God is Leading

Over the course of 7 hr and 30 minutes of Staff Orientation today for SPO Minnesota we plodded through what seemed like innumerable details, documents, calendars (to the left), policies, reminders, tips, and procedures.  We discussed everything from how to forward your SPO email to how to make sure you get reimbursed for emergency purchases to the office dress code when we are working at the NET Center.

We logged into Google docs and looked at eighty-five different Role Descriptions that have been written for this new year of outreach on college campuses.  We went over every last detail of how to make sure that our pledges for our personal fundraising are input correctly in the database.   We even discussed at length, over lunch, what happens when five young boys decide to ‘make a swimming pool’ out of the bathroom. Please note that I didnt say ‘out of the bathtub’, but ‘out of the bathroom’.   (Ask Casey Dynan about that one sometime)

So, by the end of the day we had covered a ton of important details and every single one of them was necessary to hear and understand.  Yet it isn’t the volumes of info we left with that I am thinking about this evening.  Rather, it is the clarity of perspective that we began the day with that is echoing in my heart and mind.  It was during the first thirty minutes of our time together that each of us gained something much more valuable, more helpful, and more potent than the details and tools to be a successful missionary to college students.

In those thirty minutes of prayer, praise, and intercession we gave way to the truth that “God is leading” and that “Unless the LORD builds the house, its builders labor in vain”  (Psalm 127:1).   Our prayer was the first and most important bit of ‘orientation’ we did today and it set a tone for the year that will not be easily shrugged off or forgotten.