Bethany College of Missions hosted a contest last week on Twitter. It was really simple. All you had to do was tweet this:
Follow @BCOM_network and RT this + your answer 4 a chance to win an iPod touch: "Where would you do missions?"
...as many times as you wanted. Simple, right? I tweeted about 400 times. Probably closer to 500. All I could think about was getting that iPod touch. Twitter has anti-spam programs, so I couldn't tweet the same answer twice. I'd quickly generate the names of cities and states and countries to put in the answer spot. At first, they were places that I wanted to do missions. Then, places that I thought could use more God. And then, I just started spitting out random answers. Sometimes, for an hour at a time.
The contest ended last Wednesday and the winner was announced on Friday at 2pm. Needless to say, I was anxious to hear the results.
I didn't win. I'm glad.
Did I, at any point in my pointless mass tweeting, ever once seriously think of God and/or missions? The point of the whole contest was to raise interest in mission work, and for people to discover opportunities through BCOM to get plugged into missions. What was my motivation? Was it to bring glory to God and people to hear His calling? Nope. It was an iPod touch.
I have two iPods. I won one from a contest at my school, and the other I got for Christmas. I don't even need an iPod.
But a whole lot of people need God.
Okay before I say this remember missions is somthing very dear to my hear, haha I'm practically majoring in it. But the thing I'm learning more and more is God doesnt expect us to be perfect, but instead he uses our imperfections and our mistakes to help us learn how to grow closer to him, and to show us his grace. I too learned a big lesson this week, one that has to do with everything going on in my room. But am I regreatful I made this mistake, no instead I am thankful that I learned from it. So what I'm trying to say I guess if make sure you are not treating this experience as only a mistake, but make sure you take the time to learn , to grow. ( by the way i believe you might already be doing this, just wanted to make sure)
ReplyDeleteSo, I was just randomly looking through blogs that mention BCOM and I stumbled onto yours.
ReplyDeleteI'm the one who won said iPod... To be perfectly honest-I was SHOCKED. I was also in Austria at the time, visiting my classmates who are on internship (I only did the 1 year program through the school.)
Anyway, I have to say I didn't really need the iPod either. But I did need to reminder that my Father loves me and cares about my needs, enough to even care about my wants. Which was really awesome.
Sorry you didn't win, but thought I'd let you know it did at least go to a good home. :)