By Kennard Blackwell, MBC Bethesda Future Leader

On my fourth mission trip with The Rock to the Dominican Republic aka The DR, what does God choose to reiterate over the 9 days that I spent there??? Live for His glory. I’ve been going on these mission trips since 2007 to participate on the Step Team (and I still have yet to learn the language..shame). We’d perform for ladies and gents of all ages and chant phrases like “Jesucristo Gloria a Dios,” which means Jesus Christ, Glory to God for those of you that are English-only…I gotcha . Funny enough, God brings this correction to me on my fourth mission trip.

Taken by Lauren Taylor

Conviction was screaming at me. During mission trips, I usually walk away with a high sense of urgency to make a big change in my life. This time I felt the urgency to live a lifestyle that is solely devoted to glorifying God. Prior to this trip, I was trying to live for God with strings attached to my selfish desires…strings attached to the things that I wanted to occur in my life. My plans. My way. I realized that where I was in certain situations in my life were because I placed myself there. God’s glory hadn’t been driving me there. I realized that if I hadn’t been following some of these selfish desires, I would be somewhere else. For me it was like a Venn diagram of two different lifestyles. A lot on the left and right side of the circles…little in the overlap.

Albert Barnes said as commentary on 1 Cor. 10:31 [So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God],

“What a change would it make in the world if this rule were everywhere followed! How differently would even professing Christians live! How many of their plans would they be constrained at once to abandon! And what a mighty revolution would it at once make on earth, should all the actions of men begin to be performed to promote the glory of God!”

We had a chance to really step out and go after His glory…literally. There was a day on the trip that we were in Dos Hermanas or Two Sisters (see I told you I gotcha), where the rain had caused our bus driver to stop driving because the road (more like a huge dirt-clay pathway) gets extremely muddy when it rains. Because of the weather it became too muddy for the bus to drive through. I mean, we would have gotten stuck. And we don’t wanna get stuck now do we??? So we had to head back to the hotel…or go hard for the Lord and hike through what felt like a mile of mud that was so sticky you thought someone wrapped dumbbells on your ankles and squirted Super Elmer’s glue on the bottom of your Nikes. Oh, and as we started out, rain began pouring down making our marching conditions worse. At first complaints were tossed out. But the more we stepped towards our destination, the more we began to enjoy the long trek to this rejected neighborhood that needed to see God’s love and pursuit. We saw that it wasn’t that bad. Plus, we realized that Jesus went through this. It was impressive to see the drama team put their all into their performance. The main character was repeatedly pushed into puddles and spots of mud. They willingly laid down without hesitation.

Taken by Lacey Dean

When you follow God’s glory, you’re not striving for your own good, but others. “For I am not seeking my own good but the good of many, so that they may be saved,” [1 Cor. 10:33b]. And it was great to be able to walk that out in the DR and be a part of this story. All in or nothing…those are the greatest stories…

…oh yea, and this officially marks the first blog for the Future Leaders Class of 2011…legit!