Episode 160. Saying YES to God’s Plan with Becky Murray

Unedited Transcript

Becky. I am so excited that you're here. Thank you for joining me. Absolute pleasure. Thank you for having me. Oh, this is going to be so fun. So, first of all, I don't think we could have two more different accents and I so much, so, so much. I need to hear tell me where you grew up. Okay. So I'm from the north of England.

So an area called Yorkshire and my particular town is such a strong accent that I get asked all over. Am I from Scotland? I'm from Australia, but it's the strong Yorkshire accent that I cannot shake off. Okay. I it's beautiful. We got on and I was just like, I want to listen to her all day long. How long did you live in Yorkshire?

Yorkshire? Sure. Yes. Okay. Spell it's spelled Yunque Shire, but it's pronounced Yorkshire and then lived there my whole, whole life growing up and only moved out of that about seven years ago. Um, so I'm a little further down still in England, but a little further down the crunchy now web where they speak a little bit more proper.

Okay. And so I often get teased almost from my accent, how rude I am, but yes, I am what I have. I love it. And I think it's beautiful. Well, my family lives in what people call the deep south, which is very south in the U S um, so we live in Mississippi and, um, which is, which is interesting because I grew up in a different state in Tennessee where it's still a Southern accent.

But Mississippi is like the pinnacle of the Southern accent. And so I'm just starting to pick up pieces of it the longer I live here. So anyway, it's always fun to talk about that. Um, well, Becky, I am, I'm so excited about your story. I, when I got the email about your book and about, um, How you're sharing your story in this message.

I just was so excited to talk to you and your book is called embrace the journey, the story that caught my attention and where I love to see start is this story that you tell of you purchasing a pair of flip flops and how a little girl named Felicity really kind of changed everything for you. So for listeners who have not heard your story, can we start there?

Absolutely we can. Yes. So, um, I was always passionate about missions, but as a very little girl, very passionate about missions. Um, but then in my teen years decided I was going to go and study law. I'd changed my mind. Didn't want to be mentioned at all what I was going to study law and have lots of butter.

Thank you very much. And, um, but I was on a short terms, missions trip with my church, just because, to be honest, I'd wanted to get out and see the world a little bit. And he was on a short term missions trip that for the first time in my life, I felt God speak to me about a children's home. And so I did a 180 in my life when I came back home from that missions trip.

And that was it. All the plans for life changed and you are wanting to go into missions. So from that point on, I started doing short-terms missions with my local church, just to get some experience of, of being out in different fields and different cultural contexts. And in 2006, I was on one such Trek to see how many hours it was only.

We were there for two weeks and, um, it was on this particular trip where I met these. Two kids living on the streets. Um, but one of them is dying for this to take. And she was a nine year old girl and she simply didn't have any issues. So I took her to the marketplace and bought her a little pink pair of flip flops that costs 50 pounds.

So that would be less than a dollar, maybe 80 cents, maybe. I don't know, but it wasn't some huge acts of generosity. It wasn't a moment that made it to Instagram. You know, it was nothing like that. In fact, it was insignificant. In the moment or so I thought, and then I said, okay, come back tonight. We're doing a huge gospel campaign.

Come back. They see you then, and we'll take you with us to the gospel campaign. So the evening comes around and the whole team stood outside the cause align, you know, ready to take us. And she came running down the road. She's got this huge smile on her face because she's wearing shoes and she's never owned shoes before.

And so she's all excited. And she said, Becky, should I wait in the hotel? Because I said, no, honey, we're literally just about to get in the cars. You could ride with us. Um, we're about to leave. And he said, yes, but shouldn't, I wait in your hotel room. Now you should have asked my husband already of the guys on the trip that I immediately would have known what she was asking.

But I remember at the time thinking here's a nine year old girl, I was in my very early twenties at the time. And I thought she couldn't possibly be asking me what I think she has. I must quote this wrong. So I asked her a third time, what are you saying? And she explained that she thought I'd spent 50 Pence on her so I could have a body and she was willing to give it.

She thought I deserved it because of the flip-flops. And I remember in this moment, looking her and having a child look you in the eyes and think you deserve the body for 50 pounds. That. Broke something very deep inside of me. You see, I'd read about children selling their bodies for bottle of Coke, but nothing can prepare for the moment.

A child looks you in the eye and thinks you deserve it. And it just broke me. And I determined right there in that moment, I'd already got this exciting promise of a children's home, but at this point it was just a dream. It was just a promise. And so if life became hard or challenging, I could lay it down.

