What a Broken Person Has

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“I happened to be in the courtyard when it happened.” He said it quiet. Reverent.

“About sixty missionaries were driven in and herded together, awaiting execution. What impressed me most of all about these people was their amazing fearlessness. There was no panic, no crying for mercy. Roman Catholic and Protestant alike… they awaited death with perfect calm.”

He stops for a moment. Tears fill his eyes. “I’m convinced that there can be no salvation for us sinners except through the Redeemer, Jesus Christ. This terrible massacre has led me to look into the Scriptures.”

Then he tells the story of a thirteen year old girl.

Just before the carnage began, the golden-haired girl stepped out and went to stand before the governor. “Why are you planning to kill us,” she asked.  Her voice carried to the farthest corner of the courtyard.

“Haven’t our doctors come from far-off lands to give their lives for your people? Many with hopeless diseases have been healed; some who were blind have received their sight, and health and happiness have been brought into thousands of your homes because of what our doctors have done.

“Is it because of this good that has been done that you are going to kill us?” The governor’s head was down. He had nothing to say. There was really nothing he could say.

The golden haired girl continued. “Governor, you talk a lot about filial piety. It is your claim, is it not, that among the hundred virtues filial piety takes the highest place. But you have hundreds of young men in this province who are opium sots and gamblers. Can they exercise filial piety?

“Can they love their parents and obey their will? Our missionaries have come from foreign lands and have preached Jesus to them, and He has saved them and given them power to live rightly and to love and obey their parents. Is it then, perhaps, because of this good that has been done that we are to be killed?”

By this time the governor was writhing. Each word seemed to touch him to the quick. It was far more than a defense, that brave speech, it was a sentence. It was the girl who sat in judgment and the governor stood at the bar.

But the drama only lasted for one brief moment.

A soldier, standing near the girl, grasped her by her golden hair, and with one blow of his sword severed her head from her body. That was the signal for the massacre to begin.

“I saw fifty-nine men, women, and children killed that afternoon,” went on the gentleman. “Even in the moment of death every face seemed to hold a smile of peace.

“Is it any wonder, therefore, that such marvelous fortitude should have led me to search your Scriptures and to have compelled me to believe that the Bible is in very truth the word of God?”

 

~Testimony taken from a firsthand account written by missionary to China, Jonathan Goforth 

 

 

 

And how can we live Christ if we are living for the approval of man? And how can we eat Christ if we eat the world’s fare? And how can we walk the narrow road if we are too caught up on the broad path leading to destruction?

Before God, I repent.

Some things in life are worth dying for.

Some things are worthy to be set apart unto.

Many, many things are worthy of nothing but to be left behind, set aside, turned away from. Our very selves are considered as nothing… when we have The Pearl of Great Price, the Treasure worth giving everything up for.

May I die to all else, big and small, in living and in dying, each day, every breath. Jesus, may I live it true: All I have is CHRIST.

May 17, 2013

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Filed Under: Brokenness, Christian Living, Missions

The Coin

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It was eighteen years ago that she gave us the coin.

That was before she accused Dad of running around with a young woman at church. Nearly split the church wide open. Dad came home with a shot gun and the counselor had to intervene and they’ve been seperated ever since.

But eighteen years ago was before all of that happened. Before tongues wagged and hearts broke and tears fell and things were never the same.

We were sitting at the supper table after church, Jackson and I. And Mom, she handed us a Canadian Maple.

“You’ll face hard times together,” she said. “Here’s something for you to put away for a rainy day, for when you just don’t have anything else.”

She slipped us the coin and we tucked it away and for eighteen years of marriage, while we traveled the world over and back again, that coin stayed in the attic, tucked away in its plastic sheath.

Until recently.

Jackson took it out.

He opened the safe where important documents are kept and he slipped the coin out and he looked at it.

“We need groceries,” he said.

I knew what the words cost him. I knew the pain of a hardworking man not able to fund a trip to the grocery store. But I also know something else about him… that walking the path of the Lord’s will is more important to him than anything else.

“The Lord’s going to take care of us,” Jackson continued. “He always has.”

He looked at me as he fingered the coin. The clock ticked and the fridge hummed and four little bodies lay tucked in their beds, oblivious to the choices of their parents.

“It’d be a shame to just spend this.” He said it thoughtful. Slow. The processing of a man intent on what’s best for his family.

I thought of the growing grocery list: bananas, bread, jelly, toilet paper, trash bags. I thought of the empty cupboards and the empty bank account and I knew they would stay empty.

“I want to invest it,” he says it slow, sure, sacred- like; an act of worship.

 

“What do you think about us selling this and giving the money to feed the Nuba people in Sudan?”

I choke back the tears and say YES! What better way to invest than in another person?

We get down on our knees and pray. “Thank You, Jesus,” I pray. “Thank You we get to be part of this, part of ministering to Your body. Thank You for the chance to give our best.”

