walking as freedom bringers

And we shall come,

Bearing hands that break chains

Hands and tongues bringing freedom

Authority not of ourselves

Authority of Jesus Christ

I AM

Open your mouths

I will flow forth my truth

Come carrying my yoke

The yoke that is easy

Break the chains of injustice

Leave the shattered shackles at the altar

Walk forward in freedom, truth, and love

Then will the doors be removed from their hinges

Then will the walls between your church gatherings and your community fall

Then revival, then Pentecost

Then the world will know, fall in worship

Then will I be back for you

Walk as freedom bringers

Bright lights

Consuming fires

Walk and let people see my salvation because of you

Go and be!

Though you have no words let me speak through you

My appointed generation,

‘For such a time as this’

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.

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.”

looking in for healing

Sometimes you just want the pain to go away and it won’t. Sometimes being introspective is the most frightening thing in the world, because when you really quiet yourself and look inward all it brings up is pain. Because when you look intently inward you often see things long covered over and buried. Things buried for good reason. But maybe now it’s time. Time to face the monsters long hibernating in the caves of your heart and soul. Maybe, just maybe if we face them head on we will no longer have anything to fear. Maybe the pain will be a breeding ground for healing and freedom. Maybe the silence of God will give way to intimacy and He will be more real than ever. Time to embrace moments of silence, hours of lingering discomfort, days of confronting things hard to face, that the result may be beautiful peace and freedom from things we had long since forgotten were holding us captive.

shouts to surrender

“Pain is God’s megaphone. He whispers to us in our joys, speaks to us in our conscience, and shouts to us in our pain.” C.S. Lewis

Pain… I think that I’ve yet to meet a person on the planet who has not struggled at some point with the problem of pain. There are plenty of words that are easily associated with pain. One word that I have recently learned to associate with pain is this… longing. We live in a world filled with it. We daily walk through a culture that is so saturated with instant gratification that we are often left with hollow, corpses of people interacting at surface level seeking the next moment that they will be briefly fulfilled. In the pit of it all there is that deep longing that persists and will not be silenced. We who are believers still experience longing, sometimes brief, sometimes overwhelming. The thing about longings is they are never really quenched. In very nature and definition, longings are things that persist and are not satisfied.
The topic of longing and hungering for something is somewhat new to me in certain aspects, but lately it has been one megaphone in which God has screamed quite a few things in my direction. I’ve learned that longings, rather than being a cause of complete devastation, are a cause for surrender.
It is funny to me the things that God will ask for as a sacrifice. For Abraham, it was his firstborn, the seed of his promise. For the widow, it was her last two coins. For a boy in a field it was his lunch. For me as of late, it has been a sacrifice of heart, longings, and dreams. It is interesting how hard it can be to let go of longings you never wished to open yourself up to in the first place. However, when God calls for the sacrifice to be made you are left with two options: hold on, or surrender. Surrender as it seems to me would be the best option, because while surrender may lead to pain it will always ultimately lead to something even more glorious than we could have imagined. Along with the choice of surrender the option for bitterness is left wide open. At times the desire to shrivel up and rely on self, to shut out the world, seems so temping. Yet, as I am in the process of learning, a little bit of transparency and openness with those God provides to help get you through is one of the most valuable things that come along with the trial.
As I am moving through the process of surrender I’m finding one resounding theme: GOD IS FAITHFUL! When you decide to make the choice to sacrifice the longings of the heart He begins to change the temperature and mood of your heart. He transforms the pain, the longing, the hollow desire to escape feeling and emotions. He makes them something so much more than the longing could have ever been in the first place, had it been fulfilled. If you will allow Him to do so, He will transform the longing into a deep seeded desire, hunger, and yearning for Himself. The amazing thing about this type of yearning is that He is more than happy to fill it to overflowing time and time again. The once hollow shell of unsatisfied longing, is replaced by a depth that is replenished daily. I’m certain that the pain and the trials and the temptation to return to the longing may linger. I suppose that’s why our lives are a process and why we must continue to die to self daily. I by no means have this all figured out, but so far this is what I have seen to be true. Love you all. Praying that each of you will be strong as you daily face the world in which we live. May we all bring him glory in every moment as we navigate this life together. May we not be afraid of a little transparency from time to time and realize God has put us all together for a reason.

“Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer; you shall cry, and He will say, ‘Here I am.’” Isaiah 58:9

clear the drowning haze…

Haze, deep and thick.

I can’t see my hand in front of my face.

Haze so thick it drowns out your voice.

I want to hear you but I can’t.

I want to see you but I can’t.

Come clear the haze that’s in my mind.

Make it clear again so that I can see.

Make it clear again, come and rescue me.

