Tears of Purpose

"When I quit crying for my people, send me home."

I hastily scribbled down this quote from a spontaneous testimony I heard last fall while attending a Chronological Bible Teaching seminar. I don't even remember the last name of the missionary now, it's somewhere in my notebook; Kerry and his wife work with a tribe in Mexico. He shared very passionately, and even with tears, about his joy and purpose to disciple the baby Christians in that particular tribe in Biblical truth, and see them be able to reproduce.

He didn't apologize for his tears. "When I quit crying for my people, send me home," he said. When they become more of a project than a people, when they become "something to do" instead of a God-glorifying purpose for living, send me home.

That's when I got all misty-eyed. That's the type of God centered passion and purposeful living I want permeating my life until my dying day.

So does it? Do I have a life purpose that brings me to tears? Do you? Although discipling the world is part of every Christian's purpose, maybe your particular ministry group is children, or government leaders, or unwed mothers. What matters is that whatever God has called you to, you give your whole heart to, as a faithful steward of that calling and one who will give account.

Kerry's remarkable testimony reminded me to steadfastly guard the particular purposes God has given me. If my love relationship with God wanes from busyness along the way, if I lose the "why" behind what I am doing, if I forget to be in effectual prayer about it, then I shutter to think that in essence I become nothing more than "sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal, I Cor 13:1." I can't get that statement out of my mind. "When I quit crying for my people, send me home."

It's a prayer worth pondering.