The next day, Jackson goes to sell the coin. He returns home with $1500 cash, 15 crisp hundred dollar bills.

My man, he knows how to invest.

 

That Sunday we slip the bills into an envelope and write “Sudan” on it and we listen to the guest speaker, a Sudanese pastor.

“We take trip to Sudan,” he tells us. “We buy grain and take it into the Nuba mountains. My people are starving. They are hiding in caves and are being bombed every day. Life is hard. I cannot forsake them.”

And on this side of the world, brothers and sisters, an entire association of churches, pledge to help. We send two men with our Sudanese brother into the mountains of Sudan.

The mission is dangerous. Sudan is in turmoil and these men are entering the war zone.

The team gets stuck in Cairo. It takes days, then weeks, for the money transfer to go through. The rains are forecasted to begin any day in Sudan and when that happens, they will not be able to travel.

The team encounters one difficulty after another…they get sick, they can’t locate drivers who are bold enough to trek into the war zone, the money still won’t go through…

The team contacts us and asks everyone to fast.

We all feel the spiritual warfare of this mission. We know we battle not flesh and blood.

The call to fast goes out and we stop eating. At dinner time, the kids ask why I’m not having meal with them and I explain about the Nuba people and the need for God to provide a way. Jackson is working late…but fasting. Friends text to let each other know we are in this together.

All over our little town, we call on the Lord, asking Him to move His mighty hand. We pray for our brothers and sisters hiding in the Nuba mountains.

The Lord hears.

I get the message on a Monday morning:

“Team Nuba were able to get up the mountain, get the grain/oil/supplies to the people, and even pick up 500 refugees on the way back and safely transport them to a camp near the border.

Said they haven’t had sleep in 70 hours but they were in very good spirits. Their plan is to get rested up today and start the journey home tomorrow.
PLEASE DO NOT STOP PRAYING NOW!”

 

I fall to my knees and thank God. I ican see those faces, the mommas. The babies. All the blank stares.

But this time, I see the smiles.

It is such a sacred thing to be a part of, there is such a deep intimacy with the Lord. It is an hour before I can even call Jackson with the news.

All day, I break out in random song. When I pick oldest up from school, I excitedly tell him the news and we hoot and holler in the car.

 My Nuba sister is hiding in a cave somehwere with her children. But tonight, she will have food to give them. Tonight, she knows that the world hasn’t forsaken them, her brothers and sisters living in houses with heaping plates…well, she knows we care.

Tonight, she knows that her God delivers.

Jackson eats with us tonight, and he breaks the bread:

“Share with God’s people who are in need.

Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat. I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me…

Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for Me.

And if anyone gives a cup of cold water to one of these little ones because he is my disciple, I tell you the truth, he will certainly not lose his reward.

So do not forget to do good and to share with others, for with such sacrifices God is pleased.”

 

Jackson and I just look at each other.

We both feel it, the pleasure of God.

And as we eat our simple meal, we enter into our inheritance.

And I’m so full, I’m just about to pop.

Come back tomorrow, Thursday, June 21, for an update on the Sudan mission!

 

Invest means “to use, give, or devote (time, talent, etc.), as for a purpose or to achieve a profitable return.”

Sometimes when you need something the most is when you *need* to give it away.

We can spend a life or we can invest one.

“But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ.  What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ.” Philippians 3:7-8

 

Linking up with Ann today

May 21, 2012

5 Comments

Filed Under: Brokenness, God Provides, Honoring God, Missions, Prayer, Sacrifice, Victory

A Bit of News

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Hello friends, just a note to touch base…

We have started preparations for our return to the mission field and things are a bit crazy :) Posting around here may be weird for awhile, but I plan on being back soon. So many awesome stories to share of God’s provision, direction, and overwhelming Presence in our lives and ministry! I can’t wait to tell you!

I would like to personally invite you to keep up with our family by subscribing for updates here. An adventure awaits and I would love to have you join in.

Also, Energy Explosion is Only $2.99 on Amazon for a limited time. {PDF version is also $2.99}

Thank you so much for prayers, notes, and friendship.

Much love,
AJ

May 4, 2012

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Filed Under: Blogging, Home, Missions

Scandalous

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Eric and Woody were looking at me, listening intently, wondering what exactly I had discovered.

I’d entered that dark, cold prison cell with John the Baptist. With him, I’d asked, “Are You really the One?”

I’d agonized.

I’d wondered if I was really His.

I’d doubted God.

I’d done the opposite of what Jesus said the “blessed” ones do.

“My faith was obliterated,” I told them. “I needed to know where that left me. Was I shipwrecked?

“I did a word study on that word ”stumble.”

“It refers to a very specific condition, “to cease believing.”

In fact, one dictionary says it is to “cause a person to distrust One who is worthy of complete trust and obedience.”

It’s what Jesus said not to do to children.

