JUSTIN CHANG

This summer I had the opportunity to spend a month in South India for Short-Term Summer Missions (STSM)! This experience was an amazing time, filled with wonderful opportunities to spend time with the people of India and getting to know more about their cultures, environments, and lifestyles. Above all, the love of God really shone through to me as a brilliant reminder of the good that He has done in not just my life, but in places that I had never even considered before. However, as much as I’d like to say this experience was motivated purely by faith, I think I can say that my heart for missions came from a non-biblical place. 

For an entire year, I had already decided that I would apply for STSM. However, it wasn’t for the purpose of advancing God’s kingdom or preaching the Gospel - it was very much rooted in fulfilling my ego. I wanted to prove to myself that I could spend my time in another country as if it were a challenge or an accomplishment. For that reason, I felt like I could be content with going to India, since my reasoning was that it would not only be the most physically demanding country in STSM, but that it would also satisfy me with a sense of achievement, or a performance well done. Of course, I wanted to grow in my faith as well, but it felt like it had taken a step back in light of my desire to feel accomplished. When I found out I would be going to South India, I was excited, but I couldn’t help but feel that I was being motivated by the wrong things. Whether that was learning the skits and dances out of necessity rather than out of love, or convincing myself that the hardships that others had faced in the past wouldn’t be applicable to me, it pushed the idea of faithful servitude out of my mind.

Fast-forwarding to when we were in the country, I was humbled almost instantly. The physical conditions that our team faced did not seem like too much of an issue at first, but sickness ran its course through us by the second week and delayed us from doing ministry. It was pretty discouraging seeing us being in such physical discomfort, and I definitely suffered in that as well. However, it wasn’t the physical aspect of humbling that I was affected deeply by. Spiritually, I felt more tumultuous than I had ever felt before. In the discipleship groups we had with the pre-university students of the school we visited, I heard a lot from not just the Christian students, but also the Hindu and Muslim students about their upbringings and their ideas about faith. Hearing so many different perspectives allowed me to truly see how God was moving outside the little bubble of faith I had been so accustomed to. There was this one Hindu girl that I prayed over, and her prayer request at the end of our discipleship sessions was that her family would turn to Christ. She didn’t even acknowledge her own faith; she just wanted to pray over the wellbeing of her own family and that they would know the love that Jesus poured onto her and her friends. Witnessing and hearing that request from her own voice was very powerful to me, because it invited me to really see for the first time how powerfully the Gospel can speak, even to someone who subscribes to a different belief. I think I acknowledged for the first time that the Gospel wasn’t just an answer to the question of what Jesus did, but that it is the testament to our need for a savior in Jesus. A verse that really stuck with me in this regard was 1 Corinthians 3:7, which reads: “So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth.” God had definitely found His way into her heart through inviting the Gospel to her, and through that I was able to find a new aspect of my faith - just another example of God moving in ways I could never predict. I found out a lot of things about my faith on this trip - how shallow it was, how content I was with it before, and what God had been trying to speak to me since even before the trip. I had a lot of time to reflect heavily on what my journey of faith had produced, and the faith that I wanted to foster because of what I had witnessed.

Now that I’m home, I’ve found a new desire to seek out wisdom through the Word. On the trip, I was held accountable for committing to devos and certain verses and passages, and I grew a further inclination to try and understand what God’s will was for me. While on the trip, I did find myself in a bit of a crisis regarding how unclear I felt God was when praying, which left me feeling deeply dissatisfied. But I think that’s what He was trying to guide me towards all along. My doubts began to clear up when I came across Lamentations 3:22-23, which reads: “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.” It gave me great relief that God isn’t just this almighty presence that rained down judgement, but rather that He is a loving Father that actively seeks me out, regardless of how shameful I feel about myself at any given moment. He loves me, and so I seek Him out and rejoice while doing so. It didn’t have to be more complex than that. Trusting in my God and leaning on Him when I can’t myself - I really believe I cemented this in myself during my time in India, and it’s an experience I’ll never let go of.