Time to brag on God… my personal wake up call.

“But as for me, it is good to be near God. I have made the Sovereign LORD my refuge; I will tell of all your deeds.” Psalm 73:28

Ok, time to brag on God a bit here. Seriously, God is AWESOME!!!! Have you ever just sat back and thought about all the stuff God is doing in and around you and felt like your head was going to explode because it wouldn’t all fit in there? Welcome to my last few months. In the last month and a half God has especially shown just how glorious He can be. I’ve attempted countless times to put it into words, and in every instance I fall short. It’s a new sense of purpose. A new urgency, and it’s exciting!

To give you the full picture I’ve actually got to go back to July, the 25th to be exact. I was sitting on the floor of Sugar Creek Baptist church, crying, miserable, confused, and angry. I was talking to God in a room where the Holy Spirit was in every crevasse, people were being saved, and kids were on their faces. The topic of our conversation in a nutshell: “God, what is wrong with me?” I told God I didn’t understand my lack of urgency. I didn’t understand how a few weeks before I could be in Ethiopia, on fire, in the word, sensitive to the Spirit, caring about people dying and going to hell and now I was in America, and I didn’t care. I wanted to care. I wanted to have the same passion, to love, to minister. But I didn’t know how, I didn’t feel it. All I knew how to do in America was want-to-want God and long for Ethiopia. So I got on my face. I wept. I talked honestly with him. I asked Him to fix me, and He answered. He told me I didn’t have to feel it. I had to do one thing that would lead to the rest happening… surrender. One easy word… so incredibly hard to actually do. The process began. Incredibly slow at times, insanely accelerated at others.

Fast forward to today and I am overwhelmed what God has brought me into and through and is preparing to do. In the last few months he has brought me incredible new, strong friendships, based solely on Christ and making him known to the world. He has strengthened old friendships the same way. He has brought intense accountability that is so hard, but so rewarding and freeing. He has brought a fresh passion and experience of His Holy Spirit, the almost lost person of the trinity in my life. He has brought random strangers in the midst of their suffering, and allowed me the chance to tell about a God who loves them. Just in the last few days he has brought a prayed for and long desired mentor for even more intense learning and accountability. And one of the most overwhelming things He has brought is a boldness to speak truth, actually to speak at all. He is giving me a voice and I’m attempting to practice using it, seeking his wisdom in every word. He is giving us a vision of a new Pentecost. A time that we can say the message God speaks through us is cutting to the heart and new believers are being added daily to our numbers. (Acts 2:37-47)

The challenge for us as believers is this: It’s time to WAKE UP! God had to wake me up in a crazy in your face way. It’s time to be more passionate, humble, sold-out, bold, real, and on our faces than ever before. God is working, and trust me you don’t want to miss out on this. It’s exciting! It makes you feel like singing, dancing, staying up all night praying, fasting, shouting, weeping, praising God, and falling on your face all at the same time, and it’s the best feeling in the world. Get on board. You’ll never be the same and you’ll never regret it. Praying for you all, that God would wreck your world the way he has been wrecking mine lately. Love you.