“Furthermore,” I told them, “it is the word Jesus used when He went to the cross. He said all of the disciples would “fall away.” This is the same word He used. See, even the disciples stumbled in their faith.

“And Jesus told Peter, “Satan has asked to sift you like wheat. But I have prayed for you, that your faith would remain. And when you have returned, strengthen your brethren.”

I looked into their faces, my own eyes wet. “Stumbling doesn’t have to be permanent,” I told them.

“When it all comes down, it is understanding that He holds onto us. That no matter what evil has been done to us, no matter what dark nights we have seen, no matter the fear and loneliness…no matter our own faithlessness and falling away, the depth of our sinfulness… HE IS FAITHFUL.”

“It is holding onto His character.”

And I don’t know how they understood the weak attempt I made, but they did.

Husband took over from there and explained the love of God and talked for another hour or more, doing much better than I did.

He shared how God was demonstrating His love that very moment, in bringing us all to this same place at this same time, out of every place we could and should be, the globe over…

Yet He orchestrated each of our lives so we could be together, in order for us each to know His hope and grace and speak together of His love.

“He loves you. He wants you to believe it.” And he quotes John 3:16. Such a simple statement, yet so rich.

Later, after we’d hugged Woody’s neck and prayed for them both and slipped a $20 in Woody’s old truck as an expression of God’s love, we left and returned home to our own babes and noise and busyness.

“What did the Lord say to you through all that,” husband asked me.

“I’m not sure yet,” I told him. “I need to think about it.”

I thought about what had happened to Woody.

I thought about what had happened to me, as a child.

I thought about Little Bit and the trauma she has experienced.

I thought about the depths of pain and sin and heartache and trauma.

I thought about what persecution did to John the Baptist and what disillusionment did to the disciples and what oppression did to the Israelites.

In each case, it skewed their perspective of God. It caused them to stop believing.

I thought about all the things that cause us to withdraw and reject and not believe God’s love for us.

And then it hit me.The word for “stumble,” that word that means to cease trusting the One who is absolutely worthy and deserving of our complete trust and obedience.

It’s the word “Skandalizo” in the Greek.

Scandal.

And there He is, reaching deep again and bringing me to my knees. I know what He wants to say to me.

“It’s not what is done to you that is scandalous, my child. Distrust for Me is the real scandal.“

This is what causes heavenly hosts to gasp and cover their eyes and bring hands to mouth. This is what causes those who know God’s nature to hide in shame….when one of us distrusts Him.

I thought of the abuse I experienced as a child…and that the real scandal is that I responded in distrust for God.

I thought about hardship and pain and trauma and rejection and abuse and neglect and poverty and deep suffering the world over…and yet still the real scandal is when our response is distrust for the Holy One.

Because the sufferings of this world don’t compare to the glory of Him.    If we could just see!

And isn’t this why Satan attacks our faith and starts even with the youngest of children? He wants to blind our eyes with pain. He wants to mar our vision with abuse, neglect, and hardship.

He wants us to keep our eyes on our own failures and sin.

He wants to scandalize the One who should never, ever, ever be doubted, the One who demonstrated the depths of His character by entering the womb of a woman…being cared for by sinful man…being vulnerable to other’s sin…then dying at the hands of us all.

Oh yes, Satan wants to establish early on a lifestyle of truly scandalous living…distrust for One whose very name is Love.

I drop to my knees and pray to the Holy One who is worthy. “Oh my God, may I never scandalize You again!”

“Satan has done everything he can to sift me and shipwreck my faith. But You have prayed for me and You are the author and finisher of my faith, Jesus, and You have been faithful to me when I have been faithless. Praise Your Name! Now, Worthy One, may I never scandalize You again.”

And I pray for a man named Woody, a man traveling into a Colorado winter and a painful, lonely death. “May he be saved,” I pray. “May You find him. May his dark, cold prison of death be where he discovers Your faithfulness….Your trustworthiness. May his stumbling turn to faith.”

And His whispered response reverberates deep within: “Strengthen the brethren, my child. Strengthen the brethren.”

Friend, are you stumbling? If you are, I have written you a letter that answers the question “How can my faith be restored?” I’m staying up late at the Lord’s prompting to write this :) It is my joy to share two simple lifestyle habits with you. To access the letter, simply click here. Love and blessings, friend. AJ

{Part I of this story can be read here}

November 3, 2011

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Filed Under: Faith, Honoring God, Love, Missions, Prayer, Seeing God

“What if I’m an Esau?”

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“We’re sending you guys to a bed and breakfast for two nights… will even take care of childcare too.”

Our pastor told us this three weeks ago and we were shocked and delighted and so Friday we dropped the kids off and packed our suitcase and drove an hour to the B&B.

It was while standing in the kitchen with our host, Eric, that we knew. We weren’t here simply for a getaway. God had sent us on a mission.

