I feel there are two words that drive the passion for any type of foreign missions work, and both come from the heart of an individual. These two words provide each of us with direction, objectives, focus and the desire to overcome insurmountable odds.
The first word is contentment. According to Oxford Languages, contentment is a state of happiness and satisfaction. In our Western culture, we are taught from birth to gather as many materialistic items as we can before someone else beats us to the punch. We spend 40 to 60 hours a week at a job that, hopefully, will provide us with the funds to feel financially secure. Along with the ability to purchase clothes, food, a car and a house, our jobs give us the sense that we’re successful as we pound out our daily tasks at work.
When you visit other countries, such as China, India, Ecuador and several others where I’ve spent time, it opens your eyes and heart to see how little people often survive on in their daily lives. You can feel the frustration and emptiness of those who are grinding out life one day at a time. You see poverty, women being abused physically and emotionally, and children begging for food and needing the love that only a parent could give them. Those images have been burned into my mind as I’ve returned home and resumed my normal lifestyle.
The second word is purpose. According to Oxford Languages, purpose is the reason for which something is done or created, or for which something exists. You were created for one specific purpose in this one lifetime. The hang-up most people have is that our purpose is defined by others. We let others’ expectations, their influence and their position in our lives box us into what completes us as individuals.
There is only one you! What if you missed that one special purpose that was designed just for your skills, your love, your compassion and your knowledge?
The greatest example I can offer is that the Abbie DeLoach Foundation, along with Compassion Christian Church, sponsored five student nurses to spend 10 days in Ecuador. The goal was to provide medical care for several villages. This group pounded out 16-hour days to meet the demand that was placed into their care. Each of the nurses pushed through, because they knew it was their purpose to provide complete medical care for the people in these villages.
When they traveled back to the United States and returned to their respective colleges to graduate with a nursing degree, each of them was more certain of their purpose in life: to serve others in the medical field.
Today, all those nurses are on the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic, battling the virus in different cities and making life-and-death decisions that affect so many families. They are enduring the demands on their skills, knowledge and limited personal time because they have found their one purpose in this one lifetime.
So I ask you, what one trip, what one vacation, what one decision has impacted you so much that it gave you contentment with your life, along with a purpose that was designed only for you?
Live inspired,
Jimmy
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