional ways for me to be blessed all the more--”There is no one who has left [anything for the kingdom's sake] who will fail to receive a hundredfold [return] in this life...” Why am I so blessed and others seem so cursed? Why do I have an awesome wife and wonderful children? Why do I have the best friends a man could ever hope for? Why do I get to be a part of, and even help lead, a wonderful church family? Why do I have awesome elders when so many other preachers serve with much less than that? Why do I fly at warp speeds in comfort to do my mission work, while other evangelists have traveled and still do travel in great discomfort and at great peril?
I don't have good answers. I know my life is a testimony to His goodness, not my own. I know my destiny is controlled by him and my course is charted by his will. Paul said he knew how to be rich and he knew how to be poor. My wife, Tana, wrote me a note for my trip and in it she said, “Did you ever think a little boy from Tussy [my country home “town” in Oklahoma] would be going to India? What a wonderful life He has given the two of us!” Indeed, Tana! And, who would have thought a little girl from Ratliff City would become his wife, follow him all over the country doing ministry, experience a heart so full of joy that it would almost explode, and still suffer such a broken heart that it seemed the wounds would never heal? Five states, thirteen houses, eleven churches, thousands of miles and four awesome kids later, we are living out our dream.
I've been wondering what I did think when I was still that little guy with big eyes looking forward to my journey into a much bigger world. I really can't remember. I do know that in retrospect God had his hand on me all along. I never dreamed of or wanted to be a minister, at least, in name and occupation. But, my dream was to do “ministry” all along, even though I didn't know what it was called back then. I just didn't want to be a “preacher” as it was done in my little world. I loved helping and serving people though. I loved seeing others happy. I loved sharing whatever I had with others. Still do. I dreamed of being the Dad I wanted to have. I dreamed of being the kind of husband I wanted my mom to have. I dreamed of being the friend I wanted to know. I dreamed idealistic dreams of a world much better. And, yes, I dreamed of an air conditioned house free of mosquitoes. I dreamed of comforts and safety. I dreamed of education and purpose. I dreamed of seeing the enormous world I read and heard about.
And, then God called me. He turned my world upside down and rocked my planet. He has led me down my own mostly bucolic “dirt roads” to where he wanted me to go. Each time I heard that Sawyer Brown song, “I'll Take the Dirt Road,” several years ago, I smiled, and thought, yeah, that's my theme song. “I'll take the dirt road, it's all I know. Been walkin' it for years; it's gone where I need to go. It ain't easy; it ain't supposed to be...” Tussy, Oklahoma. Dirt road. Fox High School, Dirt road. Southeastern Oklahoma State University. Dirt road. Amber (Amberton) University. Dirt road. Churches that will never be famous or mega (infamous, maybe!:). The dirt road. I grew up on a dirt road and then a gravelly, oil road. Yet, in these fairly lowly places, God has molded, protected and blessed me. He's done his deal in my life.
When Pastor P. B. Sugumar from Chennai, India walked into the Northeast Church building several years ago and asked to speak to the pastor, little did I know that God was again “recomputing” my own course. No, I can't say that my lifelong goal was to go to India. I never thought about or planned to go to India, even though the church planting I led in Phoenix supported the planting of a church in Bangalore, India in the mid 1980s. I guess I just got on the plane back when I was ten, and then again when I was 21, and thought I'd ride it wherever God decided to fly it. But from that hot-in-the-summer and cold-in-the-winter shanty that I called home for the first 18 years of my life, to the spacious and beautiful house I now call home in Wylie, Texas, and from the bed of a pickup truck on a hot summer night to the luxurious comforts of a Boeing 767 on a hot summer night some 40 years later, God has done more than I could ask or imagine in my life.
Now, I'm going to India representing the best church in the world in service to a much different world very far away. But it's for the same, eternal God. Two thousand years ago, in a dream, Paul received a plea from a man from Macedonia asking that Paul “come over and help them.” Two years ago, I (we) received a call from a man from India, asking on behalf of his own little church and 50 other small independent village churches in Asia, that we come over and help them. And, after much prayer and deliberation, here I am (we are), 38,000 feet over the Atlantic Ocean, going to hot, humid places with lots of mosquitoes, to try to help. And, by my side is my little buddy, now turned 23, Casey, who stated in his graduation-from-elementary-school-goal, at the end of his fifth grade, that he was going to grow up and work in ministry with his dad. I guess I'm not the only one living out my dreams. I cried then and I'm choking up now.
With each seeker that I teach, I try to clearly point out that my only goal for them is that they be “crazy, radical, in-love-with-God disciples who will go anywhere and do anything for God.” I'm always convicted when I say it, wondering if I really walk that talk. Am I personally, a crazy, radical, in-love-with-God disciple who will go anywhere and do anything for God? I hope so, but only the tests of life will reveal that. “The whole creation groans waiting for the sons of God to be revealed.” But, I know that I'm not on this mission journey because I am good. I'm on this trip because God is good. And, I'll again try to out give God, and He'll again make a joke out of that, because as I learned many years ago, you can't out give the Greatest Giver of all. Period. “For to me to live is Christ and to die is gain.” It's ultimately all good for the believer. “We are more than conquerors through him who loves us.”
I do not know what lies ahead these next days, or these next years, but this I know: we got a call from a man from Asia asking us to come on over and help. And, God wrote it on my heart and the heart of the Northeast Church decades ago to go help people. That we can do.
Posted August 08, 2008
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