On Oceans, and Following Your Calling

Our guest poster today is my good friend and teammate, Sarah Davis. I’ve been excited about her writing for us for a while now and I think you’ll see why. Sarah is a hard worker and eloquent speaker/writer and her passion for serving the Lord is evident. Kevin and I have known her and her husband, Ryan, for a few years now and they were personally responsible for our invitation to join this amazing mission team (Thanks, guys!) and we’re so grateful to be able to work alongside them. ~Keli

 

“For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.” Matthew 16:25

I live nowhere near an ocean. My husband Ryan and I live in the Andes mountains, surrounded by towering majesties painted in shades of brown and red or lush green, depending on the month of the year. Living here in Cusco, Peru, (a neighborhood or two over from Ruffled Mango’s very own, Keli Westmoreland), has taught me to love the mountains – something I never saw myself saying. I’m originally from North Carolina and grew up spending a few weeks every year savoring good seafood and splashing around in the waters of our state’s beautiful beaches. For me, the mountains were always… pretty – but, at heart, I will always be one of those “beach people” who doesn’t mind getting real sandy or a little sunburnt.

I loved Keli’s post from a while back called “The Fire in my Bones”. Keli, we must’ve caught the same “missionary” bug, and I’m grateful that we ended up years later working with the church here together in Cusco. In college, after a couple of Latin American mission trips where most of my classmates came home and said, “Man, it’s good to be back in ‘Merica!”, I, like Keli, found myself feeling quite the opposite. I felt a drive and a relentless calling that led me to pursue a life as a missionary. It was where I knew I felt alive, fulfilled. After a handful of years working in secular fields, living a more “sensible and practical” life, I finally decided that I couldn’t run away from it anymore. And answering that call was the hardest and best thing I’ve ever done. I am incandescently happy with my boots finally on the ground in this third-world country, trying my best to share a message week-to-week that is life-savingly urgent.

I bring up the ocean because it’s the title of a song that has really moved me for a few months now. The song is called “Oceans” by Hillsong UNITED. You know when you’re having a rough day (or month), and it seems like God just reaches down and puts some inspiring words in your path through a book, a friend, or music? Well, that’s what this song was for me… I instantly found it so relatable to my work here with the church. (True, I’d have to drive 22 treacherous hours over 15,000 foot peaks to see the Pacific ocean in Peru’s capital city, Lima. But somehow the message of this song, which uses beautiful analogies of the water, describes my day-to-day life as a missionary so well.) I want to share the lyrics with you in just a bit. But first, a little about what I do…

I think the memes that pop up on Facebook from time-to-time that say: “What My Mom Thinks I Do,” “What My Friends Think I Do,” “What I Actually Do,” etc. are pretty funny. And after some conversations that I’ve had with people back home, I sometimes think some people must really wonder what we, as missionaries, actually do. To be honest, some of their ideas are sincere, but hilariously inaccurate. Am I frolicking around with poor, orphaned children every morning, or baptizing a couple of people I meet on the street each day? (Not hardly.) And although I try my best to package it all together in a neat little newsletter every couple of months… a typical week for us here is very hard to portray. What I can say is that it involves a whole lot of unknowns, a lot of making-it-up-as-I-go, a lot of admitting “that was a bad idea,” and a lot of disappointments and allowing God to pick me back up and redirect my steps. I do… hard stuff.

The vast majority of you who are reading this today are not foreign missionaries and don’t aspire to be. (And thank God for this! – that we are all different parts of the Body – that there are some of you who are patient enough to live in the small towns laboring with older congregations or in the US cities outside of the Bible belt meeting each week with the faithful few.) We missionaries are nothing more than the small, oddball percentage who, in some skewed sense, wanted to leave our home nation and culture, our families, everything familiar and simple…only because somehow this actually seemed easier than to no longer deny our calling. 

Today, I’m not asking you to consider something that’s not your calling, to grab your husband when he gets home from work and tell him that you’re moving the family to Southeast Asia to work with an orphanage or to teach the people of China about the Word. (Although, if you ever have felt called to something like this…we should talk!) But what I am challenging you to do is to stop living so comfortably – to find and follow your calling. This was one of the greatest gifts God gave me when I moved to a foreign country, learned a brand new language, and started trying to talk to people around me about Christ. I was no longer comfortable; therefore, He could finally use me in a bigger way.

