Lessons Learned

Now that I’ve been back from Africa for a few weeks and taken some time to process the past 18 months, here are a few observations I’ve reached:

-     Spiritual warfare is real. I knew this going in, but there on the frontlines of poverty and sickness, I realized it more than ever. Christians are striving to bring the love and healing power of Christ, and Satan is actively working to oppose it.

-     The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick (Jeremiah 17:9). Again, I knew this, but to see it in another part of the world just affirms how dark human hearts are everywhere. We are not basically good people who occasionally do bad; we are, by nature, bad people who can only be made good by the perfect blood of Jesus.

-     God is able to do “far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think” (Ephesians 3:20). In researching and writing a book about Living Hope, I saw the evidence of God’s hand on this ministry throughout its 10-year history, and even well before that. Living Hope chaplain Graham Haddad, who was there from the beginning, told me that this verse aptly describes the birth and development of Living Hope.

-     When God issues a call to do something for Him, He also provides the means to accomplish it. Much as He did this with Graham, Pastor John Thomas and the other founders of Living Hope, God enabled me to envision the book and carry it through to completion. A year ago, it was a blank slate; today it is nearly finished and it looks spectacular. I’m not saying this to boast about myself – this is all His doing. I, along with many others, was just an instrument He used to make it happen.

-     I hate injustice. I saw it everywhere, from corrupt government officials all the way down to petty criminals, and it drove me crazy sometimes.

Now the challenge is to apply these lessons in whatever vocation and location God places me in next. I’m excited to see what that will be.