Last night myself and the rest of Y-squad hopped on a train headed to our 11th and final country, Moldova! This morning we arrived and safely made it to our hotel where we all have the luxuary of having rooms with balconies, comfy beds, and space that we only have share with one other person! We're bunking up here for the next couple days and then we'll be splitting up and heading out to our ministry locations. It's been a beautiful start to this final month so far and I only foresee more of it!
I'm realizing more and more how in America we are raised to waste and throw away those things that are so precious to others elsewhere. Be that our food and clothing, which people all over the world lack or our virginities and sexual purity, which is forcibly taken from children in so many places. We are taught and conditioned to attribute little value to the things that so many are never allowed to have or have taken from them at such young ages. We are such a weak people group...we needn't have our food or purity taken from us, we needn't be starved and enslaved by force because we will kill ourselves. We will live in indulgence and willing walk into enslaving addictions ourselves. We will self inflict that life long pain just for the taste of some superficial, immediate pleasure. It has never been a battle of flesh and blood... though in other places the enemy has to attack in that way and that battle does have to be fought first... it has always has been and always will be a battle of spiritual, unseen things. Whether it be an obese American man, a desperate girl responding to a "booty call" or a starving child somewhere, a young girl sold into the sex trade as a toddler...it's still enslavement; one is just easier to see as an injustice while the other is easier to justify.
none of it is meant to be this way. He has a better way, for all of us, no matter what way we have been caught up in entrappement.
He has the keys, beloved, to set us free. set you free. set me free.
Hey Mom, I love you! I hope you've had a great Mother's day so far and that even though I wasn't there to get you a flower during the church service that someone did :) Rick's usually good about making sure those things happen, so I'm sure you got a beautiful one. I pray this blesses you today!
Today I woke up with a migraine. No actually today I woke up with my jaw clenched, because of a weird dream I had last night... seems to the be the norm for my time here so far... and knew that the inevitable migraine would be coming soon. Every time I clench my jaw at night one is bound to come my way, and sure enough soon after I got out of bed and ventured downstairs in order to make breakfast my head was pounding and my eyes were squinty in their attempt to avoid light.
So.. I grabbed a giant cup of water, some ibuprofen and went back to bed, or at least went back to laying in bed.
some times its hard to see for yourself what you need.
but the Lord is faithful.
ha I needed a day of being debilitated.
I needed a day of my mind not wanting to think for itself, and that came through a migraine.
This morning I also woke up to a message from my teammate about this book John Piper wrote called Momentary Marriage, you can currently download it for free, and when I went downstairs for breakfast everyone was watching a video about a couple (you can watch it: here) that shared their testimony and how the book had impacted them. My short summary is that the book is about how marriage was created from the beginning to be a representation of Christ's covenant with the church, and it gave me a lot to mull over today as I was stuck at home.
It helped reveal a lot of things.
I am selfish
I like being a picture of myself, that I've created
I have a high value for my individuality and independence
I often don't see the best in people, unless they've shown me the best
I often don't believe in the best for people... I'm a skeptic
I'm dramatic and unrelenting... in the wrong ways sometimes
I have a stubborn will
I hold to unwarranted fears
I don't trust
I'd rather just not face some hard things
I hold to idealist principles instead of living in the vision of God
I am unloving, ungracious, and unsubmissive
And this is when I think most of the time, I / we follow these statements with:
"Good thing we serve a gracious and merciful God, who loves us no matter what"
but today I also realized that in that we miss something. If all we let follow our conviction is the comfort that God still loves us no matter what, we miss out on the repentance and fullness of life that comes from realizing that God is worthy of more than I give him, or have given him lately
He is worthy
of my selfless thoughts and acts
of creating a better picture of who I am
of my union with and dependence on him
of my belief in the best, because he has shown me the best and been the best
of my dramatic and unrelenting love... nothing else
of leading me in the right way
of my trust
of my fearlessness in the face of trials
of my living sacrifice and life being a representation of his love
of my loving, gracious, submission
Thank the Lord for migraines and days like these. Thank the Lord that there is more to everything than what we see, feel, or acknowledge, and that he is faithful to revealing those things. Praise him because he is faithful, because he is gracious and merciful, and because he is love. Obey him because he is worthy, obey him because he knows best, obey him because he believes in the best for us and in us, and obey him because his love compels such action.
"Blessed are you when you loose
your Own identity
Then blessed when you find it
And it has been redeemed."
