Have you ever started a project, got the majority if it done, like ¾ of the way done, decide you hate it, and completely start over? Yeah, I did that with college. It was my junior year, spring semester when I decided that this path that I was on just wasn’t for me. I was full of anxiety, fear, and I was uncertain about everything I had been doing the past 3 years. I felt completely defeated and discouraged in life. That’s when my parents suggested I look at Liberty University. They have told me for the longest time that they knew I was going to go into ministry, specifically youth ministry. I thought they were crazy, and I told them never wanted to go into ministry. So, after my first semester in nursing school at Liberty, I called them and said I’m changing my major to Youth Ministry.
Transferring my senior year and having to start college over probably looked crazy and didn’t make a lot of sense to many people, but God’s plan usually doesn’t make sense to us because we can’t see the bigger purpose.
Now, graduation is in sight, which brought all new fears of my future. I prayed for clarity of my future and I kept being reminded of Proverbs 31:25 over and over that says,
“She is clothed with strength and dignity, and she laughs without fear of the future”
I have continued to pray this verse over myself. To become a woman clothed with strength that is not my own but only comes from the Lord, to be completely confident that my worth is found in the one who paid it all and not in what I do or what has been done to me, and to laugh in the face of fear because I know that my God has already defeated him.
I’ve never been one to shy away from an adventure. So, when I heard God calling me to the biggest adventure I have ever taken, how could I say no? The World Race is an 11-month mission trip to 11 countries. I had known about it for years and always wanted to go but never felt like the time was right. As I looked at the trips, I felt like God was physically pushing me. I thought it was weird and that it was all in my head until I read Matthew 9:37-38
“Then he said to his disciples, ‘The harvest is abundant, but the workers are few. Therefore, pray to the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into his harvest”
I’ve heard this verse a hundred times but this time it stirred something in me. I looked to Charles Spurgeon for some help and this is what I found (in reference to the expression ‘send out workers’),
“Now the Greek is much more forcible, it is that he would push them forward, and thrust them out; it is the same word which is used for the expulsion of a devil from a man possessed. It takes great power to drive a devil out, it will need equal power from God to drive a minister out to his work.”
So, I applied the next day and now I am being sent out on another adventure, this August, that probably looks crazy and doesn’t make a lot sense to many people, but I know God’s plan is greater than any of mine.
I would love to talk to you more about this trip and what God has been doing. Feel free to reach out anytime! You can also subscribe to my blog to keep up with me as I prepare for my trip and while I am out on the mission field. It is my prayer that you will pray for myself and my team as we answer the call to go and spread the Gospel around the world, and to also consider joining me in my mission through financial support.
Talk to you soon!
Anna-Stewart Faircloth
