Not to us O Lord, not to us, but to your name give glory, because of your steadfast love and your faithfulness. –Psalm 115:1

There are many people who can say that they live a blessed life and they would have good reason to say so. There are many things that bless our lives…… Good job, great family, faithful friends, a roof over our heads, etc….. And while I also believe that my life is also blessed, I’ve come to believe that I’m one of the really blessed ones. Let me explain: For the last 14 years, I’ve known exactly how God wanted to use my life, to impact China for Christ. Not for one day in the last 5,112+ days have I doubted that God made me for a specific purpose and it’s been clear in so many ways that this is what God meant when He made Mike Falkenstine. In all the times that He’s provided financially when it looked like there was seemingly no way out. In doing Chinese language study and having a Chinese language evaluator tell me that he’d never seen anyone get to my level of Chinese so quickly. In giving me a wife that doesn’t shrivel and shrink when I’m away in China, but rather takes on the duties of parenting without me with gusto. In the ways I make friends with Chinese so quickly, the way they trust me so quickly. And in looking at the path my life has taken me and seeing that He knew that I’d need the experience and skills I now possess because of the creation of the China Resource Center. And in the knowledge I’d need to write The Chinese Puzzle and to create other tools to be a part of His plan to help modern-day Westerners constructively engage with modern-day China.

Now before you think that all of this sounds pretty heady, I have one more piece to add: All of it has been God’s doing. All of it. I can’t take credit for any of it. The only thing I’ve done is obeyed what I heard from God and marched forward. That march has taken me many places and given me opportunity to do and see things that I would have never imagined as a boy. I’ve been marching a long time.

Fast forward the march to last Saturday. Over the weekend, we completed another successful Bible Distribution event in rural eastern Henan province. 9,000 Bibles distributed to some of the poorest Christians in China and according to our past experience, 45,000 Chinese will be impacted for Christ. During one of the four stops we made last Saturday, something really special happened. We had the opportunity to distribute Bibles to a group who had come to receive them and then we stayed at their poor rural church for lunch. While we were waiting for lunch, we got to interview some people about what their new Bible meant to them. One man that we interviewed absolutely blew us away. He had been praying for three years that God would somehow provide a Bible for him! And here we were, being an answer to his prayer. Through tears, he explained how he because a Christian, but there no Bibles for him.

And that’s when it all hit me. I’m truly blessed. Here I’ve been, just marching along, not knowing many times how God may use me someday. And last Saturday God took all the training, all the language study, all the financial difficulties, all that I’ve been doing on the march and intersected it with real life results of the ministry. To know exactly God’s purpose for your life and to see Him use you in that way is incredibly special and an incredible blessing.