Risky Business-- GMT Summer Staff

 

For the second summer, I’m working for a company called Group Mission Trips. College students are sent out all over the country with a team, a Penske truck full of thousands of dollars of equipment, and a credit card. Sounds risky huh? We’re entrusted with the mission of sharing God’s love with high school students, youth leaders, residents, local organizations, and everyone we encounter along the way. With only 2 weeks of training and getting to know one another, we’re sent out as student missionaries. To any normal business, taking a risk like this is suicide. For Group Mission Trips, this is the risk they are called to by Christ. The full-time staff does everything they can to prepare us for our positions, fill us up with Christ, and be a resource throughout the summer. However, they are well aware that they can’t control what will happen at hundreds of camps throughout the summer. In my eyes, this is a beautiful and fully necessary risk to take because it’s rooted in the mission of Jesus Christ.

Ask any summer staffer—it’s quite a risk to leave behind your friends, family, home, and summer to be placed on team of strangers doing a very demanding and stressful job. I’m amazed by the courage of the ladies on my crew this summer that have never even been to a mission trip with Group—they are quite literally walking by faith rather than sight. We live out of suitcases, sleep on school floors, and drive to the middle of nowhere to set up a camp where students spend a week doing free home repair for a community. Not only is this job thrilling, fulfilling, and adventurous—it’s downright terrifying. No summer staffer ‘knows’ that this is the right risk to take; the job offer doesn’t come in a sparkly box with a pretty ribbon that says “This is God’s plan for you!” Risk looks ugly and dangerous; it feels like paralyzing fear or even imminent disaster. We embark on our journeys with anxiety, fear, and worries! There’s nobody that can promise us that we won’t struggle or fail, in fact, we’re promised during training that we will face challenges and stressful circumstances. So why take the risk?

Because that’s where we find God. In the overwhelming anxiety of a situation where you have no control or insight into the future, faith takes over. We love the mission and purpose of Group Mission Trips, so we give up 3 months to serve others and trust God with the unknown.

Our culture is obsessed with certainty and safety and it can severely inhibit our spiritual lives. Jesus never called anyone to an easy existence with a predictable outcome! The man asked strangers to leave their families and everything they’d ever known to follow him—a dirty, homeless guy that pissed off the authorities. Sounds like something your parents would teach you to avoid at all costs. And yet, they followed. Imagine selling everything you owned, saying goodbye to those you are closest to in this world, and not knowing if you’d ever see any of it again. For all you know, you’ll wind up dead or in jail for life. Christians have always been risk-takers.

They followed because Jesus moved their hearts with a truth that can’t be found anywhere else. It comes from the belief and faith that this man sacrificed everything he had to set us free from our own demons and flaws. He loves us with an unconditional, radical, and uncomfortable love. Most people can’t take a compliment without feeling awkward… He died for you—how uncomfortable is that? We respond by walking blindly into situations that wreck us with fear, but give us life. What are you afraid of? Telling someone you truly love them and being rejected? Walking away from the only friends you have because you know they aren’t good for you? Ending a marriage that’s toxic and winding up alone? Changing your major without a clue what you will do instead? Those situations all terrify us because they involve investing in something that goes off the clear cut path and winds up in messy, confusing territory. We’re called to leave the things that prevent us from loving God, ourselves, and others wholeheartedly. We’re called to walk away from the situations that we know are wrong and the ones that feel wrong deep down in our souls. Maybe they aren’t blatantly detrimental, but they slowly sap our joy and passion for life—we’re called to leave it and turn to God.

I’ve been a control freak in my love life for as long as I can remember. I had low self esteem and copious amounts of baggage that steered me toward the nearest relationship in times of loneliness or desperation. As I’ve worked through those issues and re-centered myself on what’s really meaningful to me, I’ve learned some very important lessons. Love is messy! If it’s easy, and doesn’t make you uncomfortable or worried, it’s not love. I used to think, “I’ll know when it’s right because it’ll just be easy. The timing will be right, the guy will be right, everything will just fall into place.” No. There will always be excuses to shy away from love because it’s terrifying and risky. Now I don’t ask myself if it’s easy or good timing, I ask myself if the relationship challenges me and helps me grow in faith. I assess my reasons for being in the relationship and I articulate what values the relationship must be founded on. I don’t ask myself if the guy is perfect, I ask myself if he’s honest, compassionate, committed to Christ, and ready to work hard for love. Miraculously enough, as soon as I started asking the right questions, things got much better for me. I now find myself in a relationship that faces a unique set of challenges and roadblocks, but I’m not worried about the rough terrain because I’m focused on making sure we have a foundation to withstand the unexpected storms of life. I have no idea if he’ll love me in five days or five years, but I know that we’re both in the relationship for the right reasons and that’s all the certainty I need. Being able to talk openly about our fears and worries with taking the risk of trusting one another has made this the healthiest relationship I’ve ever had. At the end of the day, it’s still not easy, and I don’t want it to be.

A Christian life isn’t easy, perfect, or neatly laid out in front of us—if we’re too comfortable, we aren’t being honest with ourselves and we aren’t investing in our faith as much as we think we are. However, we can always be certain that God will appear in the dysfunction, hardship, pain, and risk if we let Him. He fills our stories with unpredictable, humorous, crazy, and beautiful twists and turns if we trust Him, and at the end of our lives we’ll see that he’s a much better author than we could ever be.