I Blindly Said Yes and God Gave Me a Dream Come True

Josh Caliguire May 24, 2019

YWAM missionary surfer running into the sunset with a surfboard

I was young and now I am old, yet I have never seen the righteous forsaken or their children begging for bread.

Psalm 37:25

I want to tell you why this verse speaks over this picturesque early morning I had this winter.

This verse brings me back to a very small, seemingly insignificant moment I had while sitting on a plane, looking out the window over Mexico for the first time.

It was not easy for me to have made it so far. This mission trip had required letting go of expectations of family, pressure to pursue the American dream, and my own comfortability. Even doing a half-year of missions was a huge deal for me, who, coming into that season, still had many unanswered questions about God.

But here I am, 3 months in. After a life of being too scared to fully follow Jesus, I was learning to finally say yes to Him. 3 months of miracles, financial provision, and lots of emotional healing had gone by, which was making a strong foundation of trust; individual moments of truly letting God have my heart. Little had I known He had been preparing me for an even bigger ask.

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Photo: Virginia Bardlsey

As I looked down, foreign, rugged mountains passed thousands of feet below me, and the ocean suddenly came in view. Soon a city appeared, and the seatbelt light turned on. We were heading into a new adventure. As I stared at this unknown land, my heart started to churn and I felt a very peculiar feeling, a sort of curiosity but also a sense of belonging. The voice I had been starting to follow during my school spoke. "This is where I want you."

3 years have passed since that moment; where I was just brave enough to say yes to a wild invitation: to be a full-time missionary in Mexico.

I didn’t know it, but my “yes” to God single-handedly joined all the things I deeply cared about, which before, I had no clue how I’d ever be able to invest in them. Community was one: walking through life in deep relationship with others. Others were learning a second language, having a job that I loved and would even do for free, and living on the ocean.

Which brings me to these pictures. Spending a morning with life-long friends, traveling to an island to surf, living in a country I have fallen in love with. I was reminded of God’s faithfulness.

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Photo: Jonathan Caliguire

We are never given God’s blueprints for His extravagant plans and dreams for us; we sometimes only get a whisper or a churning in our hearts. Could this be God? What I can tell you is this: that every time I have taken that risk to follow those invitations, that voice, it has always turned out that God was working intimately and so intentionally... with my best interest in mind.