But then in the moment of meeting for the less dirty, she became my non-negotiable moment where I knew I had to give my life to this. Yeah. This is off script. If somebody is in one of those moments, you know, you're on the other side of that non-negotiable moment now, but for somebody who's in that, or maybe they're experiencing God, call them into something right now.

They're maybe it's, maybe it's not. Felicity story, but maybe it's another area of deep need, whether it's spiritual or physical, what advice or wisdom would you want to share with them on the other side of your moment like that? To trust God, because I think sometimes God asks things, overs I'll be, feel called in a certain area.

But then we, we do what Moses did when God called Moses immediately looked at himself and all that. He was not. And I often look at myself and I see everything that I'm not, I'm not, not the greatest speaker in the world. I'm not the, got the ASQ in the world. I don't come from a wealthy family. I don't come from an influential family.

I've got the wrong accent. You know everything about it. If we see why we should not and could not. But if we just said yes to God, and we don't know how we get from a to Z, but if we trust God, he'll take us from a, to B to C today. And it's step by step. As we keep saying yes. And walking in obedience, because at the other side of our, yes, is God's miraculous, transforming power is just looking for people to be obedient.

Yeah. On the other side of our yes. Is his transforming power. That's so good. That matters so much. Okay. I want to jump in to your work with one by one. I want you to tell us all about it. We named it one by one, because, and again, it was a case of. Feeling overwhelmed. So often many of the nations we work in there's so much need, you don't know where to start.

And I always describe it as I'm holding a teaspoon in my hand, and an attempting to empty an ocean using the teaspoon. And it feels ridiculous. Um, but I can stop for one and Felicity became my one. So to this day, when I taking girls and rescue and Felicity again and again, um, so one by one was launched as an official non-profit and we opened that first children's home in Kenya in 2012, we started with 42 children.

We now have over 200 children in my home, but then we do a school outreach, which reaches 10,000 kids every week in Kenya. And then because of our work in Kenya, we launched an initiative called the dignity project. And that was because kids in my village were going missing. And, um, I found that it was human trafficking that was happening right on my doorstep.

Well, until this moment, human trafficking was somebody else's problem. I was running in my lane and do the children's home. I'm doing what God's told me to do human trafficking. That's somebody else's burden. But then when you find out the needs on your backyard, it's literally on your doorstep. It changed everything overnight.

And I knew I had to do something. So we did a lot of research and found out that actually period poverty. Goes hand in hand with human trafficking because girls miss a quarter of school because for that week a month, they have to wait home in the mud hut. And so by the time she's finished primary school or elementary school, as you guys would say, she's missed a quarter of our education and doesn't have the results to go on to high school and tragically the traffickers know that and already target the girls at that point.

cook cleaner and nanny and the girls go willingly, but they're never seen or heard of ever again. And so we launched the dignity project thinking it was just for our little village and Outbacks of Kenya and where we are, it's just mud hurts. And then as they were literally in the middle of nowhere, it's the real Bush, Bush of Africa.

And, um, so we launched the project thinking we would just help in the local schools, in our village. But again, when you say yes to God, you have no idea what lays on the other side of you. Yes. And so the yes, to help in our little local schools ended up opening doors, 10 nations for us to going with the dignity project to help girls around the world, because we all know human trafficking happens in everyday age, human trafficking in Flint, throughout.

Yeah. So it was in Brazil of that. We ended up getting invited to Pakistan as a nation. I never thought I'd work. Can a nation. I never thought I'd go to didn't really have a heart for the place of console that point. And so when 10 full days thought it was going to be a four day trip as a one-off to reach 1100 girls with a dignity project.

We did it. It was amazing. Many of the girls heard the gospel message for the first time, because the beautiful thing about the dignity project, not only do we tell girls about their body and females, hygiene and all that and training all around the tactics, traffickers will use 10 tastes them, but actually we sum the day up with the gospel.

By explaining no price can ever be put on you because the highest price is being paid for you through Jesus Christ. And so we're able to bring the gospel and because the dignity project, so practical nations, like Pakistan will tolerate the gospel in order to get the dignity project. So it's a phenomenal way of.

Going into areas that are normally very closed off to Christianity. And so it was on this one-off trip that we were taken into a brick factory, and I'd never heard of brick factories before I had no idea about them. Um, but in 2018, I walked into the by first brick factory and met hundreds of thousands of people trapped in slavery.

And the thing that took my breath away. With how blatant it was because human trafficking everything's covered up because everybody knows it's wrong. But here was a slavery that was blatant, uh, hundreds of people trapped in bonded labor. So meeting children who work 14 hours a day, and I got a text this week to say it was 49 degrees.

