Courageous Faith to Go Against the Grain

For years my husband and I felt called to become missionaries, instead of courageously walking into that calling we dove further and further into the world and the worlds standards.
In 1997 my world was rocked and the local church, in which I had given the past few years to by serving in every capacity possible, turned its back on me. I was left to cry out to God on my own and to pray He would do the miraculous healing in my life and my family’s life.
He answered! But that isn’t the part of the story I want to share.
After God spared my marriage, He started working on us as a couple. He was showing us that it was time to start living for Him and to quit living for the world. Don’t get me wrong. Every time the church doors were open, we were there, along with our three teenage girls. According to the worlds standards we had made it and why rock the boat with living out daily what the Bible had to say.
In 2002 I called my husband on the way to work to let him know I felt we had been lied to and there had to be so much more to God than Sunday morning from 9am- 11am. I wanted him to take a little time off work to ask God what He wanted from our family.
My husband reluctantly agreed and on April 1st of 2002 he started what became a one-year sabbatical. He prayed. He wrote. He cried. He poured himself out before the Lord. He immersed himself in the Word and studied like he was in college preparing for his final thesis in a doctorate program.
Very early in this process my husband found Romans 12 verses 1 and 2.
Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. (NIV)
Our new family motto was: Against the Grain. We were no longer going to go with the flow of society, but we were going to measure everything we did with the backdrop of God’s Word, or so we thought.
As the year finished my husband planned to open his company back up and start working again. But God (my husband’s now two favorite words) had other plans.
God had put a young mom in my path, who didn’t look like me, didn’t have the same up bringing that I did and was the age of my children. Very quickly we found what God wanted us to do with what became almost two decades: Be local missionaries to men and women who found themselves caught in abuse, addictions and negative cycles of life. We were to walk with them in relationship to show them a different way. A way that included working for a living, finishing school, taking responsibility for themselves and their children. This type of ministry we felt sure would fit perfectly into the local church, but once again we were sadly mistaken. The churches told us it wouldn’t work and that those we were called to serve, would never change.
At this time, we had a crossroads in front of us. Do it on our own and start a non-profit or leave those we felt called to serve and quietly fall back into line with the American church.
We chose the road less traveled. My husband learned all he could about becoming a non-profit and six weeks later we were approved. We lost friends, because they thought we were nuts. Our children were even made fun of when we sold our home, before we lost it to the bank, and moved into a small two-bedroom apartment.
But over the course of the next two decades, we were able to encourage many to not give up on life. Many found Jesus and began their own walk with Him. Not sure how many children were saved from abortions except for the one that introduced us to her daughter many years later. I have watched those whom we met when they found themselves incarcerated years ago, now watching their children enter high school. I have also watched young ladies receive their white coats and cry because I still remember the night God told me not to leave from banging on the front door until her mom answered. She had already taken the pills and had the knife.
Why do I say all this?
God has a purpose for all our lives. My husband and I were fortunate enough to be allowed to be used by God in many lives while serving as stateside missionaries. This all happened because of a verse that we boiled down to a life mantra of going against the grain.
Today though, those same verses in Romans 12 we take them even more seriously. If you are looking for what God’s will is for your life, look no further. We are to offer our bodies as a living sacrifice. What does that mean? God created us for one purpose, to glorify Him and to make Him known. Not make the world known. The best way to do that is to live a life sacrificed to His ways. It goes on to so that this is our true and proper worship. I love how God doesn’t leave us to figure it out. God then has Paul, the human author of Romans tell us: Do not conform to the pattern of this world. Paul even was inspired to tell us the next how? Be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Our mind’s need to be set upon what God wants, not what the world tells us is right. We will never be able to know what God’s good, pleasing and perfect will is if we don’t submit our whole life as a living sacrifice to Him.
What is God asking you, in courageous faith step out and do to make Him known today?