One Sunday morning, feeling dark and alone, I went to my favorite lonely spot up on a hill to be by myself. All weekend I had been processing a couple of unpleasant events that threatened to take me out of the ministry I have grown to love so much.
I needed to find God's face in it all. I wanted His counsel and His comfort...instead, I found Him. Doesn't always happen this way for me, but I just started to enjoy a sweet fellowship with Jesus and my problems kind of faded off to someplace else.
As I drove down the hill, the issues were still there, they hadn't been resolved, but I started asking myself, if the worst happens, and I have to leave this place, leave this ministry, leave flying, what have I lost? Well, yes, I've lost some things, but it slowly dawned on me that the experience I had just had, meeting in a personal way with my Master...no one could take that from me. That which is most valuable to me, no one can touch. Though you put me in solitary confinement, you can't take Jesus from me. Though you fill me with physical pain, you can't stop me from communing with Him. You can't touch what I value the most. All of a sudden the world became a very safe place.
That was over five years ago. God didn't allow the threats to materialize--we're still here in Papua, still loving this ministry. That sense of security that I stumbled into that day up on the hill hasn't left me. The world can be a cold, bitter place. At times it feels like it has a personal agenda to wipe you off the map. It's an amazing feeling to look into the blankness of the future knowing that it could hold some pretty rough waters and still feel safe.
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