Having a perfectly planned and well lined up life is the key to success, right? It’s like having an intricate puzzle flawlessly matched. But what if God wants to take those plans and pieces and make a completely different kind of picture. One that might not connect perfectly in my perspective, but creates something entirely different. Is God not able to do the unexpected? To work beyond my understanding, which would make it into a surprise.
God has been leading me through endless surprises lately. One of the most recent surprises is being back in Taiwan. I had no plans to return so soon, and I had no plans of becoming an English teacher again. I definitely did not write this down on my five year planing list, if I even had one of those. Some people may have heard me talk about teaching in Taiwan and how I really didn’t enjoy it. This is true, it was difficult, its was in a foreign country, with a foreign language, with people who did not quite understand where I was coming from. I felt alone and felt like I had failed as a teacher and a follower of Christ, and I think I was right to feel that way. My failures lead me to believe that being an English teacher was not for me in anyway.
This sounds reasonable, why should I keep doing the things that I fail at? So I left Taiwan to never be an English teacher again, and now one year later I find myself embarking on another exciting year of teaching. Why? Why would I dare come back? I’m glad you asked.
In my mind, this year was the year of seriousness, time to grow up, be a man, and all that good stuff. It was time to get a real job and quit acting like a child. Now I’m not saying that I wasn’t being serious before this new mind set, but I did feel like I was not trying to grow up. I was trying to avoid the calling that the LORD had placed on my life.
From a young age, being a missionary had always been a dream and a calling on my life, I grew up knowing that a missionary life was the life for me. During my last semester of high school, I decided to go to a Bible college, one that my dad had always wanted me to go. It was amazing and I found the LORD reaffirming the Call upon my life. After I had graduated, I decided to become an English teacher in Taiwan, but after that year of hardship, I really didn’t want to go back. Being a missionary in Taiwan was still a good idea but not teaching English, and if I was not teaching English then I needed to have another degree or something else. In May of this year, I stumbled over the opportunity to attend graduate school. Going there would help me get set up in the ministry, put me in a Church, and hopefully into the mission field.
I started to fill out the application, writing all of my wonderful essays, and when I had just finished diligently writing them, I was invited to go back to Taiwan to teach English. To go back to Taiwan, in my mind, was not an option at this time. I knew for sure that God would not call me back to a place where I once resisted to trust in Him or a place that I knew would be exhausting to live.
So I ignored the offer, but I could not shake the fact that God was speaking to me and calling me to go back. I felt like Jonah, when he was called to Nineveh, except I didn’t get the fun adventure of running away and meeting a great fish for lunch.
In the time that I was praying about going, and trying to think of all of the great excuses to not go, I felt the LORD, “David you want to go back to school because you think you will find security in that degree, but I want you to find your security in Me.” So now the question is, do I trust God?
This was an extremely difficult decision for me to make, because I knew that if I left for Taiwan I would have to fully depend on Him for everything. But is this not the Christian life, to fully depend on the Lord in everything I do. Why do I want to be secure without Him? Why do I want to be good enough, so that one day I do not need Him? My pride was keeping me back, back from following Him wholely. It was time to let go of David Lukachick and get a hold of Jesus Christ. I have said many times that I have been crucified with Christ, but do I live that way? Did I really die? It was time to find out, to do what I feared, to follow God to the ends of the earth, to go to a certain land that He was showing me. It was time to quit pretending that I trusted in God and really trust Him, to follow Him where I didn’t want to go.
