Jesus Uses Your Obedience

Here I am sitting in a coffee shop in Chiang Mai staring out at the river, listening to a podcast, awed by God's faithfulness.  Yep... awed.  Let me backtrack over these past 72 hours.

Three days ago, I was preparing for a trip to Penang, Malaysia.  I had bought tickets weeks ago in preparation for a visa renewal trip.  Every three months I have to leave Thailand to renew my visa for another three months.  This is the ongoing process until I am able to obtain a one year visa (something that is certainly high on my prayer list)!  The trip was planned, the tickets were purchased, I was gathering paperwork and getting ready to make a list of what I needed to pack when I received a notice... "The Royal Thai Consulate of Penang will be closing on Monday, April 2nd until further notice."  My tickets were for April 2nd - 4th.  Hmm...

As it turns out, the Consulate is moving buildings, hence the reason for the closure.  The notice went on to say it may just be closed for 4-5 days, but that was the entirety of my trip.  Now what?

Why is my first response always to be overwhelmed?!  Some days I feel like I'm a novice at this whole trust journey.  It's hard to make my first response deeper trust, instead I immediately dive into "how can I fix this?"  I think it's a pretty natural response, but Jesus is teaching me every day that fear and operating out of my own strength have no place when I'm seeking to follow Him.  Learning friends, I'm learning.

With the help of a few of my teammates, I began doing some research and found tickets to Hong Kong, yep, Hong Kong where I could go to the Consulate and renew my visa there.  No one from our team has done it before through this consulate, but another missionary friend recently went and seemed to have a fairly smooth run of it.  So, it sounded promising.  Not wanting the ticket prices to go any higher with it being last minute, I went ahead and booked the trip.  I went to work contacting people to get as much info on Hong Kong as I could, and soon the Lord provided housing through the family of a friend who I actually met here in Thailand when she came through Mae Sot on a team to visit us.  Thank you Jesus!  He's good friends, He's SO good!

So now housing was covered, tickets were purchased and I was feeling good about having a Plan B when I got a message from a friend saying the Hong Kong Consulate was going to be closing on Thursday for a holiday.  My tickets are for Tuesday to Friday.  The plan was to land on Tuesday, rest and figure out Hong Kong, go to the Consulate on Wednesday to drop off my papers, pick them up again on Thursday and then fly out on Friday.  Well... that's gotta change!  Haha!  Can you tell I was beginning to really feel the weight of this all now?  Wowzers!  But like I said, Jesus is good and I'm feeling confident that this is all still possible.  What it means for me is simply this... now when I land tomorrow morning, I need to get thru customs, get across town and get to the Consulate before 12:30 p.m. to turn in the papers so I can still pick them up on Wednesday and have everything I need before they close for Thursday.  We got this!  (You can definitely be praying for favor over that whole process).

But here's the point of this whole long story...

I've had some time to kill here in Chiang Mai.  It's actually been really good for me as it's been a while since I've really sat down to journal and write.  I forget sometimes how much I need it... how good it is for me to process and better see what the Lord is saying and doing.  Well today I opened up my journal and began writing out all that's been happening these past 72 hours.  As I turned the page to continue writing, there in the binding between two pages was a small piece of paper with a note on it.  This journal was given to me as a gift from my older sister before I came to Thailand nearly two years ago.  I was writing in another journal when she gave it to me, so it wasn't until that one was filled that I began writing in this new one.  What I didn't know was that she tucked this little note inside a random page that she knew I would eventually flip to some day.  Today just happened to be that day.  On the note was this... "Praying for you today and everyday. Romans 15:13."

Do you know what Romans 15:13 says?  It says this, "May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in Him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit."  Wow.

Today, I'm thankful for the obedience and willingness of my sister to listen to the Lord on my behalf and for taking the steps of trust that He would use what she heard to speak to me in exactly the way He needed to in exactly the time He needed to.

Sometimes I question what I think I'm hearing from the Lord.  Sometimes I wonder if it's His voice I've heard or just my own.  Sometimes I feel silly for what I think I'm hearing Him say and I feel intimidated to share what He asks me to with others.  But He doesn't ask me to figure out how He's gonna use what He has spoken to me... He asks me to be obedient to listen, to trust, to share.

Jesus uses our obedience.  What a powerful reminder of that today.