-mike crawford & his secret siblings words to build a life on
during Ukraine I read a couple blogs by my friend Danny. he was responding a question about how to get the most of your world race experience, but really in that answer was not only how to get the most out of the world race so much as how to get the most out of life. you can check those blogs out here and here.
in the second one he talks about how saying we're tired is the lamest excuse ever, and that resonated because admitedly, after a while of this world race living the phrase "I'm just tired" was becoming a familar one to me. I was physically, emotionally, and spiritually tired... but why? I could come up with a myriad of circumstantial reasons and justifications for why I was tired, and honestly no one would argue them because it's easy enough to see how this lifestyle could make you tired. here's the thing though... that's weaksauce. It is not living in the strength of the Lord and it is not overcoming anything, it is in every way living for comfort and complacency. And I was doing that even out here... maybe more so out here because I felt like I was more justified in feeling tired.
the Lord threw some serious conviction my way through Danny about all that. The truth is that I was tired, but that's becaus I wasn't fully seeking and relying on the Lord's rest to counter act that. It is inevitable that I will get tired in this life... whether that's while I'm on the world race or while I'm back in kc, mo... but that in no way means it's okay for me to just be tired and to rely on faulty methods of resting.
tuning out, watching movies, just listening to music, surfing facebook, skyping with people from home, reading a good book, even reading the bible... is not rest unless I am no tuning out but tuning into the Lord through it.
I was tired because I hadn't really tuned into the Lord in order recieve more lfie, more enegry.
there is no way I can expect, or you can expect, to live life to the FULL with Him.
there is no way I can expect to serve Him with only portions of Him.
I think in a subconcious way I've lived with the Lord the same way I used to live with my car. I'd run on the fuel I had in it until I was basically on empty, because gas was expensive and it came at cost. I do that with God too... I get something so good and fueling from Him and then I run on it until I am basically empty because in a way I know that His rest comes at a cost too. To enter into it I have to set myself aside. But how beautiful that setting aside really is. Ha I remember driving to school from home so often my last year there and these moments when i would stop at a quick trip right outside platte city being one that I looked forward to... I'd fuel up, grab a coffee or orange juice, and a delicious qt donut. But even though I loved those moments.. when I was the highway it never seemed the effiecient to me to stop there and get gas, because if I could just make it 15-25 more minutes I could be home. It was always a guessing game with the question: do I think I can make it home with out quite running out?
Here's the obvious though: if i did run out, that would have caused me so much more delay and stress than if I just stopped, filled up, and grabbed a treat along the way. And not only that but once I got home it didn't change the fact that eventually I would have to fill up.
With only about a month and half left we are currently in our "home stretch" time of the race and in some ways I've thought of the race this way for a while. "do I think I can make it home with out quite running out?"
its dumb.
it leaves me tired and restless.
That's changing though, because I've realized everything that I just wrote about... and when I realize things like that I can't just keep going on that way. I want to live this life, on the world race and on afterwards, to the FULL and I can only do that by "pulling off the highway and filling up". I can only do that by tuning into my Father in Heaven and listening to what He's saying. When I realized all of this though it stirred up this question: what does the Lord's rest even look like, and how do I get that? One of Danny's suggestions with that question was to read some scrilpture.. solid advice... and in particular to read Deuteronomy. So, I've been doing that and one thing I've learned so far is that the Lord's rest is directly correlated to remembering Him. So dirrectly correlated that in the ten commandents, the commandment about keeping the Sabbath day end by telling the people to remember all that the Lord did for them, taking them out of Egpyt. Over and over again in deuteronomy the Lord's people are told to remember Him.
Part of resting in the Lord is remembering who He is and what He has done.
I've gotten to do that quite a bit lately, and have taken up the practice of intentionally recalling all the things He has already done for me in the moments and times that I feel as if "I've come to my end". And I find that in those moments... just remembering what the Lord has done, lifts my spirit to His and gives me a peace, a calm, a rest that wasn't there moments before. The circumstances don't need to change, my heart does, it's focus does, and remembering helps bring on that change.
SO: I want to enter into the Lord's rest with you! I want to remember all that the Lord has done for us over the past year, month, week, day, hour of our lives. I want to hear from you about what God has done for you.
Remember it and find rest in who He is and all that He does.
If you've read this blog, leave a comment, telling a story about what He has done for you.
and rejoice for it is good.
He is good.
He is God.
This is a poem written by Brent Rice, a guy I served in ministry with during part of my college years; He's a legit brother and definitely has a gifting with words. The video was made by alea lovely.
