This weekend, I am attending a missions conference in downtown Indy.  This afternoon, I attended a session entitled “The Spirit of Africa.”  The speaker was a 72-year-old woman who was called four years ago to minister to a specific village in South Africa. She is a retired GM executive who spent most of her adult life pursuing, in her words, earthly recognition and fortune.  Her calling emanated from a vacation in South Africa with her daughter where they visited a tribe of about 300 people.  The Holy Spirit clearly told both she and her daughter that they were supposed to help this village. She said that at the time, she was suffering from severe cataracts that robbed her of clear vision.  She said that she could not even see her husband standing six feet in front of her.  But when the Lord called her to help this village, she said that simultaneously, she was granted perfect sight for a few minutes.  She could make out every leaf on the trees around her and look into the eyes of the people staring back at her. The significance and symbolism of that moment spoke loud and clear to her.  That was the confirmation that she needed.  Turns out that the village of 300 was actually a village of 1,400 people.  (She said, “God’s sense of humor,” or perhaps He was telling her, “I’m just that big!”)  Nonetheless, nearly four years later, she and her husband have done some amazing things to bring hope, well-being, and God’s love to this village, and they are even now expanding their ministry to another tribe in South Africa.  God is that big.

Her calling to Africa was 40 years in the making.  She told us that 40 years earlier, she had visited Africa for her job.  She said that after that visit, Africa was in her blood– she absolutely loved the people and the land.  But God still had to work on her heart.  Part of her story was that she had grown up in a Christian household.  She went to church three times a week growing up.  She had made a personal commitment to Christ early on in her life.  But she was “un-surrendered,” in her terms.  She said, “I may have surrendered three-quarters of my life to God, but I had not surrendered it all.” She was a self-described over-achiever. “I was a work-aholic, and everything I set out to accomplish, I accomplished,” including climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro– without oxygen. 

Her eyes welled up and her voice broke as she relayed to us the moment that she felt that surrender four years ago.  She was praying in her prayer circle in her back yard (which has in the middle of it a twisted I-beam from the former World Trade Center site that was demolished on 9/11).  The rain was falling down and with it, her soul was laid bare.  She surrendered fully to His will.  At the age of 69 after being a Christian for most of her life.

Needless to say, this spoke volumes to me.  Of waiting on the Lord’s calling and His gentleness and love to take the time to prepare me, however long that takes.  (As a dear friend says, God is about timing, not time.)  Also, it made me ask– what have I not fully surrendered to my Lord?  What parts am I holding back that work to hold me back from the plan that He has for me?  Yet even in my unwillingness to let it go, He waits for me, patiently revealing bit by bit those places that I have not given away to Him.  And He won’t stop pursuing me until I am ready to lay it all down.  How beautiful the Father’s love for me!