She Kept Saying, “Not Yet.” God Showed Up Anyway.
Faith knew something was missing.
She grew up in a Christian home. She heard the Gospel. She sat in church. She knew, somewhere deep down, what the empty feeling meant. And for years, she made the same quiet bargain a lot of people make: I’ll get there eventually. Just not yet.
She wanted to be in the world first. She was afraid of missing out.
It’s an honest thing to admit — and more common than most people say out loud.
A Dream She Couldn’t Shake
When Faith was 13, she had a dream. In it, Jesus was returning — coming through the clouds, just as Scripture describes. And she saw herself on her knees, desperate, too late.
She woke up and understood something she hadn’t let herself face before: you don’t get to choose the timing. You can’t decide you’ll follow Jesus after you’ve had your run at the world. The moment isn’t yours to schedule.
The dream planted something. But it didn’t change everything immediately. She carried it with her — and kept finding reasons to wait.
God Uses People Before They’re Ready
Here’s the part of Faith’s story that’s hard to explain and impossible to ignore.
Before she had surrendered her life to Christ, she signed up for a youth mission trip to Mexico. She pulled a few strings to get on the roster. She went. And while she was there — not yet saved, not yet sure — God moved through her anyway.
She gave away a Gospel booklet half-reluctantly, wanting to be done with the moment. Instead, someone started reading it aloud. A crowd gathered. People leaned in to listen.
She turned the corner and saw it happening without her.
“Even when I was like, I don’t want to do this,” she said, “God was still using it.”
That’s not a story about Faith. That’s a story about God — His patience, His pursuit, His refusal to be limited by our hesitation.
The Surrender She Almost Missed
Later that same summer, Faith went to camp. Every night, she sat in tears. She knew it was time. Every night, she didn’t move.
On the last morning, she broke down in the lunchroom — in front of a lot of people, exactly the thing she’d been afraid of. A leader found her. They talked. And finally, after years of bargaining, waiting, and running out of excuses, Faith surrendered.
She described it simply: believing that God’s got it, and then letting go.
Knowing something and believing it are two different things. She knew the Gospel for years. Believing it — trusting it enough to let go of everything she’d been holding onto — that took longer. And it happened not in a quiet, private moment, but in a crowded lunchroom, in tears, surrounded by people.
God isn’t particular about the setting.
What Happens After Surrender
Since that summer, Faith has been on two more mission trips — including a recent trip to the Middle East. She took a 15-week class called Perspectives that introduced her to the 10/40 Window: a geographic band stretching across North Africa and Asia where more than three billion people live with little to no access to the Gospel.
Three billion people who may live and die without ever hearing the name of Jesus.
That reality undoes something in you, if you let it. Faith let it. And it changed what she’s doing with her life.
“The reason we’re still here on earth, once you’re saved,” she said, “is to go and make more disciples and bring people to Christ. And if I can do that, why wouldn’t I?”
Her Story Is Still Being Written
Faith is in her last year of high school. She’s already been on three mission trips. She’s already seen God use her in ways she didn’t expect and couldn’t take credit for.
And she’s the first to say: none of this is about her.
“It’s not my story. It’s God’s story — just using me.”
That’s the most honest thing anyone can say about a life on mission. You don’t have to be impressive. You don’t have to have it all figured out. You just have to stop saying “not yet.”
Hear Faith tell her story in her own words on the Sew That Missions Podcast — Episode 81, Part 1. Listen below or wherever you listen to podcasts.
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If this conversation stirred your heart for the nations, share it with a friend, your small group, or someone exploring global missions. Let’s pray and move together — so that the world would know Him.