Face Down, Beginning of the Answer to a Cry For Something Real…

Tonight I sat in a room with a generation of people who are increasingly unsatisfied, and I praise God for them. I praise God because as I listened to them pray I realized just how disillusioned they are, we are, with the things this world has offered us, the things the church at times has offered us, and the things we have settled for. I listened as they cried out for more, literally fell face down and cried out to God. I have been a part of several of these types of prayer meetings now. Times in which denomination, theology, and arguments don’t mean a thing. These times have been filled with more honesty than I’ve seen in years, more passion almost than I’ve seen in a lifetime. The game of church isn’t enough anymore for these crusaders. They want depth. They want change. These are the so-called radicals of our day, but when I look at them I see what we are meant to be. Our hearts emptied of self, prostrate, seeking the Lord. These aren’t radical ideas… it’s what the church is supposed to be. So, why does it look so opposite of what we’re used to seeing? Why does it seem so much more alive than our common understanding of church? I had a moment tonight, sandwiched cozily between two of my sister in Christ, listening to the sounds of God’s children weeping (my own added in that mix) where it just sort of clicked in my mind. This is the church. This is community. Oh, that this would be the mental image people get when the word church comes to their mind. That instead of the words hypocrite, judgmental, and legalistic coming to people’s minds the words love, support, compassion, brokenness, and family would come to peoples minds. I praise God for the people he has placed in my life lately who have helped me realize it’s possible for these words to describe the church. For the people who have helped me realize that it’s possible for us to be a place that actually stands for love. These are the ones who challenge me to keep moving forward and keep striving to represent Christ more and more. These are the people who make me believe the church can be a family, and can actually make a change in this world for the better. With eyes still sore, tears threatening to invade again, and an overwhelming feeling that I should still be on my face, this is our prayer:

Empty us Holy Spirit! Destroy what we thought we knew. Destroy our perceptions. Destroy our way of playing church. Destroy our idea of necessity and our need for comfort! Instead rebuild children who possess YOUR HEART! Give us a mind full of your love and compassion. ABBA GOD, transform us into the bride you alone deserve and conform us to your desire. May we be left unfulfilled and completely dissatisfied by anything other than you.  REVIEVE US LORD! Make us the servants you desire, that you may receive all the glory due your powerful name. Change us LORD. Start now. We’re ready for something real…

Making It Real

6/30/10 “The first day of walking the streets of Surupa is now complete. That was intense. I am amazed at how something can be so easy and yet so complex and difficult at the same time. It seems so easy to tell them the story and have them say yes, they want to believe. But then they walk away from us and if it’s real their lives change. We don’t often see the harsher sides of that change. In the past we have connected them with local believers and gone on with the work we had to do. Today however I saw a glimpse of the harshness of that change. Today I witnessed persecution first hand and it broke a part of me. Persecution, a term we in the American church talk about but hardly ever see. A thing that is a daily reality for many of our brothers and sisters.”

For the first few days we were in Surupa our team split into 3 groups and basically went house-to-house evangelizing. On day one in the center of town my group encountered an older man. He said he wanted to hear what we had to say and as we shared Christ with him, his whole demeanor changed. By the time we were finished sharing he had decided this was something he wanted and he told us as much. We prayed with him and after we said amen he asked us to come to his home and share this good news with his family. As soon as we approached his house and the man and our translators began talking to his family two of the women began shouting and pulling at him. It did not take a common language to understand what was happening, these women were angry. You know what they say about the furry of a woman’s scorn… Our translator told us that these women were persecuting this man because they were Orthodox and were not happy about his decision. He told us it would be better for us to leave. In that moment I didn’t like the idea of leaving this man to be yelled out, but we have been taught to listen to our local partners. After all they know what the angry people are saying and we don’t. As we walked a way I felt a strange mixture of joy, knowing he was now a brother, and sadness, knowing that this fact meant he was now a sort of outcast….

“They said they did not want us there and our translator told us we should leave. I felt so helpless and I also felt like we were abandoning our new brother. It made me feel like all we did was pray with him and then send him to the wolves alone. It was overwhelmingly sad. We left with a promise to pray for him and find him later in the week so he could receive discipleship.”

We did find the man later for discipleship and looking back I knew that what we did was all we could do. In this instance and in several other similar instances on this trip God made what we were doing more real in a way than I think I’ve ever experienced. I’ve intellectually known for a while that when we show up with this message, this truth, it changes people. It changes families. I’ve heard from many people that their choice of faith has caused them to be outcast in their societies and families. However, like many things in this life seeing it first hand made it real to me. It became more than a nameless story. It became a brother I stood along side being yelled at and pulled on. Persecution has a tangible face in my mind now. It became scenes in my mind that will never be erased. I wish I could say this was the only scene of its kind, but there were several more that occurred in these weeks. I’ll share more at another time.

