Extreme Makeover - Heart Edition

The last month has been a really tough one, but through every hard time, God is there each step of the way.   I realized that things in my heart had to change or everything was going to fall apart.  A great struggle was taking place.  You see, I came to Africa with a mission and a plan for how to accomplish it.  This worked great until it clashed head-on with what God had already planned and I was not willing to give.  In the long run, my desires were God-focused and I wanted the same ultimate goals as He, but I was not particularly excited about what it was going to require of myself by doing it His way.  When faced with having to choose between God’s plan and my own, someone had to give and it clearly wasn’t going to be God.  I was the one who was in for an extreme heart makeover.

I landed in Africa and almost immediately started off on the wrong foot.  I came here with a very defensive posture; I was in an unfamiliar place, with people I didn’t know, who spoke a language I didn’t understand and with a ministry partner who I never actually gave a chance.  This was crazy!  I mean come on, after all, I took my Myers-Briggs and work style preference test.  I went through Strengths Finders and I know my spiritual gifts.  I knew what I was doing and what I was best at.  And yet here I am - an executor with no work to execute.  I am a shepherd with no flock to care for.  I love to speak and teach, but I am confronted everyday with a language barrier.  “But,” I would muse, “I took the placement test.  How on earth did I end up here?”  Before long, I was frustrated and confused, trying to put God and myself in a box because it made sense on paper.  God had other plans.  Yes, I see now that His plans involved removing me from all that was comfortable and natural for me and thrusting me into what I would like to call an environment for “accelerated critical spiritual and character growth.”

From the start, things were pretty rough in the village.  Most of the men didn’t want us there, and they had no reservations about sharing these feelings about us.  They didn’t trust us.  Their fear of us dictated everything about how they viewed us.  We knew all of this, but instead of it causing us to reach out even more, we allowed it to bind us up and keep us protected.  Not surprisingly, you could see a parallel between our relationship with the villagers and my relationship with Rich and how I treated him.  Despite this, I continued have a hard and guarded heart with Rich and told myself everything was ok so long as I was loving these people and loving God.  This is simply not biblical.  I soon found myself frustrated and discouraged.  When I finally came to the end of myself, I cried out to God.  It was as if He was just waiting for my call.  Take up a posture of humility, He said…and so began my hard heart makeover. 

“Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.   And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.” – Col. 3:12-14

We have received simple yet wise counsel from our leadership here and back at home.

“The way of a fool is right in his own eyes, but a wise man listens to advice.” – Prov. 12:15

Stay committed together, stay in the word together, and start praying together.  By God’s grace, this counsel fell on receptive ears and hearts.  God’s Word and His Spirit began to, one by one, remedy things that needed to change, and the heart that had once been so dense – that of my own – was now beginning to look more like His heart.

“But we all, with unveiled faces, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory.  Just as by the spirit of the Lord.” – 2 Cor. 3:18

I didn’t surrender everything all at once and it hasn’t been easy…but I did commit to being diligent to work at it.  As I began to exchange pride and arrogance for humility and kindness, the desire for friendship and openness began to develop between Rich and myself.  Rather than having two separate ministries in the village, I actually grew a desire to work alongside him.  As Rich and I began to work together, things started to change in the village.  We were getting out more and spending time outside the areas we were comfortable in.  New friendships blossomed and we even found another language helper.  One of my most precious memories thus far in Africa came when we had a team up here to assess the famine in our region and my host explained something to our translator in his native tongue.  He said, “When Boussieff and Souffi (Ben and Rich) first got here, no one wanted them here.  We didn’t know what they wanted.  We didn’t trust them.  But now that they have spent some time here, we see that they have clean hearts, and we don’t ever want them to leave.”  I almost committed a cultural blooper and started crying in front of everyone. I was so touched.

All I had to do was let down my walls and lay aside my own plans to allow God to work in and through my life.  Being willfully submitted to God and each other in humility has an eternal impact on those around you.  Commands are no longer burdensome, your labor ceases to be in vain, and the love you share – His love – changes lives forever.

“The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love.” – 1 John 4:8