“My friend Woody is here,” Eric told us. ”We won’t get in your way. He stopped by here to say goodbye…he’s on his way out to the mountains of Colorado. He’s got hot spots all over his body and he’s headed out there to die. Alone in the Colorado mountains.”

We tried to connect with Woody all day Saturday.  Mr. Woody made himself scarce.

Come Saturday night, we ordered Chinese take-out and sat on the bed with paper plates and chopsticks and talked about what we should do. “I say let’s go down and just tell them we don’t believe in coincidence and ask to pray for each of them and see what the Lord does,” I suggested.

My husband, he’s more direct. His fire is burning and he wants to just go down with his Bible and lay it all out.

Either way, if we want to talk to Woody, we’re going to have to be obvious and direct. No casual, “natural” opening is happening.

We finish up takeout with fortune cookies and husband cracks open his cookie and reads, “Don’t wait for others to open the right doors for you.” We laugh. There you have it, we have to go knock on some doors. The fortune cookie said so! {smile}

We go downstairs with our Bible tucked under arm and they aren’t inside and the two men are outside talking where it’s dark and cold …and we go out and chat and ask if we can share breakfast with them in the morning because we’d like to pray with them and talk to them about God.

Um hum. We did.

They said sure and it was clear they were just being polite and we wonder if Woody will really show up at the breakfast table. Did we do the right thing?

8:30 Sunday morning the four of us sit down together for breakfast.

“This is only the third or fourth time I’ve ever sat down with guests,” Eric tells us and we share some missionary stories and language blunders and we all laugh pretty good.

Then we get down to business. We ask Woody about his relationship with Jesus.

“You know,” he begins. “I used to have faith. But some things happened in my life that made me wonder if what I had was real. People done me wrong…I’ve lost absolutely everything. The only thing I have left is a guitar and my old truck…and now I have to sell my guitar.

He continued. “I read through the Bible in search of some foundation…I needed to know if what I thought I had was real. I came to conclude that I don’t have real faith.”

What he said next caused my eyes to well up and I didn’t really fight against it because it was the love of Christ within me coming out and didn’t he need to see it?

“I think I’m one of those that have to be slaughtered for someone else to be saved. You know…like in the book of Job, all his children were killed for Job to see and know God better. God’s going to do what God wants to do and I’m one not intended for His blessing.”

“I’m okay with that if that’s the way it’s supossed to be.”

…And my heart is shattered and I can’t believe what I’m hearing…

“I’m not one of the elect,” he says.

Eric chimes in. “I feel the same way,” he says. “What if I’m an Esau? You know, ‘Jacob have I loved, Esau have I hated.’”

And husband turns to me and says, “Do you want to share anything?”

Yes, I do want to say something. It’s burning within me. It’s so close to my heart that I’m breathing shallow and my pulse is pounding and oh, I get this.

“There’s a reason he asked if I want to say something,” I begin, breathless.

“It’s because he knows I’ve struggled with the same things.” And I wonder how I can boil everything down to a simple conclusion. How can I talk about stumbling and distrust and wondering if God really loves you…about dark nights when you think you had something with God and then you are shaken to the core and you wonder if you were ever founded on the right foundation?

I take a deep breath. Everyone is looking at me. The weight of responsibility for my words is heavy on my shoulders. How can I ever say the right thing?

“The conclusion I’ve come to is this,” I tell them. “It comes down to knowing and trusting the character of God.”

They’ve read the Bible before, so I explain. “You know John the Baptist? How he spent his entire life preaching Jesus and then he was arrested? And while he was in prison, waiting for his head to get cut off, he sent friends to ask Jesus, “Are you really the One?”

“His faith was shaken to the core. He was doubting and in a very stormy place.

“What Jesus said is very interesting.  He told John to evaluate things on the basis of scripture, not circumstance. But then He said something very important and insightful. He said, “Blessed is the one who does not stumble on account of Me.”

“And I looked up that word “stumble” and did a word study on it, because that’s where I was at: a doubting, stormy, afflicted place in my faith.

“And this is what I found that changed everything for me…”

{Part II of our conversation with Eric and Woody tomorrow}

This post is linked up to Ann’s Walk with Him Wednesday. Today the discussion is faith…

November 2, 2011

9 Comments

Filed Under: Faith, Missions, Mouth and Tongue, Seeing God

She Who Believes {Living Well Watered}

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My friend Liu Lian and I walked the street to see the widow.

It was hot like usual, and the streets were crowded with hawkers and bicyclists and taxis. People milled around the newspaper stand and the noodle shop. We stopped at the produce stand to buy some apples for the widow.

“I want to get her some milk powder, too,” my friend told me. “She is pregnant and last night when I was there, she only had two vegetable dishes on the table for dinner.”

We ducked into a small shop for the milk powder before continuing our journey.

It was so hot my feet were sweating in my sandals and mixed with dust from the streets, I had a sudden urge to take up pedicures the next time we returned to the states.