So that's like, I don't even know what that is. Is it like 127 or something? Yeah. Just crazy heat and kids that get no education working 14 hours a day, just making bricks day in, day out. And so we started our second children's home in Pakistan, which is actually a safe house for kids. We've managed to pull out of slavery.

And so again, just continually saying yes to Jesus, we've watched this incredible journey unfold before as, um, but it all started with just the one. Yeah. Man, I'm blown away by that, by what God has done through that one moment in your life, right? Like that's such an incredible example of what he'll do when we say yes.

Yes. And you could have never dripped Becky of what God was going to do when you first opened that children. And even what he was going to put on your heart in the trafficking world. Gosh, this is. This is so cool. Okay. For somebody listening today who maybe they're feeling a call towards working in missions, but they, they have no idea where to start, what that looks like, where to go, what to do, et cetera, all the questions you've sort of, we've talked a little bit about like the saying yes piece, but what, what other wisdom would you want to maybe encourage them with today?

So what I did when I felt the call of God, when I was 18, um, to run a children's home. And I remember coming back, I was in a short terms, missions trip in Romania at the time. And I came home and I told everybody the safe, the lot, I'm going to read a children's home. And, um, I think in my youth, I thought it would happen today.

Because God said it, so it's going to happen right now. And at least if not tomorrow, at least this year. Right. And so I remember telling everybody, and then the questions came well. Well, how and why, why are you going to choose children's? I went, you know, do you just book a flight somewhere and just go build something?

And I remember holding on to the account of Abraham and Sarah, because they'd had a promise from God too. But because nothing appearingly happened straight away, they year passes by half the year. So I was getting older, it's becoming less and less likely for this promise to happen. And yet they knew they'd heard God.

And I found myself in that exact situation where I knew I'd heard God. I knew I was going to do a children's home. But actually a whole decade had passed by and nothing apparently was happening. At least on the outside. God was doing a fall, a lot of work on the inside to change me in order. So I think God will work on our character so that we can hold the gift he's got for us on our lives.

And he will spend years more than our character in order for us to hold that gift. But I held on to the promise of Abraham and Sarah. That actually, if I allow God to do it in his way, I'll give birth to Isaac rather than creating an Ishmael in my life. And so waiting on God can sometimes take more faith than just going out and doing something, anything, it takes more faith to weigh on him, so that it's really God's timing.

His location, his purpose and his plans. But in terms of practically, what did I do in that time is I served my employer faithfully. I served my local church faithfully, but then I would use my annual leave to do a lot of short terms, missions, treads, and learn from other people. So I spent a month out in Columbia learning from an incredible guy, working with street kids.

I spent three months in Mozambique working with a phenomenal lady called Heidi baker, who does a huge work with orphans and church runs and, and all kinds of wonderful things to go and learn from people already on the field. And so I often encourage people. Now, if you feel you've got a call on your life permissions, come with us on a shot terms, missions, trap, just common, serve, common learn and see what God will do in you in those moments.

Yeah, this is reminding me of an event that our church held a couple months ago. So secret church that David pastor David Platt holds each year, um, his, his focus this year was really what does the great commission actually actually mean? And how do we live that out in our lives? And one of the things that I walked away with that day that was so impactful to me and to our family was you are either.

You either go or you send you're either, you're either a goer or you are a cinder. So what is God putting on your heart for you and your family? If it's, if it's to go then, then like, pray about what that looks like. If it's to send then pray about who are you going to partner with to advance the gospel.

And I thought that was so important. Like I just a really great way of thinking about the great commission, because the reality is we're not all called to go. Um, To go to another country or to, but we are all called to be a part of the great commission. And so that looks different for everybody. And so yeah, if somebody is listening today and they're like, yeah, in this season, I feel like.

I'm a cinder. Maybe it's maybe it's on the flip side. Like maybe it's, it's not, I'm feeling called to go, but I'm feeling called to sin. Tell people about like, what does it look like to partner with your organization? How can we, how can we pray for you? How can we support you? Tell us all that. So, um, the website is a great place to, for people to, um, non say that's a one by one.net.

And on there they can get information about upcoming trips. So either they can come on a trip if they want to, or they know someone who's got a heart for it. Maybe they could support someone to come out with this on a short term trip. Um, but we also have people sponsor our kids. So I've got live load ladies who are too ill to go out to the mission field.

But believe me, we may, they have a huge impact on the life of a child out there in the middle of Africa or out there in the middle of Pakistan because they've sponsored the child, but they, they can write to them. So they have a relationship. It's not just. A financial transaction, but actually they genuinely invest into these children's lives.

