Dreaming with the Lord [[States]]

The other day I was thinking about the plans that the LORD has been revealing to me of what long term missions looks like, and He brought this question to my mind. What is the point where most Christ followers stop dreaming with the LORD and start settling for the American Dream?

From the moment we can put a crown on our head or a cape on our back we are dreamers. We dream of what the future could look like as a princess or a hero. The possibilities are limitless. One thing I’ve found as I’ve traveled to South America and Asia is that dreamers cross through all cultures. When I was in Phuket this summer, I was looking out over our balcony and saw 3 young girls playing in the street with a strand of garland. I didn’t need to know thai to understand that these little girls were dreaming. One little girl was attaching the garland to another precious girl’s head like a veil, as they giggled and smiled away. 

I couldn’t help but think about the reality of their situation. As they dreamed, their culture was getting ready to steal their joy and push them into the sex trade. At that point, I begged the LORD to protect these young girls from a fate they couldn’t choose and draw them to his romancing heart instead.

You see, while we still have the choice to dream many people and even children are being robbed of it daily. Beautiful dreams are replaced with broken realities. 

I feel that a lot of American Christians find themselves watching their dreams in the review mirror.  I wish I could pause the moment where each person gives up dreaming with the LORD, take their head in my hands, and speak truth into their heart. We may come to a point where we need to put the princess crown on the shelf or the cape in a box but the LORD calls us to continually dream with Him. If we were sitting at a table across from each other at a coffee shop right now, I would encourage you in the fact that the LORD has plans for you that are far greater than you. I can assure you when you give up who you are trying to be in a beautiful exchange for a holy adventure with God, He takes you to places you couldn’t dream up yourself if you tried. 

Recklessly pursue the dreams the LORD gives you and you will experience depths of Him you didn’t even realize you could.

As the Spirit Leads [[States]]

 “He whispers in my ear, tells me I’m fearless. He shares a melody, and tells me to repeat it. And it makes me whole. It reminds my soul. I AM ALL HE SAYS I AM AND HE SAYS I AM HIS OWN.”

         It has been hard to be in this transition period of school almost being done and expectations of entering the grown up world. Most people my age are getting ready to look for jobs, enter grad school, looking for someone to spend their life with, and I know I am different. Most of my time is spent on my knees asking God what is next, flipping through memories of where God has begun to give me a passion for the lost, the hurting, the trafficked, and the weak in other nations. Every time I close my eyes, images flood my mind of the men, women, and children that have impacted my life half-way across the world and that God has given me a glimpse of how He loves them. I’m not sure if you’ve ever experienced that overwhelming feeling of love for someone you don’t even know. To be drawn by the Spirit to someone, and to instantly feel their burdens and want to just share that love you know is coming from Jesus with them. I’ve been blessed to experience this several times now- first with Julito in Guatemala, then Ivania that I met on a dirty street in front of her prison of a bar in Puerto Barrios, orphans on the streets of Guatemala, Honduras, and Thailand, so many women in the bars on Bangla, and girls in my generation that He has placed in my life. It’s hard to explain the feeling, but I can tell you it is overwhelming and beautiful. 

      As the Lord teaches me more of what it looks like to tune my ear to Him and give the Spirit the reins, I realize that this is something that God created to be natural for us to do. We were made to naturally love others, to feel his heart beat faster when His precious daughter in Thailand finally understands her worth, to feel the sorrow He feels when the fatherless wander the streets in search for food and hope, and to love others as He does right where they are at. Whether I am in the states or in a distant nation I know this is what he calls me to, he beckons me to himself so that I can love His children and share how He feels about them.

    2 Corinthians 5:15-16 simply says this: “For the love of Christ controls us…From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh.” Reread that one more time. Christ’s love controls us so that we don’t treat anyone as their flesh is revealing in the moment. That means we treat others like they are already living at the maximum potential for God, even if they don’t know Him. Can you try to wrap your mind around that concept with me? When you listen to what God has to say about a person and then you call that out in them- you are regarding them as Christ does. Can you imagine how radically different this world would look if we put that into practice? We are called to naturally love others like Christ does—not just me but you too are called to love those around you to the potential of righteousness found in the King of Kings. We are all that God says we are- so take the challenge and start calling that out in the people around you with me.

