Ryan's culte

So, unfortunately, the French word for devotion, worship, religion, worship service... is also the word for a cult. On Sunday's, we go to church to the culte. We also have a culte every day before class, Monday and Thursday as a large group, Tuesday in our individual classes, and Friday we sing worship songs. For this blog entry, we are using culte as devotion. Ryan shared the following (all in French!) with the student body this week. 

This is my testimony of how I became a missionary and how God has worked on my life to change my heart to be willing to follow him wherever he calls me to go.

When I was 10 I went on my first mission trip. It was a group of 100 medical personnel and supporters who created a hospital in a school for 2 weeks during the summer in rural and remote Mexico. I went on a trip with my family almost every year growing up. On these trips I came to understand more profoundly Luke 12:48 where it says, to whom much is given much will be required. I saw the poverty of the world and I knew I wanted to do something to help.

After that first trip, I found myself 10 years later in college, asking the question how can I be useful for God. I was studying to be a biomedical engineering at the time and I was learning the value of usefulness and efficiency, two very important values in America and particularly in the field of engineering. Unfortunately, these two ideas became more important to me than trusting God with my future.  They became idols in my life. I found that I was more concerned with how useful my work was and how efficient I was that I was missing opportunities to form deep relationships with those around me. I was also not open to taking many risks because unless it was measurable and well understood, I was afraid it may be a waste of time and resources. My god became efficiency.

However God changed this way of thinking in a profound way.

While at university, I had a friend who was also studying engineering like me. However, he did not seem as stressed as I was about grades and results. He took time to be with people and reached out to me when I was very lonely in college. We played soccer together on the university team and I had hoped to be a captain of the team with him. Sadly, he developed leukemia the summer before his last year in university just before the start of the soccer season. Tragically, the leukemia took his life that winter. Yet, he taught me so much in that short time we had. He showed me the importance of relationship and people above results and productivity. His life changed my thinking even in just the two years I knew him.

After college I married my wife, Shannon, and I began to wonder what my service in missions would look like. I thought maybe it would be 2 week trips like I grew up going on. However, Shannon had a passion to serve long term as a doctor. This was difficult for me because going overseas for me meant sacrificing my ideas of efficiency and productivity as well as a good job at a very prestigious research university. It also meant that since I was following my wife who would serve as a doctor, I would not have a clear role, another frustration for me. As I saw the passion God gave Shannon to be a doctor, I knew I needed to pray that God would find a way to make our two separate desires united. What God did was difficult but also amazing.

I began to think more seriously of full time missions service, but leaving the security of the USA and a job I found fulfillment in was very intimidating. However, God began to change me. He began to help me understand that taking a risk for him my not be efficient or productive in my definition, but that it was what he wants. God wanted my whole heart and my will to be given totally to him. He was calling me to let go of efficiency and productivity. He was calling me to give up my pride and move into the unknown world of missions in Africa. It was scary and also exciting because I knew God had changed my heart.

But how did God change my heart. God showed me through the miracles and life of Jesus that efficiency is not the goal, but total surrender of my will is the goal. Jesus did not efficiently heal everyone he met. Each time he healed the blind, he used a different way. Jesus also did not always preach efficiently as we might think he would have preached. Rather, he invested deeply in the lives of 12 men. I understood as I saw the life of Jesus that I needed to be surrendered to the will of God the father and not the will of efficiency. I now have the freedom not to judge my life based on its usefulness to the world or its efficiency. I now know that my soul purpose in life is to do the will of God the father and to be completely open to whatever he calls me to do. Whether that is moving to Vanga DRC with my wife and 1 year old daughter or living in the USA and working as an engineer, I now have a new way of thinking thanks to God and his actions to bring about heart change.

Lord, thank you that you are patient with us as we learn to do your will. Thank you for showing me the idols of efficiency and productivity in my life. Thank you that you love us even in our sin. Thank you for your grace as we fail to live the way you have called us to live. I ask that you would create new hearts in us that would seek to do your will above all else. In the name of Jesus Amen.