Day 37.......World Class Christian???

"He's got the whole world.......in His hands.......He's got the whole world, in His hands.........." This is really important. I DO want to be a world-class Christian, not a worldly Christian. If we let the Lord use us, He will. Even if we are afraid, or seemingly unwilling. If we just simply pray, "Lord, Your will, not mine be done." Back in July of 2001 the Lord called me to "preach" online. I didn't get it. He allowed me to meet someone (via eBay) that had a Christian group in Yahoo Groups. From that meeting, I began to post messages in there from time to time. Then the Lord moved me to do it every week day. Now I have my own group as well (created in August 2001), and post in two others, including the one I started posting in July 2001. Now there are over 100 people world wide reading the messages daily. I have some help one or two days a week. But for the most part I post 3 to 4 times a week now. God has really used that ministry.

Recently I put my music in a website that promotes all kinds of music. I've been in there for about 17 days. Since the 3rd day, one of my songs has been in the top 10 (went as low as #3, it's #5 today) out of 4,000 Christian songs. And it's #53 today (made it to #24) in the overall rock and roll charts out of about 65,000 songs. In both places, the Yahoo groups, and this "SoundClick" website, reach the entire world. There's people reading the messages in Russia, Canada, Mexico, and Africa (and those are only the ones I know about). The songs have been listened to in China, Netherlands, England, Africa, Australia, and the Philippines. As for going on a mission trips, I've been on several down into some of the poorest parts of Mexico. What will shock and surprise you is that they are willing to give you anything and everything, they have. I remember once ministering in one place on a river bank "Colonia" or village. I only knew one Spanish song at the time, and it's the Spanish translation of Cristy Lane's song "One Day at a Time". It's "Un Dia la Vez" in Spanish. I must have sung it 10 times. My uncle preached, and we prayed for folks. Then when we were getting ready to leave (we were taken there by a friend and needed to head back to his neck of the woods) they invited us to eat with them. They made food for us, and didn't even eat with us. They served us. I remember being frustrated because I knew they didn't have money to be giving us food, we should have had food to bring them, but as it was an after thought, we didn't have any with us. I guess you could say I was arguing with God in a sense. But I kept my mouth shut, and ate what they gave us. Avocados, onions, peppers, and goat's cheese (I did kind of give the cheese to my aunt) after having eaten a little of it. As I was riding in the truck leaving that place I was praying and asking the Lord why He would make me take those people's food. It came to me that I would have been robbing them of their blessing had I not received what they offered. Simply stated they were blessing God by blessing us. We came to share the word of God with them, and they shared what they had. I wept and wept and repented of arguing with God. He knows what He's doing, even if we don't. One thing I did miss down there was toilets and showers. Now when you stay in a hotel you have those things, but if you stay with the people, like we did.......those things aren't available. One place we went, water is so scarce a man said to my uncle, water's for drinking, not bathing. I highly recommend going on a mission trip, at least once. You'll never forget it as long as you live. That experience I had was over 5 years ago, and I still get teary eyed just thinking about it.

"What steps can I take to prepare to go on a short term missions experience in the next year?"

Ask my uncle when we can go, and if necessary (if we'll be gone on a Sunday) ask my assistant pastor to take over the congregation for one Sunday. :-) James