    I may not know right now where God is going to call me to long term- or even what my life will look like in 6 months (because it will be drastically different- how could it not following the adventure my savior has for me?!) but I do know that I am going to continue to love those around me deeply as The Spirit leads.

New Normal [[States]]

   There have been many different times over the past two months that I have wanted to sit down and write, write my heart, what God’s revealing to me, what’s next but I haven’t been able to. If I write about the revelations God gave me in Thailand I just want to cry, and if I write about what God is teaching me here at home I just want to cry because it means I’m moving on when my heart so desperately wants to hold onto the memories of speaking life into women forced into prostitution in Guatemala in Thailand and the orphans I held, kissed, rocked, and loved.

   I can’t fully explain to you this feeling of having half of your heart here and half on the missions field.  Every time I serve on the west side of buffalo and I see different cultures, I just want to weep.  When I sit in class and learn more about exceptional education my professors don’t know that in my mind I’m replaying every moment I got to hold julito’s hand or toss a ball back and forth for hours with him, and that’s not normal. When I listen to my professor teach about the injustices of the past, she doesn’t know that I’m praying ferverently in my mind for C-, I-, B-, and each woman I have spent hours in bars with crying, laughing, and speaking life into. And when I still [yes, still] accidently throw my toilet paper in the garbage I am reminded that I was not created to just be here in America, to just live the “American dream” and die living for myself.  It’s okay that “normal” isn’t normal to me anymore.

I’m so grateful that my heavenly papa is so faithful to me. He’s faithful to the promises that He gives me. He’s faithful to my often wandering heart. He’s faithful to keep using me despite me. And as I sit here, patiently waiting for what’s next I take heart and know that He has a plan that is so much bigger than me.

“I am letting go of the ordinary in order to obtain a greater prize.”  That’s the new normal.

Gutted [[States]]

If I had to label the past month I’ve been home it would be one of struggle and frustration. Much like what Jacob faced in Genesis, I’ve felt like I’ve been wrestling with God. Wrestling with why He would change me and give me a heart for the nations just to bring me right back to buffalo- where I struggle to keep afloat most. I’ve rocked orphans to sleep who have never had safe arms to fall asleep in, I’ve fed the poor living in literal garbage dumps, I’ve shared truth with women in forced prostitution, I’ve been part of leading a community of believers in Honduras back to wholeness and healing, and I’ve been able to speak life into my own generation as I watch God transform lives before my eyes- but to be home, to be home is a much different story and nothing like my new heart. I felt like I was being exiled by God and like He was taking back his promise of using me to reach the nations.

  

Straight up lies that the enemy was feeding me. 

So then why does God have me here for another season of life? Sometimes we need a literal representation of our state to see how far God wants to still bring us. This is one of those instances. You see, before I left for Thailand this summer a friend of mine let God speak through her to tell me I needed to be gutted. Gutted like a house that’s been destroyed by a flood- and I didn’t fully understand what God meant until the other day. As I was serving with some friends on the west side of buffalo- God began to wreck me. I stepped into an abandoned house that the ministry we were working with was beginning to renovate just to find that our first task was to gut the upstairs. As I grabbed a hammer and chisel and began to pry up the wood planks- it all began to click for me. An “ahaa” moment if you will, when you finally get what God has been telling you the whole time.  For every plank of wood I chiseled into and pried up I realized the things he still needed to pry out of my life. At one point after several hours of this tedious and exhausting work I began to ask God why not just build the parts that are beyond repair and leave the rest- but that’s not how he works and that’s not how you renovate a house that’s falling apart. Underneath the parts that even looked stable was rotting wood that the eye couldn’t see without taking it up. It’s a slow process and sometimes it is easy to want to pry up the pieces you know will come up whole even if its not the right time because you don’t want to spend the time or effort prying up the tougher pieces- but nonetheless you have to pry it up in a specific pattern, a very specific way. 

God has not given up the promises he has made me of reaching the nations. He hasn’t abandoned me into an exiled land how my blinded eyes were seeing. No, in fact he is right here, surrounding me with his presence as he lovingly chisels and pries away the parts of me that aren’t who he knows I am and strengthens every part of me as I’m being built up in Him.

God brought these verses to my attention the other day and reminded me of the truth in where he has me. 