We reached the apartment complex where the newly widowed young woman lived. Liu Lian talked us past the guard and we walked down the gravel road towards her building. Liu Lian pointed out painted red markings that ran along the ground at the side of the building.

“See that?” she asked. “That’s the line for the departed spirit to follow home. In case he gets lost…”

We followed the paint up the stairs to a second floor apartment. The door posts were covered in slashed, dripping red. A candle burned outside the doorway.

Her mother was there with her and they invited us in.

The room was somber and dark and I could sense the air thick with spiritual activity. On the table was a shrine to the murdered man and incense burned and filled the apartment with a pungent smoke.

They looked at me strange, eyes hard and distrustful. I was the foreigner, the outsider. What right did I have to intrude upon something so painful, so deep as sudden, violent death? And I’d never met these people before.

Yet I was compelled, yes, I was commissioned.

Aren’t we all?

My friend asked how they were and then began speaking very quickly, beyond my ability to understand. She gestured at me and waved and they smirked and nodded and I knew they’d just agreed to tolerate me.

She turned and looked at me. I was up. “I’m so grieved by what you have experienced,” I began. “And I know there is nothing I can do to change things or make things right again. But I came here today to tell you Who can heal your broken places.”

I made a simple gospel presentation and I quoted the scripture I had memorized: John 7:38

“He who believes in Me (who cleaves to and trusts in and relies on Me) as the Scripture has said, from his innermost being shall flow (continuously) springs and rivers of living water.”

It was the only scripture I had memorized and I had worked for weeks to get it just right. Liu Lian had coached and tutored me.

I could see the desperation in the widow’s eyes. She was truly without hope. She asked me if I could help her get to America. I told her no, I didn’t have the means for that, but I had the good news of Jesus and He was better than any good life America might offer her.

She fell into a numb silence and I gave her a Jesus film and a gospel tract as we excused ourselves.

Past the dead man’s photo with incense, past the painted doorframes, down the stairs with their screaming message of despair.

Outside, Liu Lian turned to me. “Her mother told me she is pregnant with twins. She is six months along and doesn’t know how she will take care of them. She is seriously considering abortion because if she waits much longer, she will be too far along to abort legally.”

My heart broke and I immediately began praying for the lives of these two unborn babies.

I returned home but couldn’t get the woman off my heart or mind. The next day, I enlisted another friend, a local believer, to go with me to talk with the woman.

The guard was a bit more troublesome this time. My friend reverted to using the local dialect to convince him to let us in. He did, but the widow and her mother did not come to the door.

I couldn’t bear the thought of leaving without speaking to her.

We asked some neighbors if she was at home.

“She went out a couple hours ago but she should be back anytime.”

We waited.

Shortly, we saw the two women walking slowly up the gravel road, the young woman clinging tightly to the arm of her mother.

We greeted them and they were cordial and we asked to speak with them inside and they hesitated, but then acquiesced.

“I know you are struggling with so many decisions,” I told the widow. “But please, please don’t abort those babies. They are the children of your husband and there has been so much death and sadness already. You don’t need even more. Please!”

My friend also gave her advice and made many words about keeping the babies. I told her that if she needed anything, please call me or come see me and I gave her my address.

On our way out the door, the mother pulled my friend aside for a moment. We left and with tears in her eyes, my friend relayed the message to me that the widow had already aborted the babies. At the abortion, the momma found out what gender they were.

They were twin little boys.

And it had just happened that very morning. They were just returning from the clinic when we caught them on the gravel road.

We were too late.

I grieved those baby boys. “I’m so sorry,” I told them again and again~ like they could hear. “I’m so sorry.”

Grief has a way of messing with your faith. Pain and trauma and hardship all viciously attack your trust in God. There are some things that just aren’t supposed to be.

But they are.

And I’ve been through loss and grief and trauma and when I feel someone else’s, it all comes back, that innate tendency to close up and shut off because faith seems too risky. It seems downright foolish. It seems Sunday Schoolish and fairy tale and who needs that?

And yet…

It wasn’t a fairy tale when Jesus told Mary and Martha “This illness does not end in death” in John 11…and then Lazarus died. No siree, there’s nothing fairy tale about that.

Who could deny the cold, hard facts? The reality was that Lazarus lay decaying in a grave.

But didn’t Jesus also say to Martha, “If you believe, you will see the glory of God?”

So on the one hand we have the reality of death. On the other, we have the promise of God. It’s pretty clear that Jesus set this scenario up so that we would all know that faith isn’t a fairy tale. It isn’t some good-for-Sunday School-only concept.

He made sure the stakes were as high as they could possibly be, the reality as dark and the fate as sealed as possible. Then He turned around and taught us a profound lesson: that reality may be hard and cold and deathly but there is a reality just as true and real and concrete …and that is His word.

Because hadn’t He told them it wouldn’t end in death? After it was all said and done, Lazarus, the one who died, was. not. dead.

