God's Great Plan
When in 1995 my friend Amy Young moved to Chengdu, China, to teach English as a “Great Commission” cross-cultural worker, she wasn’t prepared for the proliferation in her new home of what she calls a “free-range animal.” On her first night in this new city, the head of her English department said, “Please mind the doors because there are many mice.” How true those words proved to be: mice nibbling the flowers next to her bed; mice running over her face as she slept; mice that she finally, with a frying pan, had to put out of their misery when they got caught in the sticky-paper trap. Rodents aside, Amy loved living in China and stayed there sixteen years longer than her originally envisioned two. As a follower of Jesus, she knew that her very presence embodied God’s love and grace.
God calls those of us who believe in Him to share His good news through our presence and our actions—whatever country, town, or village we live in. In the story of Scripture we can see how this has always been God’s plan. Let’s go back and see how God has always used presence as His way of reaching people.
God created Adam and Eve in His image, as those valuable and dearly loved (see Genesis 1:26–27). But His people disobeyed Him, and thus, sin and disharmony entered the world (Genesis 3:6–7). Brother turned against brother (see Genesis 25:13–24 for the story of Esau and Jacob) and child against parent (see 2 Samuel 15 and following the story of David and his son Absalom, who plotted to take the kingdom from his father).
When the people started to garner too much harmful power, finding even more damaging ways to hurt each other, God mixed up their languages at Babel to limit their ability to understand each other (see Genesis 11:1–9). God’s vision for unity among those He created had been fractured as their suspicion of other people groups grew.
All this brokenness needed to be set right. So, God set in motion his grand rescue plan, sending His very own beloved Son to become an embodied person, a Man who lived on the earth. Indeed, Jesus died as the ultimate sacrifice to save us from the curse of our wrongdoing. Then after He rose from the dead, God sent the Holy Spirit to dwell within those who believe in Him—an amazing gift from our loving Creator and Maker. The first followers of Christ received this gift at Pentecost (see Acts 2), when many of the believers started to speak in a variety of languages. Those gathered were “utterly amazed” at how the Galileans spoke in their native tongue (Acts 2:7).
With this gift, God reversed the great tragedy at Babel. Through the Spirit dwelling within them, the believers could share God’s message of transforming love with those whom they met. They were living out Jesus’ promise before He returned to His Father in heaven: “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 2:8).
God’s empowering presence through His Holy Spirit was not only for the early church; it’s for us today. We can trust that He lives in and through us in our communities, right where we are. He will inspire some of us, like my friend Amy, to move to China to embody His love there (among the mice) while others He’ll call to stay as a witness to His light right there in the town or village in which they were born.
For instance, in my twenties I believed God was calling me not to be a missions’ partner overseas but to stay in my native United States to share His good news and to pray that His love would permeate our lives. But we serve a God of surprises, and my earlier vision changed when I got married. Then I moved to England with my new husband and have lived and served here for the bulk of my adult life! With, I’m afraid, mice running across the vicarage living room floor at times.
How about you? Where is God calling you to share His message of grace and truth? How could you do so today or this week? My prayer is that you sense God’s delight in you, right where you’re at, and know that His presence shines through you in ways you might not even be aware of.
–Written by Amy Boucher Pye. Used by permission from the author. Click here to connect with Amy.
