Plans Get Changed

One of my favorite bands, Stellarkart, sings a song called “Finish Last.”

“People change, plans get changed and everything changes but You; You always stay the same....I wanna finish last, last in the worlds eyes. No matter what I do, I will be first in Your eyes.”

I have this really bad habit of continuously making plans. I form these plans in my mind, the things I really want to do or see or experience. I make these plans, and I box God in with my ideas of how things should go in my life. In high school, my junior year, I figured out my plan for the next nine years of my life. And boy was it specific:

Graduate with highest honors

Go to Southern Nazarene University as a Theology and Ministry major with a missions concentration and a minor in Spanish

Graduate magna cum laude

Volunteer as a missionary in a Spanish-speaking country for two years

Go to seminary for a Master of Arts in Intercultural Studies (MAICS)

Meanwhile, be a pastor or associate pastor at a church near Kansas City while working toward ordination

In 2016, I would then earn my MAICS and the same summer be ordained as an elder in the Church of the Nazarene. I would also get married this summer to some amazing boy, although I wasn’t sure who this would be.

Then my husband and I would receive our appointment as missionaries in the Church of the Nazarene, and my life would begin, or so it seemed because this was as far as I had it mapped out.

Quite a plan, eh? Boy did I have it all laid out for God. He knew exactly where I was supposed to be for all those years, according to me. It’s just now dawning on me how much God must have laughed at these great plans of mine. And now I know that He had much greater plans for me than I had for myself!

I can check off the first two items on this list for the most part. I graduated high school, highest honors and everything, and I went to Southern Naz, which is where God led me in my junior year. (Before that time, ever since the fifth grade I planned to go to Mount Vernon Nazarene University, but God changed my plans then, too.)

I took the course “Nazarene Missions” my first semester at SNU. We had a guest speaker representing the ministry Extreme Nazarene, a church-plant ministry currently working in Peru, taking the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the unreached people of Peru. Almost immediately I became passionate about this ministry and their 2 year volunteer “program” targeted at young adults. I filed it away as something I definitely wanted to do after graduation. I could then fill in more details to my master plan--the “where” of my volunteer missionary service after graduation.

But Extreme Nazarene came back in the Spring semester. I went through this awesome semi truck trailer that has been converted into an exhibit to tell people about the way God is using and is going to use Extreme in Peru. My passion was reinvigorated. I went through the truck, saw videos of real lives that have been changed and that need changing by the amazing grace of God. And I spent the whole day in the truck talking to the volunteers with Extreme. Even before entering the truck, I knew that I was called to Peru. After seeing the pictures and video, I was absolutely certain that I needed to carry the saving light of Jesus to Peru. Then I learned that the ExtremePeru project will not be sending volunteers to Peru after 2010.

Now wait a second... I know I am called to Peru, and I want to go after I graduate, and I desperately desire to be a part of this ministry, but it just doesn’t add up. I won’t graduate until 2012. But I need to go to Peru. So I had some praying to do. I tried to think like my parents, so I kept going back to ask the Extreme Staff questions that I knew they would want answers to. And I prayed, even fasted, and I waited on the Lord. And God used every outlet I would listen to in order to make His point.

One example is pretty simple...a song on the radio. I was driving by myself, and on my way to my destination, I left the radio off. Now if you know me well, you know that I love Christian music. Honestly I can’t get enough of it, so there is almost never no music on in the car with me. But I wanted quiet time with God. I prayed and was earnestly seeking God’s will. I suddenly felt like the radio needed to be on, and so I tuned in to Air1. The song that came on in a way changed my life.

Matthew West, “The Motions”

Help me fight through the nothingness of life...
I don’t wanna go through the motions
I don’t wanna go one more day
Without Your all consuming passion inside of me
I don’t wanna spend my whole life asking
What if I had given everything?
Instead of going through the motions

Those lyrics started working on me, but the second verse contained the words that I could not get out of my head:

No regrets
Not this time
I’m gonna let my heart defeat my mind

What was holding me back from this awesome opportunity that was seemingly perfect for me? It surely wasn’t my heart. My heart was set on God and the calling He has placed on my life. My heart told me that it was right for me. But my mind kept coming up with questions. Questions convincing me that this just wasn’t sensible. My mind kept reminding me of the expectations people had for me, expectations of what I should do and be and the success I should have. My mind gripped my heart with my fear of disappointing people. But the song is the testimony of what can happen when we surrender our whole lives to God’s control. “I’m going to finally let my heart defeat my mind.”

Cailyn--your mind keeps making these plans, and these plans only put God in a box and inhibit how he can use you. But take this day, stop going through the motions of your life and let your heart have victory over you mind, so that God can show you the even bigger things He has in store for you!

That was what I finally got. But the real moment I knew that I had to go to Peru came two days later. I went to a concert with the youth group from the church where I intern. The Rock and Worship Roadshow. My favorite band was playing, along with five other great Christian bands. It was held at the Ford Center in Oklahoma City, which I think seats about 15,000. There were people piled all the way into the nosebleeds of the arena.

One of the bands was playing, and I suddenly heard the words of Dr. Peter Barnes in my head, words I had heard in my missions class at SNU: “No one has the right to hear the gospel twice until everyone has had the opportunity to hear it at least once.” That moment, I was completely overwhelmed, and sat down in my seat, crying. I was surrounded by thousands of people, mostly young people, who had all heard the Gospel more than once, and here they were hearing it again. But in Peru, on the islands on Lake Titicaca, there is one church, and the pastor shows up once a week, and the people can’t even recognize him. They don’t know of the amazing grace of Jesus Christ. They don’t know that he died so that they could truly live. There are 2 billion people in the world who have not heard the Gospel, and I have the opportunity to share it with some in Peru, so that the light of Jesus can penetrate the overwhelming darkness found there in the midst of drugs and poverty and prostitution and alcoholism and pain. They deserve to hear the Gospel, because Jesus Christ died for them too.

It was that night that I surrendered all of my plans to God, and said yes to this new calling He gave me.

I have now been approved by the field to be a long term volunteer missionary in Peru with Extreme Nazarene.

There is so much more I could say, and I could describe all the things I will do, and try to imagine the things God will do through me, but most of all I wanted to share my passion and testimony of how I was called to this task.

Now I am just trying to remember that my plans may change, but the God I love and serve is still the same.