Future?

The other night when we watched the invisible children movie God spoke to me. Watching that video reinforced the feeling deep within my heart to go to Africa and do some sort of mission work for a few different reasons. First of all I will tell you about what I had been considering doing a year or two ago. I had decided that I had a heart for people in other countries, namely in Africa, and that I wanted to devote my whole life to helping them, but rather than just materialistically or physically, spiritually mainly. I had kind of thought of living how Paul did in the Bible by being kind of nomadic and establishing communities of believers. Doing this would obviously take a tremendous amount of faith and I probably wouldn't do it unless I had a companion (Ryan). Also this would mean giving up everything I had (which is good and bad) for God. I want to do that, but at the same time I don't want to at all. Basically I ended up talking myself into just wanting to stay in America and be a youth minister or do something with graphic design (video games or websites). Seeing that video reminded me of my heart for Africa and that I think I really do have the courage for doing something that hardcore. The video also was a great example of how just 4 people my age went to another country and are making a difference. Also one main thing reason I used for not wanting to go was because I didn't think I would have the motivation to learn the languages of other people. First of all that's just being lazy and secondly in that movie every single native person spoke English. It was a huge encouragement to me to see that. I still have my doubts, but I'm praying for God to rid me of those doubts and somehow make it clear to me that leaving America is His will for me. The three main things I think of when thinking about this are what I will have to give up: my family/friends, the ability to have a normal family or maybe even a family at all, and my computer. The first two are pretty easy to understand, but for my computer it might not make sense to you. Basically my computer is a part of me. I built it and my last computer. I use it all the time. I've spent more money on it than any other one item I own. Giving up my computer, even in order to give my whole heart to God, is seemingly impossible for me. I love God, but loving my computer too is a huge crutch that I intend to get rid of. (A lot of the rest of this is a rehash of my last post, but it's also got more depth to it. I had already posted this to another blog and I adjusted it a little for this blog) Recently God told me to get rid of my pirated software on my computer. I knew it through the various words I heard from people and read in the Bible throughout a period of 3 or 4 days and I struggled with God the entire time. Eventually when I read the verse about how if you can't be trusted with little then how could you be trusted with much I realized exactly why He wanted me to get rid of it. A few weeks later I heard the story about the woman who put expensive perfume on Jesus' head and the disciples rebuked her and said that they could have sold it and given the money to the poor and Jesus said that the poor they will always have, but they wouldn't always have Him. A friend of mine told me this while we were at lunch one day and his main point was that sometimes we need to give extravagant gifts to God that don't make any sense. A few days later that same friend preached a sermon on it at church and then another friend brought it up in a Bible study I had immediately after church and yet another friend preached about it Sunday night at our large group meeting and, yes there's more, I opened my Bible that night and the chapter I was reading just so happened to have that story in it. I was amazed at how consistent God was in telling me this. Anyway the first time I heard the story from my friend, the idea of giving my projector to a friend of mine (because of how much he seemed to adore it when I told him I was planning on selling it) popped into my head. At first I was like, "No way." I didn't think any big deal of it. Then Sunday came around and by the end of the day, after a lot of thinking I decided that God was asking me to do this for real. Right after the large group meeting I gave it to him and he freaked out. It was really neat. I told him that I expected to see him use it to invite people over and bless other people through it. Then that night was when I read the story again in my Bible and that was when I felt like God was saying to me "Well done, my good and faithful servant." Anyway I say all of that, because I think that the reason God has laid those two things on my heard recently (giving up software piracy and my projector, which by the way I had been planning to sell so that I could afford to upgrade my computer) was not just to make me a better person and more able to serve Him, but in order to prepare me for something bigger. I think that it is to prepare me so that I am strong enough to leave my home and to give up everything I have and know except for Him (EVEN MY COMPUTER!) so that I can do His will. Soooo yeah this is a pretty crazy thing to think about. Especially for someone who is only 20. I just ask you to let me know what you think about this and to pray for me.

(I had another post on that same blog that I want to put on here too):

Ok, so last night I was thinking about something that just amazes me. I'm about two weeks behind in Experiencing God, because I've been slacking recently. The last lesson I did was talking about how making a spiritual inventory of the different experiences with God is a good way of seeing where God is leading you and can help you to see if any new experiences or thoughts are coming from God by seeing if they line up with past experiences. At the end of the study it said to make a inventory list of your experiences and I was tired at the time so I decided I would do it later. Last night when I was thinking about it I realized that my last post consisted of my spiritual inventory for the most part and that I had already used that method in the prior post to see that leaving America is in His plan for me.