|
Why Estonia?
 24th July 2021
Nigel Parrott, member of Park Baptist Church, shares with us how God has been leading him to go on a mission
At a Christian event in 2015, someone I did not know approached me and said they felt they had a word for me from the Lord. The message was that I would be learning a new language and be working abroad in my later years for the Lord! I thanked them. As I left school at the age of 16 with no ability for languages, had never owned a passport in my 55 years and had no inkling to ever go abroad, I wondered about this word and was it meant for me?
Over the next year or so the region of Ida-Virumaa kept coming to my attention, in a country I had barely heard of and a region I had never heard of! Not the place you think of when mission comes to mind! This was filling my attention and prayer life
After this a trusted Christian friend came up to me in church saying it seemed nonsensical, but they had to say it. Had I thought of learning a new language and working abroad?
At this point I gave in and started to learn Estonian on free online courses, reading many comments that it was one of the hardest languages to learn. I was still not knowing why I was called!
I confided in some trusted Christian friends, hoping in part they would say I was mad. However the reactions were the opposite! January 2020 my Pastor came to do a personal spiritual review I told him about how I felt the Lord was leading me to work in Estonia. Again he showed little surprise, and I said I thought it would be when I retired so would not be yet. Since then however, the Lord has been changing my plans, and I have applied for my first passport. One of my key arguments with God has been, why me and what can I offer? A few years ago the Pastor brought some books to church for the congregation to take if they wished. I picked up a daily readings book by Oswald Chambers, and put it on my bookshelf, ready to begin January 01 2021
January 02 I read WILL YOU GO WITHOUT KNOWING - Hebrews 11:8
Have you been out in this way? If so there is no logical statement possible when anyone asks you what you are doing. One of the difficulties in Christian work is this question – ‘What do you expect to do?’ You do not know what you are going to do; the only thing you know is that God knows what He is doing. Continually revise your attitude towards God and see if it is a going out of everything trusting God entirely. It is this attitude that keeps you in perpetual wonder- you do not know what God is going to do next. Each morning you wake is to be a ‘going out’ building in confidence on God. “Take no thought for your life,… nor yet for your body” take no thought for the things for which you did take thought before you ‘went out’”
Have you been asking God what He is going to do? He will never tell you. God does not tell what He is going to do; He reveals to you Who He is. Do you believe in a miracle-working God, and will you go out in surrender to Him until you are not surprised an atom at anything He does?
Suppose God is the God you Know Him to be when you are nearest to Him, what an impertinence worry is! Let the attitude of the life be a continual ‘going out’ in dependence upon God, and your life will have an ineffable charm about it which is a satisfaction to Jesus. You have to learn to go out of convictions, out of creeds, out of experiences, until, so far as your faith is concerned, there is nothing between yourself and God
After praying this through, I came to the conclusion that I was not to wait till retirement when I had a pension to support me, but to commit to stepping out at the end of my current lease on the shop in September 2022
Shortly after this someone was led by the Lord to put £500 through my door, having no knowledge of my plans. After asking God about it, I now have an Estonian tutor and enough for 50 lessons. A couple of weeks later, as I sat in my front room, it came to me everything I had, was to go. There was such peace in my heart about it. Something I could never have imagined even a few weeks earlier. Since then, I have thrown out a lot of things my late wife had saved, wedding day and engagement cards, etc., which were once important. Once again I had such peace. I now spend my time looking for the next thing to get rid of
I am now excited and at total peace, ready to start whatever the Lord has planned, knowing that all I have to offer Estonia is my Lord, however He wishes as He leads me
|
|
|
|