You need to figure out, through prayer, what your “great unknown” is – what the thing is that God will have to lead you through when your feet won’t touch the bottom of the ocean. We’re talking about your Peter Story here – where God could lead you if you’d just do something crazy and step out on the water! As you allow yourself to dare to do this – your “hard thing”- you’ll find strength, talent, and perseverance that you never knew you had. You’ll feel unstoppable and vibrant, like you did as a child running through the backyard barefoot in the summertime. And you’ll see the most beautiful things unfold before you as the hand of God works mightily through your human surrender and your conviction to take action.
Ann Voskamp has a very artful post called “Dear You Who Doesn’t Want to Do the Hard Thing,” and in it she says, “You’re meant to do hard and holy things because they are the next thing — to get to the best thing. You’re made to do hard things — because there’s no other way to get to the happy and holy things. Life is Pain — and you get to choose: either the Pain of Discipline or the Pain of Disappointment.” 

I couldn’t amen her more. Why keep living in a boring way that supposedly brings us comfort when at the end of the day, as we put our heads on the pillow, that “comfort” brings us the pain of guilt and disappointment? – that is disappointment in ourselves, as we feel it deep down in our bones that we were meant for more. 

Without further adieu, allow me to share the lyrics with you that continue to compel me. If you’d like, you can look up the actual song and listen to it, as it has a gorgeous melody that really drives the meaning home. We’re actually about to teach the a cappella version in Spanish to our congregation here in Cusco! (I may have had an influence in this. 🙂 )

Oceans | Hillsong UNITED

You call me out upon the waters

The great unknown where feet may fail

And there I find You in the mystery

In oceans deep

My faith will stand

 

And I will call upon Your name

And keep my eyes above the waves

When oceans rise

My soul will rest in Your embrace

For I am Yours and You are mine

 

Your grace abounds in deepest waters

Your sovereign hand

Will be my guide

Where feet may fail and fear surrounds me

You’ve never failed and You won’t start now

 

So I will call upon Your name

And keep my eyes above the waves

When oceans rise

My soul will rest in Your embrace

For I am Yours and You are mine

 

Spirit, lead me where my trust is without borders

Let me walk upon the waters

Wherever You would call me

Take me deeper than my feet could ever wander

And my faith will be made stronger

In the presence of my Savior

 
Maybe your hard thing is looking into adopting a child (like has been spoken about so beautifully on this blog: Adoption: A Labor of Love; Growing Your Faith and Your Family Through Adoption). Maybe it’s confronting an ugly truth that has taken root in your marriage or other relationships. Maybe it’s starting something awesome for your community or volunteering regularly in places where darkness reigns – like a women’s or homeless shelter. Maybe your hard thing is taking a more active role in the spiritual upbringing of your children. Or maybe it’s starting a weekly women’s Bible study in your home, not just for Christian friends to fellowship, but aimed at women in your neighborhood who might not yet believe in Christ.

Life, even life lived inside of your comfort zone, is hard and demanding. It will continue to be hard no matter what. So, why not, along with all the other daily hassles, choose to do the hardest things – the ones that really count?? Have a vision for Christ that is bigger than just fixing dinner, more inspired than just filling a seat at your workplace from 8-5. Choose a life of adventure with Him and “walk upon the waters wherever [He] would call you.”

Today, won’t you join me in praying this together?

Lord, show me what the hard thing is that you want to lead me to do. I want to walk out on the water, like Peter did. Even though his faith faltered for a moment, I want you to lead me into an incredible story like his, wherever you would call me. Take me somewhere that I wouldn’t expect – to a place I wouldn’t dream of going on my own. Strengthen my faith as I go along and keep my eyes above the waves in the most difficult moments where I sense that I am sinking. But mostly Lord, I just thank you that I am yours and you are mine, because if this weren’t true, you know that I’d just stay put right where I am without ever daring to really live. I pray through faith in Jesus’ name, asking you to make all of my hopes come true, AMEN.

Sarah Tesh Davis loves her life as a missionary living in Cusco, Peru, with her awesome husband and best friend, Ryan. She loves music, traveling to amazing places throughout South America, trying new foods out as well as recipes at home. In December, Sarah and Ryan can’t wait to become the parents of their first child – a baby boy!

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