As I sit back now. Here in comfortable American life these scenes still as real as ever in my mind seem so far removed. Countries apart. Thinking on them now my heart still aches. It makes me wonder how that man, and the other of our brothers and sisters in the midst of persecution, is faring. It makes me realize the importance of community and having others to stand beside, others to help you be strong. While my heart aches thinking of this man, my heart is also encouraged. Encouraged because I know that we did not leave him alone. Because even though we are here half a world away God is still alive and well in Ethiopia and God’s church is now alive and well in Surupa. Because I know that by God’s power there is now a fellowship there that this man and the other believers of Surupa can go to in order to grow and be strengthen. Looking back I see that a promise of prayer and a growing body of believers is the best thing we could have left these people with. I no longer feel like we left them surrounded by wolves waiting to attack. Instead I know we left them with a God who is strong, who will see them through the hardest days. And in my heart I never left them at all, I am standing along side them as their sister, praying that they will overcome the harshness of this world. They are overcomers and heaven only knows what they will accomplish.

First church service ever in Surupa

Day 1– እግዜር ይስጥልኝ

As previously stated I am attempting to be better this year about sharing all that the Lord did in Ethiopia this year. Having said that I can honestly say that I am more anxious to share than I have ever been. Usually at this time I am dealing with reverse culture shock, which is often much more intense than it’s counterpart. This year I find myself struggling not to write out my entire journal and post it in this moment. Rather than hastily blurting it all out at once I will refrain a bit. I do want to take you through the entire journey. I will be quoting in many instances directly from my journal in an attempt to be as raw and unedited as possible, this with the hope that you could see honestly from my heart. I want to you to see all that the Lord has done and is doing, both in the country of Ethiopia and very personally with me. That second one sort of sounds completely frightening to me, but I’m learning that when God wants you to be real it’s better to stop being an idiot and obey Him. I don’t know why He wants me to share, but I can’t shake it. So rather than fighting I’m attempting surrender. If it’s anything like the last two weeks of my life have been He will prove true and overwhelmingly glorious, and I can’t wait to watch it play out. So welcome to my adventure, His adventure in me. Where better to start than day 1…

Ethiopia 6/28/2010: “And so it begins, day one in country. Currently sitting in a bus in the rain in Addis. Sitting here on this bus I may have just learned my favorite Amharic phrase: Xabier yeesteline.”

When we go on these trips we expect God to speak to us, to challenge us, change us. However, of all the things God could use I never anticipated He would speak directly to my soul in a language that was not even my own. On this, the first day in country the Lord bent down and spoke directly to me through the language of the people I was here to love. Even more so He taught me in a phrase that was coined for beggars. I was intrigued by this phrase so I did a little research with my Ethiopian friends. Xabier yeesteline is a phrase people say specifically to beggars, when one has nothing to give to them. It literally means, “May God provide on my behalf.” As I mulled this phrase and idea over in my mind I was overwhelmed. This still holds true as I sit at my computer screen back in Texas. We serve a God who is provider. Often when we go to countries like Ethiopia, and in all honesty even here in America we are overwhelmed by needs. We become paralyzed by where to start, thinking that one person can’t make a difference in all this mess, so we often do nothing. But, God calls us to action not just conversation, not just comfortable fellowship. In this phrase my heart was shaken. It was a good wake up call for day 1 in Ethiopia, and it’s a good wake up call as I sit here back in America. At times in our lives we may be left with nothing left to give but an ‘Xabier yeesteline’ but in other moments we are called to be the answer to the many ‘xabier yeestelines’ the broken people that surround us have been given their entire lives.

“What a powerful image of Christ. Even when we have nothing left to give these people, He comes and provides for them on our behalf. May we be for some of these the answer to the many ‘xabier yeesteline’ they have received in their lives.”