Used to be…

I find it extremely interesting to learn what people once were before Jesus called them to do something entirely different. Sometimes the connections can be seen and are somewhat obvious; sometimes it’s simple to see how someone got from point A to point B. But I think that most of the time, these supernatural transitions are more super than natural, with connections that are hard to follow. If we were novels read by some other world’s inhabitants, would they be able to guess the ending from the beginning? I think most of us could easily answer, “No!”

A friend of mine was sharing with me about her alarming understanding of God’s call on her life. She had been pursuing a career in theatre, had dreams of stage direction, lights, action and constant entertainment for the masses. She felt she was well suited to this role because of her love for people, and her desire to unite a cast together to perform at their best.

Now she is in Bible School. She went through some life-altering experiences during a year or so and now understands how much better God can use her in ministry rather than theatre. God showed her how much more beneficial her love will be when channeled toward the unsaved. Essentially she told me, “The Gospel changes people’s lives. Theatre doesn’t do that. At the most it will impact an audience for a day or two, and then it is forgotten. Ministry is much more meaningful for people!”

[Just a note: I'm not saying that full time ministry is the only way to serve God. To the contrary, there are many who are doing exactly what God has called them to do in the office, in the sports arena, in the home. But there is a difference between a life lived around God and a life lived for God. God has dreams for everyone, and they are usually not what we expect. But He does incorporate our personal interests and talents. Sometimes He wants to awaken other things inside us that only come from Him, so that He will be glorified!] As for my friend, she has grabbed the heart of God and God is using her wildly in areas she never even thought of.

I’ve heard countless stories like this. People who were addicted to drugs or alcohol or sex, suddenly transformed and dedicating their lives to helping other people. They explode the Gospel because it truly changed them; they have to tell others about it! So instead of just working as counselors or anti-traffickers – although some of them do that too – they are missionaries or pastors or street evangelists, incorporating the life-giving Gospel into their daily lives.

I love hearing how God takes what we think is “the plan” and brings us into something else entirely. It seems that most people have a point of awakening in their lives that changes everything: some moment that makes them reevaluate everything thus far and then leave it behind to chase after some new “God dream.”

For me the transition toward God’s dream seemed slow, but somehow always deep-seated within me. In highschool I had one passion: animation. Ask anyone; they will confirm that that was what I wanted to do. I wrote about it, drew it, dreamed it, thought it, lived it, was it. This was the interest I fully believed God had given me for a reason. And somewhere on the backburner of my mind was this silly justification that, once comfortably established at Warner Brothers as an Oscar-winning director, I would use my workplace as a pulpit, changing the animation world and Hollywood for Christ.

It sounded good. And I thought it was God.

But, as I one day realized, rather startlingly, I was wrong.

Buried beneath all this hunger for 2D celluloids and storyboarding, voice acting and animation history… there was another passion brewing. One that I recognized but refused to chase until I was 21 years old and irritated with art school.

I always wanted to travel. I loved other cultures. I loved people of other countries. I loved adventure. I craved change and creativity and new scenery like the proverbial fat kid craves cake.

Over the course of a year, God began to show me these other desires, but only as I began to realize and confess the idolatry behind my surface passion. Little by little, I began to give it up. Really because I started to recognize the detrimental effects it was having on my relationship with my family and friends, not to mention my relationship with God.

There was a day that I actually wrote a letter to a character in the world I constantly escaped to, bidding farewell. I needed that letter to mark something for me, and it was a day of closure and more freedom than I realized in that moment. I began coughing up the dreams I had invented and finding the beautiful grace and love of God instead.

Then He helped me dream again. In 2006 I went to Peru on a mission trip. My heart exploded. I fell in love, seemingly with Peru, but more accurately with the lifestyle of missions. I had never experienced such adventure before. I had never been used by God in such ways before. I never dreamed that I would preach to people on the street, let alone enjoy it! I was broken in so many ways and God used a host of experiences and people to show me that … ahh! there was something more I was supposed to do. Something I was called to do.

In 2008, I attended MCM Ministry School, mostly in faith and out of hunger to go to “the field,” as missionaries call it. I had planned fervently on attending MCM’s sister school in Sweden, the original home of Mission SOS International. Again, God had other plans.

I continue to be broken. Continue to fall in love. Continue to be amazed. Though I am still in preparation, I cannot believe my life now.

Sometimes I pause and think that, had I had my way, I’d be out in California by now, struggling with the masses to find an animation job, probably hating it and finding it not to be what I expected. Or maybe I’d be menially happy with a two-bit job somewhere else entirely, but still always wondering about some other life unknowingly buried within me.

I’m so thankful for the Holy Spirit and how He rescues us. Even from ourselves. Even when we think that we are hearing Him. Where would I be without Him?

Now, I am thinking about all this because I am preparing a 5 minute testimony with the rest of the Mexico team. We will use our stories and experiences to accentuate the Gospel and preach to the people in San Luis. And I am so amazed by God. He is a miracle worker. He alone knows what we will really be happy doing with our lives.

What dream is God stirring within you? And are you chasing Him to find it?

” For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord! “

Romans 7:22-25

PS. Oh, for the record, I do still enjoy and appreciate animation . Some of my favorite movies are animated! It has just taken its rightful [second] place in the course of my life: where it belongs. The miracle is that I’m perfectly okay with that .

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