“Blessed be the LORD, for he has wondrously shown his steadfast love to me when I was in a besieged city. I said in my alarm, “I am cut off from your sight.” But you heard the voice of my pleas for mercy when I cried to you for help. Love the LORD all you saints! The LORD preserves the faithful ..Be strong and let your hearts take courage all you who wait for the LORD.” Psalm 31:21-24

I am patiently waiting on you LORD, as you refine me, as you purge the places long devastated and build me up in you, in your love, and your truth. You are faithful abba-so I give it all to you LORD trusting that you’ll make something beautiful out of me.

He's faithful to the End [[States]]

Today I got news that Tiger 1- a bar that many of the girls that became our sisters this summer worked in caught fire- and killed and injured several people.  A lightning bolt struck the transformer box in the electrical wires and sparked a fire that created a mess of chaos on Bangla. The electricity went on and off several times before the fire that was thought to be a bomb at first and from that chaos erupted. When I first heard this news, I pictured my sisters in those bars scrambling in crowds to push away from the flames in complete fear- and instantly my heart was in confusion and disbelief that God would allow this to pass through his hands on the very streets that I walked just a few short weeks ago and to the very women he allowed me to love. 

       After I let my heart accept the lie of confusion for several hours God led me to a page in my journal that made my jaw drop- and it hasn’t returned to normal position yet as he keeps piecing things together and revealing to me why he allowed the fire to happen. You see, the very page he brought me to was one that was written over a month ago sitting in a kfc with three of my teammates in Patong after prayer walking Bangla as a cry to God asking him what his plans were for that place. Torie, Alley, Anna Grace, and I sat in a tourist filled kfc and asked God for specific revelations of what he had in store. I know what you’re thinking, God speak to us in a Kentucky fried chicken in Thailand, crazy sounding right? Well we stepped out in vulnerability and faith anyways and asked to see God’s to-do list, and oh did he reveal much of his plans- that are still being fulfilled.

       Sometimes God reveals things to us to test our faith- to see if we truly trust his voice. That day God revealed to us several things that changed our view of how God speaks to us, and challenged us to trust him at his word. The Lord revealed to my teammate Torie chapter 18 of revelation- a chapter that she didn’t know what it contained or that it was going to be God speaking out his plans for over a month later. If you haven’t read Revelation 18, I will give you the spark notes version of it to help the understanding of God’s sovereign power here.  In this chapter an angel that had authority from heaven is talking to Babylon and calling out this fallen city on the sexual immorality that is happening , the drunkenness, the idols they have made, their love of luxurious things, for their “sins are heaped as high as heaven” (Rev. 18:5) This voice from heaven warns them to get out now before they are taken down with this city because God’s righteous anger is coming- “For this reason her plagues will come in a single day, death and mourning and famine, and she will be burned up with fire; for mighty is the Lord God who has judged her.” (Rev. 18:8)  At first glance this may seem harsh, but it’s easy to forget that we serve a just God- one that hates sin and what that sin does to the people that he created for love.  God is jealous for every person on Bangla and I know that he is coming to restore his people- that fire last night was a glimpse into his righteous anger against the sin on Bangla, and his longing for his children to turn to him. He is warning them of what is coming and offering them redemption in return for abandonment of self and sin. Earlier this week I was reading a book by A.W. Tozer that talks into a fear of the Lord saying “Until we have been gripped by that nameless terror which results when an unholy creature is suddenly confronted by that One who is the holiest of all, we are not likely to be much affected by the doctrine of love and grace.”  Bangla felt that nameless terror last night- and God is proving over and over that his hand is on Bangla road and each of the people he allowed us to meet this summer.

God has never left Bangla. He has never stopped fighting for His people in Phuket. He is faithful to the very end.

God has been speaking to me through songs all summer long- he brought me to this song today as I was praying for Bangla, and oh how perfectly did he orchestrate this into what he has revealed to me today.

The promise of your coming light

 It burns so brightly in my mind

and all creation longs and waits

 For the dawning of that day
And he will come riding on the clouds

With Justice in his heart

And a sword upon his side
And all will see the glory of this man

With fire in his eyes

He's jealous for his bride
He's faithful to the end

 He's faithful to my heart.