UNTO SOMETHING GREATER:
WHY AMERICA?
Las Vegas, January 2009:
I stood in the prayer room facing a map that stretched from one wall to the other. My hand was placed on Africa and I prayed fervently for the nations. Why had I come here, to Vegas? It’s my last year in college and I’ve been preparing for 4 years to go into missions after graduation, using the counseling degree I’ll have earned to bring healing to the broken hearted. Now, 5 months from graduation I’m at a Campus America Leadership Summit, not a Missions Sending Conference. That was my heart, but the more I allowed my eyes to open, nothing was leading me towards these things, only my own desires. Sure, I’d received a call to missions soon after salvation, but when I looked at my life, God had been wooing me a different direction, away from Africa and back to America.
Everything I was doing was everything I loved. Somehow God had worked it all out, giving me things I never knew I wanted. I was leading prayer, heading up the 24/7 initiative, traveling nearly every weekend, Oklahoma, Georgia, South Carolina and interceding for colleges, sometimes meeting with fellow leaders and sharing stories of what’s been happening in our prayer rooms. Even more, God had expanded my influence in the past year and given me a handful of freshman to travel with, love on and share my excited. I knew my grip on the nations was slipping away, but it didn’t seem to matter because He kept filling my hands with new blessings, new adventures and a new love for our generation. I truly felt that way until he sealed the deal.
Back in Las Vegas I’m still standing with my face to the wall, hand now placed on Asia, heart with the nations. The Lord spoke clearly, so I wouldn’t have the excuse that I didn’t understand. “Place your hand on America”. This would not be a simple act of obedience. I knew God was asking me to lay down my plans to go overseas, all the history I’d cultivated in prayer, all the dreams he’d given me and visions of China and India. Put them down, and adopt a new burden. Frankly, I didn’t want to. I’ve harbored a secret resentment towards America for having heard the gospel and largely rejected it. I wanted to go to the strategic places, the unreached. A straightforward command. “Move your hand”. But it ripped at my heart. I couldn’t do it.
The summer before Vegas I had spent in China. I had a funny suspicion he was sending me to the end of the world to tell me he was planning on keeping me at home. I asked him point plank, “Lord, do you want me in full time missions”. He told me, “I want you in full time love”. It didn’t scare me or threaten my call. I wanted to be in full time love as well. When I was 18 I got confirmation from him that he’d be using me overseas. It wasn’t the kind of confirmation when someone prays over you and they kinda say something that makes you think maybe, perhaps, that would have been God confirming. No, this was blatant. I would be a missionary, a woman who traveled and prayed, worshiping and bringing light to the darkest regions of the world. I just didn’t know how big his plans were.
I wept openly, no longer standing before the map but now kneeling, asking God to give me the strength to obey. Finally, by His grace, my hand slid across the Atlantic and covered America. Immediately a rush of words flowed from my lips and prayer for our nation streamed from my innermost being. Simultaneously the Lord said to me, “It’s unto something greater. Don’t cry Baby. You will go to the nations. You will bring in the lost and set captives free. But here, now, I have you in the US. And you will love it. I know you will because I’m changing your heart. But you don’t have to be afraid, because it’s unto something greater.”
That night the Campus America family was worshiping together. We’d spent all day talking and praying about how God has been moving in American College students, sweeping youth up in a the momentum of holiness and intimacy. I loved it. I soaked it up. Nonetheless, here I was in the worship service crying again, mourning the loss of my immediate plans to go overseas. A man came up behind me and laid his hand on my shoulder. “It’s not about your call”, he said. “You’re being selfish if you think it’s about your call. This whole thing has been a set up to get you to fall in love with him…It’s a ploy. He just wants you, wherever you are. Don’t cry. You act like you’ve lost something. You haven’t lost anything. He’s just gained all of you.”
“It’s unto something greater”, He said one last time before letting me fall into his arms and feel the security of his plans as they wrapped around me. In a matter of a couple minutes everything had changed. My eyes had been opened. I saw clearly. He’d set me up for this a long time ago, giving me a heart for prayer, leading me across the state and several times across the country to build unity and encourage others to do the same. But now it had meaning. Just as Robert Wilder traveled to every university 100 years back, encouraging students to seek God, so I too would gear up for a journey across America, thankfully backed by a couple hundred friends doing the same work, and call our nation to repentance, to revival. We’d call them to the nations. The Students Volunteer Movement was a result of the work Wilder and others did in the US. They understood that their call to America was “unto something greater”
Although I’ve known I’m a vagabond (a traveling worker) for as long as I can remember, it was good to hear the Lord say it. Not only that, but I found out he’s been saying it to a lot of people. A bunch of the Campus America staff is called to the nations. Turns out, God’s got them here before sending them out too. Funny how that works. Since the day I moved my hand over the US, I’ve been surprised how little has changed. He still led me to China for the summer, still has be mobilizing a missions team next year and continues to fill me with strategy to reach college campuses with the message of intimacy through prayer. I’m doing what I never had the guts to dream of. Now, with greater vision, purpose and a new zeal for our nation, I am traveling, praying and loving full time.
