Facing Your Fears About Short-Term Missions
Why are you scared?
What drives you to paralysis?
What prevents you from taking action?
What would it take to get around the obstacles in your way?
Maybe you are fearless. If you are fearless, I’d love to get in your head for a bit. I’m not talking about a stupid kind of fearlessness – a fearlessness that would lead you to jump off a tall building without a parachute or another method of safety.
Perhaps being fearless is relative. Somethings scare me to death, but they don’t faze you.
Many of the questions I get about short-term missions – especially related to my experiences in Guatemala – are related to the fears people have:
Will I get sick?
Will I be safe?
What will I eat?
Where will I sleep?
How will I understand the people I am serving?
Will I make it home safely?
Will people at home think I’m strange for going to a strange land?
How will I get from one place to the other?
Will I be welcomed where I serve?
Will I really make a difference?
If we peal these questions back, we can see that they are really questions based on fear. I get it. I had many of these same questions before I went to Guatemala the first time. And to be honest, I would probably still have many of these questions if I went somewhere different from Guatemala in the future.
It’s okay to have questions. Here’s the problem though. At some point, we have to take action. It helps to get some of the answers to these questions ahead of time, but we may never get all our questions answered. At some point, we have to take a leap of faith. We have to trust that God will work upstream ahead of our fears and ahead of our unanswered questions.
I’m in the early stages of planning a multi-week return trip to Guatemala in 2016.
Maybe you are supposed to join me for some or all of this trip.
Just maybe, it’s time for you to put aside your fears so you can take a leap of faith that will change your life forever.
Are you in our out? Don’t let your fears stand in your way of doing something amazing with your life.
What scares you the most about going on a short-term missions trip? What will it take for you to overcome these fears?