And equally with my kids, I've watched my children receive letters and photos from their sponsors, and they'll often take those photos into the church in the early morning prayer meetings. And they'll start praying over their sponsor families. To them. That is their family. For many of my kids, especially in Kenya, they were either orphaned or abandoned.

And so to have someone at the other side of the world choose to support, then they were chosen by someone, makes them feel loved. And it's the whole adoption, you know, just as we were adopted in Christ and the same way I kids have been chosen by people from miles away to help invest into their lives.

And that just. It almost brings it in a healing even into them, especially the ones that were abandoned brings this inner healing to them that they've been chosen. And first and foremost, by the heavenly father who chose them and loves them. And he's got this incredible plan, but then also getting letters from people in England and America and different parts of the world just brings them alive.

So there's lots of ways people can get involved. Okay. I love that so much. Okay. So. Let's get back to the book, embrace the journey is out into the world. I want to hear D have you always wanted to write a book? How did this process, how did this process happen? I'm I'm about to write my first book as well.

So I love hearing people's stories about like they get into this work. For me, I didn't ever intend to write a book. In fact, I met my husband, my husband's the writer and not me. Um, but it was a case of we've watched God do so many incredible things and. I wanted that documented. I wanted to put down in black and white, the windows that God's done.

My father, um, my father passed sadly passed away a few years ago, but my dad actually started with Alzheimer's in his fifties. So it was very, very young to start with Alzheimer's disease, but watching his memory, just fade away. It was so heartbreaking because it was the very thing that made in him, his life circumstances, his relationships.

So by the end, he had no idea who I was. He thought I was a carer and I'm the youngest of three. So I remember visiting him one day with my elder sister and he still remembered her. But he didn't remember me and oh gosh, that hurt. Um, but watching his memories, fade, I think brought alive all of them also that I need to document what God's done.

Cause I don't want to ever forget the goodness of God. And I called it, embrace the journey because actually. So the times we like to dwell on the mountain top moment. Yeah. And the moments of the miracles, and I've watched God do some amazing miracles from just miracles of provision, to miracles of transformation.

Like we've seen which, which doctors get their hearts and lives to Jesus. We've watched food, multiply. We've watched kids pray for the second, see them healed. We've seen some just amazing miracles that blow my mind. And so I wanted to document them. Buddy clearly life's not just the mountain. Top moments.

Life is scattered big valley moments and we tend to shy away from sharing the valley moments because actually it's painful and it's saw, and it's not pleasant, but I'm determined that. It's it's often when you look back the valley moments with very times, you began to look more like Jesus than your mountain, top moments.

And it's in the valleys and in the really challenging seasons that we all really shaped and defined, and our character really begins to develop. And so I call it that embrace the journey in terms of. It's embracing the whole path that Jesus has is on not just the excite and Instagram moments, but also the challenge in tough moments too.

So we've gone through seasons where my husband contracted malaria and he was told he'd only got three hours left to live. They actually stopped the medical treatments and we're just giving him pain relief until he passes. And he was 27 at the time. And I remember thinking, no, this can't be, this is just wrong.

Um, but God came through and did an incredible miracle, but walking through that season was difficult. And then likewise, with the birth of my own little boy, he'll be 10 in just a week's time. But when he was first born, he was very poorly and rushed on a ventilator and extremely early. Five major surgeries in his first year, we almost lost him twice.

And so we've gone through some really challenging times where it's, it's been a case of Lord. Why did it have to go this way? Wait, why couldn't have gone the way I prayed it to go. But again, as we walk in obedience, not knowing the steps ahead, not knowing how we make it to Z. But we know that if we're faithful with the E and F then sure enough, he'll, he'll keep walking the steps.

And then, so I caught it, embraced the journey cause it's every part of our life that God has this incredible ability of bringing in even our painful, challenging moments together in order to shape us and mold us and make us small. I came and he blesses is even in the challenging stuff. We just don't necessarily see it.

While we're walking through it. Yeah, that's so good. I am so excited about this message and just how God is going to use it to spur on other readers in their own pursuit of. What God has for their lives. And so I can't wait for our listeners to get their hands on it. It's called one more time, embrace the journey.

And I'm so grateful Becky, that you would come on and share your story. What we're going to do now is go on over to our Patrion community. So for our friends who are subscribed over there, please go listen to our extra interview where we get to know Becky a little bit better, but for now, Becky, again, I just want to say a huge thank you to you.

I'm just, I'm blown away by your story and what God has done through your life. And I'm so thrilled that you are sharing it with the world. Thank you. Absolute pleasure. Thank you for having me.