And doesn’t He say to me and to you that even though our reality may be empty and dry and spent and cold and inadequate…but there is another reality just as real and true and sure and that is His word?

She who believes will see the glory of God.

She who believes will have streams of water gushing from her innermost being.

Perhaps God wants you and me to learn what faith really is: a transferred focus from the reality I can see to the one I cannot. A faith that asks and correctly answers the question, “What is real? What I can see laying up in that tomb? or what God has said?”

What God has said is the truer reality.

 

[Most] blessed is the woman who believes in, trusts in, and relies on the Lord, and whose hope and confidence is the Lord.

For she shall be like a tree planted by the waters that spreads out its roots by the river; and it shall not see and fear when heat comes; but its leaf shall be green. It shall not be anxious and full of care in the year of drought, nor shall it cease yielding fruit.

Jeremiah 17:7-8

What hard reality are you facing right now?

What has God said about it?

Which reality will you believe?

 

“I, the LORD, have spoken.” She who believes the word of the Lord will live well watered.

 

 

 

October 24, 2011

4 Comments

Filed Under: Faith, Life in the Spirit, Missions, Trust

Friday’s Father

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It’s Friday, and everybody chants ”Thank God It’s Friday”… with plans for the movies or the mall or the local corn maze if it’s October.

Come Friday night, Husband drives downtown into the setting sun.

This is how we spend many Friday nights. While other teenagers are doing silly things they shouldn’t, and other couples are going on dinner dates, and other families are having game nights in their warm houses… Husband, he parks his car at Juvenile Court and checks his belongings at security and gets ushered past the cold steel doors with the loud clicking lock that rings in your ears.

He goes to talk with teenage boys who’ve given up fun Fridays for gangs, theft, and drugs instead.

He enters the small room and waits. The guard makes the announcement to the boys- turned- men-too-early. Some of them are fathers already, themselves barely into adolescence: “Anybody wanna see the preacher?”

And usually 3 or 4 out of the hundred plus say yes and thank God that someone is there, even if it is only one night of the week and oh, if there were more men for other nights of the week, for these boys who’ve never had a father in their lives.

He never asks why they’ve been arrested. He just lets them share what they want. He’s been a deputy sheriff~ in the past, before the call to ministry. He knows how hard a heart can become and he knows how to help soften it.

He shares how Christ can change their lives. He gives these boys hope. He tells them, “Son, you’ve got to decide what direction your life is going to take. You’ve not had anyone to show you the right way…but that doesn’t mean you can’t find it. Jesus is your answer. He’s the life rope that won’t let you down.”

He shares his story, of how he was going down the same road, getting into all sorts of trouble. Then at 21, God intervened in his life and he surrendered to Jesus and that’s when life really began for him.

And sometimes the boys are ready. They do business with God. Sometimes they aren’t. Sometimes they are confused and still searching…but always they listen.

“Preacher, can you explain to me the grace of God?” the boys ask, time and time again.

Husband, he comes home broken.

He aches for the loss these boys have experienced. They’ve not seen or known a father. They’ve not been given the chance to see the Father…and isn’t it through incarnate flesh that we really see what the Father looks like?

So he goes and for an hour or so, he is Father’s hands and feet, Father’s words and touch, Father’s breath and life.

He stretches…reaches…touches…

He breathes hope… and then hopes it catches.

And we wonder what more we can do and why is it always so little?

I look at my own four little ones and I wonder, am I explaining to them the grace of God? Does my life, my responses, my energy, my presence, my availability explain God’s grace? Do they know deep that God is good?

Do they daily taste and see that the Lord is good from the home structure and environment I lay out for them day after day?

Am I a Father-mother to them?

No, this isn’t about bashing myself up for all my failures, for they are many. It is about praying, “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Your Name…”

Because to hallow His name means to live in accordance with His character. It means to abide in His love. It means to be the instrument of His nature, to allow His very essence be expressed through me. And we are to live “hallowed” because He is hallowed. We express His very divinity.

So I fall to my knees and I beseech “O Father, Hallowed be Your name!! ”

Husband comes home on a Friday night and the kids are in bed and I ask him how it went and he sits on the couch and says, “I only got to talk to one tonight. They were so busy, so busy. So many boys coming in….”

“But he listened and he asked me to tell him what God is like.” His voice cracks and who can bear such a weighty task of reflecting God’s glory? Us? We are all but jars of clay…

“I think he understood, I really do. I think he saw Jesus.”

And in heaven, a prayer is answered. Grace given to the sons of men, a response to sinners saved by grace. A Name is hallowed and a life is changed and joy, it rises; and I can’t wait to beseech on knees again.

O Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Your Name.

October 21, 2011

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Filed Under: Grace, Honoring God, Missions, Redemption

The Director of our steps

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I head into town with the 3 little ones in car seats. It isn’t often I take them all with me on errands; I’ve learned not many errands are that important, but this one is. We’re getting vaccines.

