Motivation Check

Tomorrow we are going on Outreach again (as long as Daryl feels well enough... poor guy has been sick lately!) and I am super excited about it! We didn't go last week because most of us were out of town. As much as I enjoyed being at Resolved and getting a time of relaxation, I really missed being out there!

Additionally, we have been seeing the same girls the last few weeks so I am excited to see if we will see them again tomorrow. That's half the battle with this ministry. Sometimes we see a girl we have seen before but there will be a few weeks to a few months in between each sighting so it's really hard to develop relationships with them. All we can do is pray that the one brief visit will plant a seed. BUT when we see them every week, it opens doors to develop trust with them! I'm excited to see what God does tomorrow night!


Funny, I wasn't going to go this route with the blog today, but something I read in a Piper book just came to mind. It's kind of applicable to this... kind of not... but I will make it work ;)

John Piper wrote in A Godward Life:

"The effect it has on me is to make me want to love like Jesus loved and not always be thinking of the earthly payoff. Face it. A few kids are cute, but most streets kids will be thankless, rude, dirty, diseased, scar-faced, shifty-eyed, lice-infested, suspicious, smelly, and have rotten teeth. If we minister mainly for the earthly payoff, we will burn out in a year.

Jesus did not say, "True religion is converting orphans." He did not say, "True religion is making orphans mature and successful adults." He said, "True religion is visiting orphans." Results are God's business alone. Obedience is ours by his grace. More specifically, by faith in future grace. Perhaps when we grasp this, we will be freed from our earthbound way of thinking and released to minister to the ones who are least likely to thank us."


Perhaps God brought this to my mind just now because as excited as I am to see some of the same girls, should we end up seeing all new faces and not one girl we know, I will be tempted to let myself get discouraged because it didn't go the way I had hoped. But as this quote says, "Obedience is ours by his grace." Whether or not we get the 'results' I think we should get, I need to be obedient and do the work He has called me to do, cheerfully, thankfully, and fervently.

I need to keep this in mind. It is only with this attitude that I can be "released to minister to the ones who are least likely to thank us."


Sorry for the weird shift in this blog. I guess even in my excitement, I sometimes need to be stopped in my tracks and reminded why I am doing this in the first place. Not for my own personal enjoyment or satisfaction... but for Jesus, for His Gospel, and for my obedience to Him.