“WHOM SHALL I SEND AND WHO WILL GO FOR ME?”
These are words that have echoed through my soul since I memorized them in bible drill as a young girl. For those of you who know the verse, yes I memorized it in it’s entirety but the next portion always caused my core to shudder. Every time.
“THEN SAID I, HERE AM I. SEND ME.”
Decades later I sat in my plush living room chair on the edge of decision and read this verse for the first time when my heart melted in surrender rather than shaking in fear. What might He ask? Where might He send me? Those concerns no longer shook me. I wanted to go for Him no matter the cost for the first time in my life. I was suddenly propelled into a new season. I left my comfy, cozy life in Conway, AR to move to a tiny town where I knew no one. I attended ministry school, my missions awakened heart found life and purpose when I stepped onto foreign soil to promote the gospel of Jesus Christ for the first time. I gained friends that are forever more like family.
That season transformed me. Again and again I would say, “here am I, send me.”
I learned that a proper response to God will land us in the most unexpected yet wonderful, sometimes wretched yet always beautiful places. It will lead us to the faces whose change in countenance we shall never forget. He will allow heartache and perceived disappointment because He sees us on the other side of the struggle bright shining in His radiant glory. He sees the beauty that comes from full reliance on Him, full trust in Him, and growing deeper in our love for Him and those around us.
My “send me” responses connected me with a missions organization called Global Infusion. Four years after seeing this verse with a fresh heart, I found myself standing among the Global Infusion team in a church service about to help with a missions launch. The t-shirt they gave me to wear read in white on black: Here I am, SEND ME. Within the year, I moved to Knoxville and now have the privilege of watching mission teams launch into the uttermost parts of the earth much more often than I get to go (that’s a story for another day- ha). The very thing that once terrified me is now the very thing that sets the trajectory of my life. I have come to believe that God is saying…not just to me, but to any who would respond: “Whom shall I send and who will go for me?” May our hearts ever be ready to respond, “Here am I. Send me.”