Husband calls because he is at school and he’s close to where we’ll be and he suggests we meet him at the park after we’re done.

After shots we park at Chick-Fil-A and walk down the path to the nature reserve. Not ten steps down the path we see an Asian woman with two young children. The children with her are meandering, lagging behind. Mine are running ahead, looking for nuts and colored leaves.

Husband greets the woman in the language we’ve learned and she returns the greeting…she’s from our people group!

We start talking with her and she tells us where she is from and why she is here. “I can’t speak English,” she tells us. “I’m here to help with the grandchildren while my daughter finishes university.”

She says she wants to return to her homeland. “America is very beautiful, but it is not home.” We nod and relate our first experiences in a new country. “I’m 65 years old!” she exclaims, indicating she is too old to change much anymore.

I smile at her and tell her she looks so young…she really does…and Husband asks her if she has ever heard of Jesus before.

She looks baffled. “No,” she hesitates, not having a reference point. Is Jesus a place? A food? She doesn’t even know He’s a Person.

I tell her, “Since you are in America, we must share with you! Jesus! He is the most precious thing we have.”

She nods her agreement and Husband begins with creation, and the fall, and the broken relationship between man and God. As I look at the treasures the children have found, he tells how Jesus, God’s own son, came to restore our relationship with God.

Later he tells me he felt like he bumbled the whole thing. We are so out of practice using our second language! “You did great!” I encourage him. He is so much better at sharing the gospel than I am, and so bold.

While the kids are playing at Chick-Fil-A, Husband and I talk about the encounter. “You know that’s why we were at the park today,” he said to me, and I fill with awe. “He wanted that lady to hear the gospel in a language she can understand…”

“…and He sent us here to tell her,” I finish.

It is so amazing, so God, that I have no more words to say. We just look at each other in awe.

It doesn’t seem like we are doing anything “important.” We aren’t preaching to hundreds or leading Bible studies or writing books or even going overseas right now.

We are spending our days tired and I’m chasing a lot of children around and we’re doing a lot of studying and reading. And making a lot of trips into town for things like vaccines and diapers.

Yet today God directed our steps to a park where a woman from the other side of the world was, a woman who had never heard the name of Jesus...and couldn’t understand it anyway, if it was spoken in English.

“God looks down from heaven and sees the whole human race. From His throne, He observes all who live on the earth. Nothing in all of creation can hide from Him. He sees every step I take. I know the Lord sees all that I do; therefore, I will not be shaken… for He is right beside me.”

Surely it is God who ordains the steps of a man.

“I will instruct you and teach you in the way which you should go; I will counsel you with My eye upon you.” Psalm 32:8

 

Wherever your paths take you this day, friend, may you know His counsel is upon you, His instruction in your steps. May you walk confident.

 

 

October 15, 2011

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Filed Under: God Provides, Life in the Spirit, Missions

The Beautiful Wounded

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The man, I notice him when he walks through the doors.

I’m placing toilet paper and laundry detergent on the conveyor belt of the local Dollar General. Before she even rings me up, there he is- in line behind me. He’s holding two quarts of car oil in his dark, worn hands.

I nod and smile and turn back to my cart and kids now bubbling all over the front area of the store.

He speaks to my inner place and I hear Him quiet, “This man needs to know I love him.”

“Okay, Lord,” I say. I turn back to the man with sunken face and smile again. “How are you today, sir?” I ask.

“Good, good, just hot.”

This is the South and it’s always the weather we fall back on when we talk small. Never mind the man is shrunk up to nothing, that his lip is bleeding, that his teeth are all gone, that he is literally wasting away for all to see...no, there is only the weather to tck tck at.

Youngest keeps reaching for the toys near the register and oldest is pushing on the cart to play with Little Bit inside. I’m trying to use coupons and pay the cashier and keep the buggy from running into my heels while instructing daughter to put that back already.

“Let me get out of this caldron first?” I ask Him as I grab my sacked paper goods and round the kids up and herd everything towards the door. Sometimes its all I can do to think straight.

We get outside and I park the cart.

 The man is already out the door and I try to bargain with God. “If he comes by here on his way to the car, then I’ll tell him.”

I glance around and notice he is already at his car- on the opposite side of the lot. He won’t be coming my way. A lost sheep has to be found. I’ll have to be a shepherd and leave the fold.

For a split second I consider forgetting it, going my way and excusing myself. But I don’t want to miss what God is doing, and I don’t want to quench that Voice, that Spirit that I crave so much in my life.

“C’mon, kids,” I round them up. “I want to go speak with this gentleman.”

They listen quickly. Grace.

I approach the man and his van. He’s got the front hood up and is pouring oil. “Sir?” I ask. “Do you need to make a phone call? I have a phone you can use.”

It feels so lame, so silly, so moronic. But it’s the opportunity given and I take it.

“Oh no ma’am.”

