..... But He is Good

The past few weeks my mind has been wandering back to Turkey. It was almost exactly two years ago that I boarded a plane in Calgary Alberta headed for Turkey. I had no idea what to expect. None of us on my team did. We went with the intent of putting into practice all that we had learned in the past three months during the lecture phase of our YWAM discipleship training school and seeing the Kingdom of God come in a foreign country. Our purpose was to be Christ in this predominately Muslim nation. We didn't know how we were going to do this, and even more so, we had no idea what God was going to do in us.



I went with the mindset that the past three months had been about God working in my heart and the next two months would be about seeing God work in the lives of others.It had nothing to do with me. I knew that God would work in me and through me, but thought my own growth and experience would be minimal. Boy was I wrong! When I look back on the past few years, this was the time when I very intimately experienced the meaning of that quote that started this blogging series. "Safe? He is not safe, but He is good."

In terms of the physical, we were quite safe in Turkey. Though it is 99.8% Muslim  the places were in were not dangerous places for Christians. We did have to be careful about what we said. We were not to use words such as missions and missionary and we could not use the names of specific missions organizations working in the country. When referring to ourselves with other missionaries, we said we were there with "Y Company". The worst that would have happened to us would have been that we may have been kicked out the country but the implications for long term missionaries were the possibility of not getting their visa's renewed and not being able to continue their missionary work there if we were to do something that reflected on them and their associations with us. We were able to share the gospel freely with no fear of reprisal.

The first three weeks were terrific. The four of us were staying in a house owned by missionaries who were in their home country on sabbatical  We made our own schedule,went wherever we felt the Holy Spirit was leading us, and made some wonderful friends. Our team was wonderful and we had little to no problems getting along with each other. We saw God begin to work in the hearts of some Turkish young men we had met and built relationships with during our visits to the nearby university. God gave us wonderful favor with the security guards at the university and we were able to come and go as we wanted. (The universities in Turkey have very high security. There are armed guards at ever entrance and it is usually not easy to get on as a visitor. We, however had no problems and were able to go multiple times a week.) It was a wonderful time and our expectations for the next portion of our time were high.

It became immediately apparent upon our arrival in the next city that things were going to be much different.
First Steve lost our cell phone on the train and then, the day after arriving, Steve and I both became quite ill. During our five weeks in Antalya, we were staying with an American missionary couple. They lived in a five bedroom apartment and had the three bedrooms on the main floor set up to host teams. All three of us girls were in the same room, which was a bit of an adjustment after having had our own rooms previously. They were also used to hosting larger teams and, because of the necessity of routine for larger teams, were much more strict in their routines and their expectations of us than we had been used to. Though they had said that we would be responsible for making our own schedule and finding opportunities to serve ourselves, we discovered that were actually a number of things that they expected of us.

These were only the surface things. Everything in this city was differently spiritually. I immediately began feeling isolated from my team. I had all sorts emotions at warring inside of me. For the first time in years, God felt distant. I couldn't hear His still small voice when I prayed. I didn't feel His presence during worship. I had hundreds of questions and got back no answers. One day in particular stands out to me. We decided to do some street evangelism. We went to Starbucks and asked God who He wanted us to speak to and He wanted us to say. I was sitting, waiting to hear something, anything, from Him but all I got was silence. While the rest of the team wrote down what they felt God was speaking, I sat there pleading with God. There had been times in my life when I could not hear God for myself, but this was the first time I could not hear God for someone else. The more I tried, the louder the silence became. To say I was upset would be a gross understatement.

After spending time in prayer, we began walking, searching for the person or people God would point out for us to speak to. We found no one. There were a few people we stopped and talked to and shared the  gospel with, but there were no encounters that stood out. Feeling confused, we stopped to sit on a  bench over looking the Mediterranean sea to seek God a bit more. I was holding the notebook we had been using to write down what God was speaking. I sat there, holding this notebook filled with the words of God to everyone else on my team but me and looking out over the ocean. None of it made any sense. And then, God spoke. In a previous blog post I talked a bit about this experience and if you want to know more about this specific incident, it would be worth going back to that one (When Heaven Doesn't Answer). He said five words to me. "This is all about you."

And it was. I though that my time in Turkey had nothing to do with me and was all about what God wanted to do in the lives of those we encountered. I thought that in the midst of that, my emotions, my experiences, had very little significance. I was so wrong. Yes, it was all about what God was doing through us. It was about those Turkish university students we shared the gospel with. It was about the gypsy family we brought food to. It was about the missionaries we were able to encourage and bless. And it was about me. It was about what God was doing in my heart and what He wanted to show me about who He is. It was about learning the goodness of God in the midst of one of the most painful experiences of my life. It was about seeing that even when God is silent and even when His presence cannot be felt, He is still faithful and He is  always good.

Looking back on this I can see where He was. I can see Him around every corner of the experience. In my mind I see Him sitting at every nearby table, on every bench, in every restaurant and coffee shop. I see Him  sitting on every bus and walking two steps ahead of me on every street. He was always there. But I needed to experience it the way I did, I needed to endure the silences and ask the unanswered questions. I needed to cry every tear of confusion and frustration so that I could see it the way it really was. Because He is not safe..... but He is always good.