No Stomach for Africa.

I’m done. Phew. I gave my final sermon today and I’m heading home tomorrow night. This place is beautiful, intriguing, intense, exhausting. As I sat with my hawkish republican pastor friend Zekarias today speaking intensely for over an hour about the profound threat of radical Islamic expansion in Ethiopia and the ever-present memories of civil war, I had a moment of hesitation. Am I cut out for a world like this? Do I have the energy and resolve do deal with the mounting crises of Africa? Or will this place ebb away at me until I’m too tired to return?

So I lay on my bed exhausted this afternoon unblinking, unseeing while a cool breeze came in with the afternoon sun through my patio door. 3 stories below, under the endless canopy of tin roofs and smog, the constant religious noise from one holy day or another came pulsing uninvited through my door. And I thought to myself, I really don’t think I have the stomach for this place. I really don’t. As beautiful the people, as rich the opportunities, the risk and messiness and intensity is also here. I want to retreat from dirty streets and ancient rivalries to my comfortable cave of moody music and snuggly kids. Yet somewhere in my heart, deeper than resolve, vaster than determination, there this tiny whisper of compulsion that has driven me for over 16 years. I’ve labeled it “calling” and for the sake of calling I’ll keep coming back to this rich confusing joyful tragic continent.

Over and over. As long as I have strength and the Spirit’s go-ahead. My deepest sense of personal destiny is anchored intrinsically to Africa. What else would I do with my life?

Our seminars on Friday and Saturday were exceptional. I mean that. These people, like the biblical Bereans, are checking out the stuff we’re teaching. They are analytical and brilliant. And I’m telling you, I’m watching them move from skeptisim to conviction and it gives me shivers to think about what they might actually DO with this stuff. Of course most will tuck the teachings away as simply “inspiring stuff” but I really believe that a few of them are actually going to start DOING discipleship and that’s thrilling to me. The pastor from one of the biggest churches reflected critically on his own ministry, “I’m asking myself… who’s my ‘Paul’? Who’s my ‘Timothy’? I don’t have a Paul and I don’t have a Timothy. So really, what am I doing in my ministry? This is what’s been missing.”

Last week, Zekarius prayed for us and said to me (by way of prophesy) that God is teaching me to rely on the Spirit in all I do.  Well I think he’s dead on.

After having the fear of God put in me by last week’s preaching debacle, I was very intentional about preparing this week’s sermon with a desperate ear open to the Holy Spirit. In prayer he dropped a mysterious reference (1 Pet 2:11) into my head, which evolved into an 11-page sermon manuscript. I resolved a couple things along the way: 1.) I would pause frequently in my prep to invite the Holy Spirit into the process and redirect accordingly. 2.) I would spend a large amount of time preparing and not assume I’d “wing it”. 3.) I would make a concerted effort to apply the verse to my own life this week. Well, I’m learning slowly. I gave the sermon this morning to a slanted church (the foundation of the church literally sat on a sideways incline!) and I think it went very well.

Even more profound this week, there was a “moment of reckoning” for me personally before getting up to teach on Friday. I was praying, feeling rather nervous, begging the Holy Spirit’s involvement… when a sudden clarity of thought seemed to settle on me. I suddenly knew what I wanted to communicate. I don’t think anybody saw it, but I was trembling and unusually bold when I got up to teach. Zekarias kept glancing up at me curiously. He later said he literally he saw the “glory of the Lord” resting on me and it took him by surprise. I saw the pastors straighten a bit and I think the Holy Spirit was speaking to them as well with that same sudden clarity. It was one of those moments that stands out for me in all my time in Africa. And of course it has nothing to do with me and everything to do with the Father’s passion for people. I’m learning that that’s the point. He wants me to rely on him for everything he leads me to. He wants me to rely when I think, “I’ve got this.” And he wants me to rely when I have no stinkin’ clue what I’m doing.

Because I’m not the point.

He’s the point.

Get it? :)

So what can I say now? Is Africa a place for grim determination based on calling? Or is it a place of profound Spirit-filled purposefulness? I guess for me it’s both. And in the future my expectant hope is that it will more and more become a place of authentic laughter, transformation, and friendship.