“Well are you from out of town? Is there something I can do to help?”

“I appreciate that, but no, I just need to put oil in every now and then. We live out in the Acres and we’re moving today to be near my brother.”

I glance inside the van and notice a woman in the passenger seat, window down, asleep.

“Well sir,” I turn back, “I just want to tell you that God loves you.” I reach out my hand and place it on his frail shoulder. “God loves you.”

We are strangers and I hope I’m giving dignity to the man and not taking it by being so bold as to touch him, but all I can think of is how Jesus touched the untouchables. Up close, the man’s bleeding lip reminds me of the leper. Or hepatitis. Sometimes the greatest way to love is to touch. 

“Yes, well….” the man trails off and shifts on his feet. He doesn’t know what to say to that.

I look back in the van again, trying to speak with the woman. I never want a woman to feel threatened by me, oh no, I’ll be quick to wash feet. 

The woman is still asleep. I am aware of the kids around my legs. “Momma, why did we come here to talk to this man?” Youngest daughter asks. The man is listening, probably wondering himself.

“Because God loves him and maybe he needs help and we can help him,” I tell her and glance at him too.  He’s wrapped up and ready to go. I turn to take the kids back across the lot when I hear the voice.

“Ma’am! Ma’am!” It’s a woman’s voice and I turn to see her awake and sitting up.

“Are you a believer too?” she asks. Ups and yells it out the window.

“Yes ma’am. I am,” I say.

She does a little jig in her seat and stretches her arms out the car window. “Oh! Oh!” She is downright giddy. “I am too! It’s so good to meet another believer!”

I walk over to her and take her hands in mine. I smile into her eyes. “Oh, it’s just so good to touch another believer,” she says.

She is as frail as her husband, but she’s beautiful. And witty. I know that maybe she’s strung out. Or maybe she’s trying to work me. Or maybe she’s a little off her rocker.

But what if she’s for real? What if she really has met Jesus and she doesn’t get the chance to go to church?

I squeeze her hands like there’s no tomorrow and we talk. She is visibly moved. I can’t believe this is put-on. Her husband, the man Jesus loves, is growing antsy. I’ve about worn out my Southern welcome.

“We’ve got to go, hon,” he tells her. I invite them to church tomorrow and we exchange names and she is such a beautiful Jan.

“Well let go of her,” beloved man tells her, already in reverse with one foot on the gas and the other on the brake.

“I’m trying,” she says and laughs, eyes twinkling.  We give one final squeeze and release each other.

“God loves you,” I tell her and she almost cries. We turn to leave and they pull away and I wonder what just happened.

I buckle the children in and as I pull out of the parking lot I ask Him, “Why is it that I feel such an affinity with people like these? Why do I feel such at home?”

I think of the Good Samaritan and I wonder if there was a reason why he stopped to help the wounded man. Had he been wounded at one time himself? Did he know? Did he serve from experience? And did the wounded man heal and go his way to help other wounded?

I wonder.

“That’s why,” He whispers to me. “You belong because you’ve been the one wounded and left for dead. And I saved you.”

And it is later, when others turn their nose at sordid past, don’t care to hear of dark nights and imperfect days, as if Barbie is real and makeup covers more than wrinkles… It is when others can’t see beauty in scars that He reminds me:

“It’s not the well who need a Physician, but the sick. I came to save sinners, not the righteous.” 

I ponder the man in John 5, who after he was made well tucked his invalid mat up under his arm and went his way. That mat, it was his past. He carried his scars as a reminder. He remembered what he had been. He remembered what Jesus had done. And he remembered those who still lay at the pool, waiting for Someone to pass their way.

And aren’t we His hands now? Aren’t we His feet? Aren’t we His body? Can we not go to the wounded and weak? 

Isn’t He within us compelling us to go?

I get on my knees and I thank Him for beautiful Jan, for marks and reminders, for nail scarred hands that reached and touched and anointed us to do the same, for imperfect days that remind me I’m the kind He came for.

The Beautiful Wounded.

 

 

 

 

 

August 9, 2011

Filed Under: Beauty, Grace, Life in the Spirit, Love, Missions

Easy Peasy Family EV

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Ever since my oldest could talk, he was sharing the gospel.

It wasn’t something we taught him and I often wondered how it happened~ smiles ~ but then I realized he was simply saying a handful of phrases that my husband and I constantly shared with others ourselves. Things like, “Have you ever heard of Jesus before?” and “Do you believe in God?” and “God exists, He really does!”

As missionaries in a communist, atheist country,  we always sought to open spiritual conversations with everyone we could. Sharing Jesus was a way of life.

Then God blessed us with 3 more children in 23 months and things changed. Suddenly, I was at home… ALOT. And my girls weren’t getting the exposure to sharing Jesus that my son had. They weren’t seeing me being missional and I missed it!

What to do?

Click here to read about a fun, simple idea that you can use too!

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April 14, 2011

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