The hand of the Lord was on me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord and set me in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. 2 He led me back and forth among them, and I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very dry.3 He asked me, “Son of man, can these bones live?”
I said, “Sovereign Lord, you alone know. ”
4 Then he said to me, “Prophesy to these bones and say to them, ‘Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord! 5 This is what the Sovereign Lord says to these bones: I will make breath[a] enter you, and you will come to life. 6 I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin; I will put breath in you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the Lord. ’”
7 So I prophesied as I was commanded. And as I was prophesying, there was a noise, a rattling sound, and the bones came together, bone to bone.8 I looked, and tendons and flesh appeared on them and skin covered them, but there was no breath in them.
9 Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to it, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Come, breath, from the four winds and breathe into these slain, that they may live.’”10 So I prophesied as he commanded me, and breath entered them; they came to life and stood up on their feet—a vast army.
11 Then he said to me: “Son of man, these bones are the people of Israel. They say, ‘Our bones are dried up and our hope is gone; we are cut off.’12 Therefore prophesy and say to them: ‘This is what the Sovereign Lordsays: My people, I am going to open your graves and bring you up from them; I will bring you back to the land of Israel. 13 Then you, my people, will know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves and bring you up from them. 14 I will put my Spirit in you and you will live, and I will settle you in your own land. Then you will know that I the Lord have spoken, and I have done it, declares the Lord. ’”
A couple years ago I listened to this sermon delivered by John Shirley at The Gathering, and it’s stuck with me since. In it he talks about a lot of truth, and a bit of it that has come up in my life time and time again… including lately… had to do with the metaphor of pruning and abiding. Now, if you can hang in there for about 1,000 more words, I’ll get back to that…. :) Ever since I can remember, I’ve enjoyed being in charge of things and honestly ever since I can remember those positions came pretty easily to me. This is especially true when I think back to before I was in a relationship with God. During middle school, and probably before that too, whenever we had group projects I liked being the leader for them. When I did dance, my favorite years were the ones when I got to be a dance assistant and help teach the younger girls classes. In high school I did theater; I was the stage manager and student director by my sophomore year… not because of some exceptional love for the theater, but I think simply because I liked “running the show”. By my junior year I switched to journalism instead of theater and became design editor of the yearbook, and that’s where I stayed through my senior year. I liked leading because ultimately I liked control. I was a very bossy, bold, in your face kind of person those years. When Jesus finally caught my attention in a good way and I entered into a relationship with the Lord through Him, I was in my freshman year of college and probably for the first time in a long time in no sort of leadership position. I was just trying to figure out life outside of high school and “on my own”. To put it in a cliché’ kind of way: It was a beautiful time of just sitting at the feet Jesus. Cliché aside though, it really was. I don’t even remember thinking about or desiring to be in a leadership position once that year. I had even been fortunate enough to have been blessed through my parents and saved up enough money, that I didn’t even have a job that year. I was with out any sort of position, other than that of getting to know Jesus, following Him, and fellowshipping with other believers. It was such a good place. The summer following my freshman year I went out to San Diego on summer project with Campus Crusade for Christ, and it was the perfect continuation of that time. The first 5 weeks of the 10-week trip I was given a mentor and served on a ministry team. Literally my life along with my heart, mind, and desires could not have looked more different then compared to the state they had been in just 9ish months before that when I had just started to walk with the Lord. Everything had been completely flip-turned upside down by Him. I’m still learning more and more how good He is at doing that. At that point in summer project, the 5 week mark, all the staff and student staff leaders leave, and in doing that they hand over the last 5 weeks of the summer project to the students. In the process of that they nominate students to step into the leadership positions they leave behind, and I so happened to be one of those students and goodness did it take me off guard. I say that with all honesty. Ha I was so clueless as to what was happening. I literally thought the student staff leader, AnnieRose, who asked me if I would be the leader of my ministry team, was asking to meet up with me just because she wanted to hang out, and I was genuinely excited to do that… then I realized what the meeting was actually for, and then I was still excited but also nervous. Truthfully, in the moment I was afraid of that leadership position. It was the first time that I had felt that way about a leadership position ever in my life; I believe that’s because during that time of getting to know Jesus and his Father, I began to realize how big they were and how small I was in comparison. More than that I realized how worthy they are of control and how much better they are at “running the show” than I am. I knew who I had been before I came to know the Lord, I knew how I took leadership and control for myself then and I didn’t want to be that person anymore. So, in the moment I didn’t want to be in a position that reminded me of that. I think I also saw my being in leadership positions as removed from my life, like so many other things I saw as being removed while I was changing over that year through God. That’s when the Lord spoke some truth about those things I believed to be being removed. That truth was, that in my naivety I was seeing Him changing