Being Available To God

A mission trip story that'll relate to a lot of people.

One of the hard things when it comes to using examples from my life is that I don’t feel like most people will relate to my examples. I at least have the desire for it to show people that joy can even be found in strong trials. I came up with something for this week though that will resonate with many more people. The example that came into my life was what things were like for me on a mission trip last year.

The mission trip that I went to last year was in O’ahu. I was nervous about sharing the gospel. I didn’t know how I should start it. I didn’t know if I’d be starting it at a bad time. I didn’t know what sort of things I should say. To take things even further, O’ahu is full of Mormons and Buddhists, so a couple of people I talked to had terrible reactions. One guy who was a Buddhist just started yelling at me while trying to explain why it was wrong of me to try and share the gospel with him. One guy who was a Mormon wrapped his arm around his daughter’s ears and pulled her closer to himself as if I was a monster that was gonna try and kill her.

Here’s the thing though. I have always wanted to feel like God was gonna use me for something. I grew up telling God over and over again that I didn’t care about how hard God would allow my life to be, I just wanted to feel like He was gonna use me for something. That was an opportunity for God to use me. I also saw it as an opportunity to prove to myself whether or not I was actually willing to make myself fully available or not. Because of that, I found myself in a state where I just kept on sharing the gospel. Every time before I planned on talking to someone, I would say to myself, “Don’t prove myself wrong. Show that I am willing to be fully available. It’s not about my ability, it’s about my availability”. After saying that to myself, I would just go up and start talking to people.

At the end of the year, the guy who was leading the mission trip started telling people how amazed he was at me. Whenever we would all go to the beach, he would wonder where I was and then realize that I had already started sharing the gospel with the people there. It happened at other places like the store too.

One thing I realized was that the most effective way to reach people was by sharing my testimony. For example, there was a time that I asked a lady if she had ever thought of what life would be like after death. She said that she’s thought about it a lot ever since a moment when she almost died. What do you know? I’ve almost died before too. After I was bringing up near death stories that I had, she finally decided to try coming to church.

Here’s the thing. Your testimony has to do with things you have experienced first-hand, not simply things you believe. People can create arguments for beliefs that have no experiences to prove them, but people can’t argue with experiences. People are likely gonna be willing to listen to experiences that you’ve had. Experiences that you’ve gone through might even sound like miracles or adventures. Maybe you’ll have some experiences to share that will be intriguing to them. Different things will effect different people in different ways.

Testimonies are a gift. Don’t be ashamed to tell people your testimony. Sure, you don’t know how people may react to it. Share your testimony at the right time, and the power of your testimony will shine through.

Are you not a Christian? I hope you realize the power of people’s testimonies if they ever bring them up to you.

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