This song always reminds me of my year 11 biology teacher, Mr Binns. I want to say it was his favourite, but maybe he just introduced it at chapel sometime and it stuck, so that I recall it oddly 14 years later and hundreds of kilometres removed.
Today we are into Moore Mission proper, beginning a week in Port Macquarie which will see us hanging out in a retirement village, 5 different schools and a radio station. We look forward to pasting and puppeting, sawing and singing, meeting and eating and spreading the gospel in this sunny paradise.
Paradise it is. And, being so, Day 2 is far too early to pray for strength, right? I have that scheduled in for Friday, when ours is depleted, when I can no longer do it by myself. Right now it’s Monday afternoon and I’m irritable after a day of planning and nervous about tomorrow and trying desperately to hide it. This isn’t my first rodeo after all – I’m in third year. I know what mission is like and the day 1 crash is simply not for me.
I drive away from our HQ on the road to dinner. It is a 15 minute trip and I need a personality transplant to make it through the evening. So I pray, desperately, and the words of that old song and others like it come back to me. Songs which speak of how small my strength is, hymns which accord with my day. I am ever so foolish. But my great God is so kind.
He reminds me that however long it takes me to ask for his strength, I am never going forth in my own. This Scripture lesson I am planning today, which may or may not be a success tomorrow, is not decided by my eloquence or confidence. And so at the beginning of mission, the first lesson learned is the same old one about how much I need my Saviour. For the sin that blinds, the weakness that paralyses, the fear that grips – Jesus is the one who came to rescue.
Here in Port Mac, we all head into this week with different tasks ahead and ideas of what success will look like. Please will you pray for us? That the name of Jesus is lifted high, that the gospel of Jesus is proclaimed boldly, and that many find forgiveness and new life in him.
It turns out that we are strong, in the end. Those words soothe my restless soul. We are strong because we go forth in the power of his might. Will you pray for us, as we go?
“Child of weakness, watch and pray. Find in me, thine all in all…”
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