me and believing that, that meant a complete and utter removal of who I had been my whole life, yet that wasn’t the case. In that moment He revealed to me that He wasn’t necessarily removing everything so much as He was restoring it to the way it was supposed to be. There was a massive reset going on, but it wasn’t to completely wipe out who I was, it was to make who I was right so that I could function and live in my fullest potential. And so, I accepted the position of leading my ministry team and let the Lord start to teach me through it what it meant and looked like to be a leader through and because of Him. Since then… I’ve basically been in a constant position of leadership in some way or another in the ministries I’ve been involved with, and boy oh boy have I learned so much through all of them. Each of them has been humbling, and each of them has been a gift from God, which in and of myself I felt pretty inadequate for, yet through Him confident with in. Getting ready for the World Race I was excited for a lot of reasons, but one of the big ones was because it was such a foreign thing to me. Literally foreign in the sense that we would be travelling from country to country but also foreign in the sense that it was with an organization I had never been involved with before and it involved things that I had never experienced before. I was looking forward to being a baby in a way, a complete and utter novice after being in a state of leadership for 3 years straight. Then I went to training camp, and was asked to be a team leader. Ha, gosh the Lord is just funny sometimes. There He talked to me about my desires of just being a follower. See in a way I think I thought that by entering into a circumstance where I seemingly knew nothing about what I would be doing, that I would automatically be disqualified from leadership and therefore free of that kind of responsibility. But what He reminded me of was that it wasn’t anything of me that ever qualified me for any position of leadership I had been given… it was simply He in me that did. I’m not exceptional, He is. I’m not experienced, He is. I’m not the leader, He is. I just follow Him closer and closer to the Father. Only in being a follower, am I a kind of leader. I wanted to run away from the responsibility of the gift He’d given me. Weird to think about, huh? That by going on a mission trip, part of my desire in it was to put myself in a place where I thought I could be free from one of things the Lord has blessed me with. I remember trying to be so inconspicuous at training camp, attempting to go through it unnoticed in any way by staff as they were trying to pick out the leaders. As you can see that worked out really well for me. (that was sarcastic) The truth will always be that as child of God you cannot get out of the blessings He desires to give you; you can never escape His goodness, no matter how you may try at times… so, I became a team leader, and I have learned so, so much through it. I have learned many a things that I could not have otherwise learned. I am and will always be grateful for this time. Here’s where I get back to that pruning and abiding thing I talked about in the beginning. In the sermon John talks about John 15, specifically verse 2:
He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunesso that it will be even more fruitful.
He focuses on second part, “while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, so that it will be even more fruitful”. Before this I’d honestly never really looked at that part of this passage. I knew about the vine and about the dead branches being cut off, but I’d never really paid attention to this part about pruning. The point he makes about it is that when we are fruitful, we can expect to be pruned and that that can be a confusing, hard time for us because it means things are going to be cut off of us. He also talks about how it is such a good thing though. The dictionary’s definition of to “prune” says that it is “to trim by cutting away dead or overgrown branches or stems, especially to increase fruitfulness and growth”. And right there is where we have the goodness… he only prunes “so that it will be even more fruitful”. The hard, confusing part comes when we have in some way formed our identity around the fruit we’ve been producing. That’s what the Lord largely started speaking to me about this past month in Ukraine. Through a series of events I started to realize that in a lot of ways I had begun to perceive who I was and gauge how good life was through the lens of the leadership position I was in. This fruit that had been produced in my life had grown too big. It was time for some pruning to happen. The slightly hard part of that was that the Lord revealed it to me and then handed me the hedge clippers. I had to choose whether I was going to step into that pruning process and therefore more of the Lords blessings or instead remain where I was with this “oversized fruit” of sorts. What I said earlier about being a child of God and not being able to run away from His blessings is still true though, and He convinced me through out that time, that the growth and fruitfulness that would come of this pruning was well worth any of the pain involved in the cutting off of stuff. So, I went for the pruning… and as of the beginning of this month I have stepped down from team leading. It is quite the change. But it is, as our current contact Raul would say, a “goodie goodie”. Ha I can’t wait to tell you more about him, but to remain on topic…this change has already in the 2 days of my officially not being a team leader proven to be yet another blessing and seriously such a good thing. This is a time, that as a branch, I am getting to go back into the vine and simply abide there, soak up some goodness, and await the new fruitfulness and growth to come. Stepping away from leadership is no longer an attempt at escaping this blessing the Lord has given me, but instead is a stepping into more of Him and listening for what’s next. It’s not a running away from anything, but now a running into the more that God has for me. It’s a beautiful thing. With that my long time teammate Kelly Jarvis (she’s been with me on this journey since day 1) has stepped up into leading our team. You can check out a bit about her process with that here: Steppin Up! Thanks for reading another one of my novels! Love you all so much and sending blessings your way!!
