Forty Days

Today is the halfway mark of my teaching mission to Ghana. I've been here forty days today, and I have forty days to go. In some ways it seems like I just got here. In others, it seems like a lifetime ago I was back at home enjoying the comfort and convenience of living in America.

Since Old Testament days the period of forty days has been that amount of time necessary to prepare for something significant or purge oneself of something negative. Moses was on the mountain with God for forty days (twice). Noah's faith was tested with forty days and nights of rain while he was in the ark. And over in the New Testament, Jesus was tested and fasted in the desert for forty days after his baptism.

Why forty? Most commentators say that the number merely represents a "significant period of time." Rick Warren and others claim it takes forty days, or about six weeks, to make a certain practice into a habit.

My first forty days of relative isolation have been a time of deep soul-searching for me. I've thought and prayed a lot about my relationship with God. I've also pondered the future and what it holds (as some of you who read this know). Above all I have determined that more than ever I want to know and love God more and to help make him known and loved by others. Sometimes my faith, and my love for God, seems so weak and shallow. I feel as though I can see him, but I can't find my way to his side. There is a distance between us; a chasm. In the next forty days I hope God will help me draw closer to him. That would be the greatest gift of this time apart.

But that is not all this time has been about. God has also revealed many things that need my attention these next forty days: my egotism (my inflated idea of my own importance), my lust for new adventures, my perfectionism, my heroism, and my God-denying self-reliance. These and other ways in which I refute by my actions that which I claim to believe has shown me that I am still very much a carnal man instead of the spiritual man I aspire to be.

Yes, I do have malaria in my bloodstream right now, but I'm taking medicine that will take care of that. There are much worse things coursing through my mind and heart. Only God can deal with those as I trust and obey him more fully. Please join me in praying that that is what will happen these next forty days.