Deepening Faith

As I look back at these past months and begin my attempt to articulate the grace and goodness of God during this time, I find it difficult to accurately communicate the full depth of all He’s done. Between the way that He has grown and sanctified my own heart, to the way He is laying a grand foundation for His Kingdom to be built upon in every corner of Puerto, there is much to share. I will do my best to condense and summarize the bits of wisdom the Lord has graciously given, while also doing justice to the proclaiming of His hand moving and Gospel spreading. 

In a humbling way, the Lord has been gently reminding me of the uttermost dependency I need and am to have on Him. In our comfort, it is easy to forget this truth. We are distracted and lied to by our pride, convinced that we are in fact capable on our own. We easily forget it is He who puts the air in our lungs each morning. Instead, we go about our day in blissful ignorance or oblivion thinking we are responsible for our daily strength, perseverance, and capabilities. However, when placed in a context where even the ordering of food can be a daunting task, the reality of this truth (uttermost dependency, that is) is put on display. In a convicting, comforting, and unavoidable way, God has continually placed this at the forefront of my life. In all things I am to be utterly dependent on Him. Within this too there has been great freedom of knowing I can trust every detail of my life within the hands of a sovereign God and good Father. What better place for my every need and want to be than in the care of the Lord of the Universe as opposed to my own feeble, sinful grip? While it is a daily battle against my flesh to truly die to myself, what a joy it is to fight in the battle of sanctification! Fighting a battle in which I can depend on the victory of the resurrected Christ to go before me in triumph. 

However, this isn’t the only battle being fought here. Through the lives of my students and their families, I’ve seen the reality of the darkness present here and across much of Mexico. Many may assume, as I did naively, that this part of the world is exposed to and saturated with the Gospel. Yet, this is far from the truth. The true Gospel reached the state of Oaxaca just about 50 years ago. The entirety of Southern Mexico is also listed on the World Watch List as one of the top 50 persecuted countries. And there are many people here that are just first and second-generation Christians having lived through violent persecution from small villages and indigenous people groups in the surrounding areas of Puerto. While Mexico may not be far from home to many of you, the reality is, it is far from the Gospel. In spite of this, the Lord has been working and moving. While the presence of idolatry is rampant here, within my own classroom I can confidently say the Lord is drawing close to Him the hearts of these young children. Seeds are being planted and taking root. I have a classroom of students who love to pray and daily beg to be the one who gets to bless our food before each meal. I have 5-year-old children that ask questions about when will the Lord return again and how will He take away all sin. These young souls know that they are sinners who have been saved by grace through the death of Jesus on the cross. And as the prayers of disciples and the sovereignty of God continue to go before us, we joyfully await the season when these seeds will bear fruit. While we are still fighting the battle of idolatry and brokenness in the culture and in the families around us, the Lord is showing the victories taking place in the hearts of students in the classroom. He is giving us a glimpse of the glory to come. 

Another glaring truth the Lord has made evident to me in this season is that of the deepening of faith–What does it look like to “grow in faith?” How is this accomplished? Well, with the combination of the Lord’s grace, incredible community, and stories of heroes of faith and martyrs, God has placed a response in my heart to these questions. Can I speak in absolute? Of course not, for I am fully aware of the Lord’s ability to work in numerous ways, but I can speak confidently knowing that this is God’s wisdom and not my own. As I was contemplating this idea of deepening faith, the Lord placed a particular question on my heart, “how much are you willing to let go of and surrender to me so that you may know me more and make me known to others?” To what extent am I willing to go? I realized that the more I release from my own hands, the more space I create to hold tightly to the God standing before me. The more money, the more time, the more ease, the more comforts, the more of this world I lay at the foot of the cross, the deeper I can go in communion with Him..the deeper anyone can go who is willing to lay it all down. The gate is narrow (Matthew 7:13-14), so if my breadth in this world is wide, how far can I truly traverse? But when I release my control so that the Lord may step in and shave away more, the deeper and deeper I may get. In light of the dependency I mentioned, it creates a trust in the Lord’s faithfulness and brings with it the conviction/challenge of to what extent am I willing to go to know Him and make Him known.

In light of these truths, I encourage you too to take a deeper look into your own heart. Be still and be at peace with the utter dependence we have on the Lord. Contemplate to what extent are you truly willing to go to know the Lord and make Him known. And as you hear this story, stories of others from Puerto, and stories from the ends of the earth, allow the Lord to soften your heart to the lost and motivate your soul to unrelenting prayer. “The harvest is plentiful but the laborers are few, therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers to the harvest” (Luke 10:2). The Lord instructs that our first response to the burden and heaviness of the lost in this world be to pray earnestly to Himself, the one who is sovereign over it all. As you pray from every corner of the earth, the Lord is faithful to answer and we will see fruit reaped. The fruit will at times be salvations, baptisms, gospel conversations, discipleship relationships, and churches planted. And in some cases, the response will be the calling of laborers, the burden on your heart to go, and the answer of faithful disciples submitting in obedience to His question “Whom shall I send?” (Isaiah 6:8). At other moments, it may feel like the response is no fruit at all…even so, He is faithful. So, pray; pray earnestly for the deepening of faith, for humility in dependency, and for the reaping of a plentiful harvest to the ends of the earth.

-Hunter Benson, Manantial Kinder Teacher