It's almost only 2 months until my arrival in Kansas City, Missouri. Typing that brings a smile to my face, followed by my stare out a window, an (all to familar too my teammates) "mmm", and a slight shake of the head. It's surreal, as it should be because it's still two months away. The thougt of coming home excites me and quickly brings dreams of the future to mind, but it also shocks me in a way... it always shocks me how fast "time flies" in restrospect.
Lately I find myself thinking, "I can't wait to catch up with [insert your name here if you are not currently on my team]. I look forward to the days when I just get to sit and catch up with everyone from home, and even for the days that I get to catch up with others on my squad that I don't get to see all the time. But as I was thinking about that today I realized I had some catching up to do with everyone, on here, right now.
So here's a piece of the recap:
That one time I spent two weeks in China:
During our time there my team worked along side Erin Miller's team and had our squad leader Kevin join us. The 14 of us headed all the way to Harbin, China which is located just under Russia and above North Korea on the map. The place is known for it's ice sculptures. I pretty much thought I would turn into a popscile while there, but luckily that proved false as it was admittedly warmer than antcipated. We knew it was "warm" because it actually snowed while we were there, which most of the time it is too cold to do.
We worked with what most people would call "the underground" or "secret" church while there. Though in all reality it felt like neither of those things while I was there. It was neither underground nor being kept a secret. It was however a very much a live church, an extension of the body of Christ, making His love known among all it's neighbors (literally and figuratively). We worked with an american couple, Jake and Steph, who had moved there just about 5 years ago, which at the time was only 3 months into their marriage! Crazy, that's what that is... crazy to get the gospel known that is.
They take a bold approach in their outeach methods and are not playing any games, well actually.. sometimes we did play games with the students we we're working with... but I mean they aren't playing around about getting the Word out there. We spent our time teaching english, to the neighbors who lived in our apartment complexes (which is where church was held in our apartments) and then also went to english corners (events where Chinese college students could come practice their english with us Americans). When we would do these things, like going to the english corners, we were told to do quite the opposite of what I expected to be told to do going into China. We were encouraged to be honest and let people know we were there volunteering with the church, teaching english and hosting bible studies, and to hand them a card with the church address and service times on it. Everything I heard about sharing our faith in China was that it was going to have to be very covert... and this was not at all covert. This was very out in the open, almost more out in the open than I think we typically are in America.
Jake and Steph believe that the Lord has told them to take this approach, to be bold and intentional about their purpose for being in China, and that with that He has promised to protect them... and He has. The church they have helped Him start there has grown and is growing because of their intentionality. All that's not to say that they haven't had some tough stuff happen or had a few run in's with the police... they have. Just last summer they had begun holding church services in a public building because the number of people attending had grown so much, but some time after that the police got word of it, showed up, shut things down and took the Chinese Pastors there to jail. They all got out and things are okay, their still holding church services; now they are just split into 3 house churches. What was really incredible to me in hearing about that story though was how the Lord can turn such moments of persecution and attack from the enemy into a display of His glory and love. After that incident happened with the police, one of the other American missionaries that is working with Jake and Steph, told us that the police man that shut them down kept calling him and naturally he was afraid to pick up the phone. He eventually did however and to his surprise the police man wasn't calling to say anything about the church, but was actually calling to ask if he would be willing to teach his son english. I think the natural response in that moment is to think "what the audacity of that guy" but as he was telling us the story I couldn't help but see what an incredibly sweet opportunity the Lord had just created in that moment to so literally "love your enemy" and display His glory no matter what.
There's more to tell about China for sure and there's definitely some stuff I need to fill you all in about this beautful place Ukraine... but that's all for now folks. Tomorrow we pack up and head our Kiev to meet up with another team who are down in Crimea, from there we'll travel with them to meet up with another team who are in Odessa, and then finally from there we will make our way to our 10th country Romania!! Some where in there I plan on writing some more and putting up here for your reading pleasures :) ha but we will also be doing a lot of travelling, so I make no promises.
...I can't wait to catch up with you all some more though. I love you!
