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Dear God, Please Forgive Me

NO WAY was I going to be a foreign missionary as a single woman!!! I didn’t want to end up a strange, cat-hoarding old lady with a bun on top of my head, so I just took matters into my own hands…
 
I knew the Lord wanted me to apply for vocational/long-term service because I had spent so much time in prayer about it…
 
But I was so sure I’d be married before I went, that I ignored what I knew I should do, and instead, I checked the box on the application for foreign missionary service that said, “short-term.” I figured that would help the Lord get me married before I committed to missionary life. Then I took my proud self to the post office and dropped that application in the mailbox.
 
Less than a nanosecond later, I felt like someone had snatched the air out of my lungs….and immediately, I knew exactly why. It was my first step of faith as a would-be missionary and I had failed miserably. There I was, preparing to go to the ends of the earth to encourage people to trust the great, big God of the Bible for whom nothing was impossible. Yet there I was, unable to trust that same great, big God for something I had already seen him do many times over in other people’s lives.
 
“Oh, dear God!” I screamed. “Please forgive me!”
 
I couldn’t “unsend” the application, but I could call the missions organization and explain what happened. And so I did.
 
I asked if they could ignore what I had just mailed out to them and just send me the paperwork I would need to complete for the vocational/long-term track. And so they did.
 
I can’t tell you what a difference that one decision made in my attitude, my missionary work, and my life in general. I found that we are much more heavily invested in something we believe we will be doing for the rest of our lives….Enough said.
 
“To obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of rams.” ~ I Samuel 15:22
 
 
 

Sherry Boykin

Sherry Boykin helps Christian women transform their lives through the perspective-shifting power of story.

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