Speaking of heartbreak…

So last night I went to Clarity and I had the conversations about Ethiopia that I always seem to have. I talked to people about missing it, how amazing it is, and not being able to wait to go back. Sometimes when I talk about it I feel like a broken record honestly but the thing is that it’s pretty much always on my mind. I really cannot honestly say that there has been a single day since I’ve been back that I have not thought about Ethiopia. It’s weird to me to love people so much that you barley know, to want to be somewhere that isn’t home so badly.

So I went home after Clarity and checked my blog. I saw a post on Matt’s adoption blog where they had some facts about Ethiopia and I must say my heart has a few new cracks in this moment. We sang a song in church this week and some of the words in the song are, “break my heart for what breaks Yours.” I have a feeling that the facts that I read in this blog break the heart of a God who loves the people of Ethiopia. My prayer is that He would continue to, as the song says; break my heart for things like this that break His heart. Anyway my point in all this was to share the stats with you. I pray they move you. To what I don’t know, but I think that maybe that’s what we need sometimes, just to be affected by something.  Any way here they are:

 

• One in ten children die before their first birthday
• One in six children die before their fifth birthday
• 44% of the population of Ethiopia is under 15 years old
• 60% of children in Ethiopia are stunted because of malnutrition
• The median age in Ethiopia is 18 years
• 1.5 million people are infected with AIDS (6th highest in the world)
• 720,000 children have been orphaned by AIDS alone
• Per capita, Ethiopia receives less aid than any country in Africa
• In the 90s the population (3%) grew faster than food production (2.2%)
• Drought struck the country from 2000-2002 (first year no crops, second year no seeds, third year no animals)
• Half the children in Ethiopia will never attend school. 88% will never attend secondary school.
• Coffee prices (Ethiopia’s only major export) fell 40-60% from 1998-2002.
• Ethiopia’s doctor to children ratio is 1 to 24,000.
• In 1993, after 30 long years of war, Eritrea broke from Ethiopia and became an independent nation leaving Ethiopia landlocked without any major seafaring ports.
• Ethiopia has approx. 4.3 million orphans and the country is twice the size of Texas.

 ”Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” – Mark Twain

 

beautiful silence

So I must admit that lately I have been a bit distracted and if you have spent more than an hour with me lately you may have realized it or maybe not. The fact is there has been this weird haze lately. I’ve noticed it mostly when I am alone trying to be quiet either when studying for school, having my quiet times, or when trying to go to sleep. It’s like I have a thousand different thoughts in my mind and none of them will settle long enough for me to be able to think about any particular one for very long. This can be quite annoying when trying study or when trying to go to sleep. Knowing that all this has been going on I must be honest and say that in some ways I was not sure about sitting through a sermon on Sunday morning. Don’t get me wrong I love going and hearing new and old truths about God but in my mind I was afraid it would be like everything else lately. I was afraid that I would not be able to focus and I would just end up more distracted. When I walked into Awaken Sunday morning my whole attitude was different. I can’t really explain it. It was like I felt safe again, I felt level headed. When we took those few moments of silence it was beautiful and peaceful. It was what I think I’ve needed for a while now to sit and just be, to just take a few seconds and soak up the presence of God.

 

As I thought later about that experience it reminded me of Psalms 4: 8, “I will lie down and sleep in peace, for you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety.” Every time I read this verse I get the image in my head of when I was a child and my parents would tuck me in bed and tell me to sleep well and not be afraid because they were there. It’s almost like God the Father is coming down and saying don’t be afraid child, don’t worry, I’m here and everything is going to be alright. I don’t know there is just something about that thought that brings such peace to my heart. I guess I should make more time to just be silent before God and rest in the fact that He is there and even when I don’t have it all together that’s alright because He does. Praise Him for that…

Thirsting for the presence of God…

So I was journaling the other day after my quiet time and I was reminded of the verse in Psalm 42 where it talks about the deer panting for the water. As many times as I have heard this verse referenced before I don’t think I have ever been able to truly visualize what it is really talking about. So I read the verse and wondered why I was so drawn to it but was not sure what to do so I closed my Bible for the time and went on with life.

Later I was listening to a pod cast by Matt Chandler from the Village Church and guess what verse he happens to mention, that’s right Psalm 42. He had other points to his sermon but the thing that grabbed me the most were the first two verses, “As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?” As he began to describe these verses he painted the picture of the huge deer sitting next to a stream with the words, “as the deer…” neatly written in cursive in the background. He said this is the image most people get in their head; they are trying to make this verse cute. He then went on to shatter that delusion. He said this verse is not a cute verse; this verse is an agonizing verse in which the Psalmist is crying out to God and comparing himself to an animal dying from a lack of water. Now that image is a completely different one. A man in agony crying out to God, longing to be filled by His Spirit instead of dying of dehydration and emptiness. This is the image this verse is really meant to bring to our minds this is the image that finally for me at least makes sense when I try and picture this passage in my mind.

As I continued to read on in this chapter of Psalms and into the next another verse caught my attention, Psalm 42:5, “Why so downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise Him, my Savior and my God.” The thing about this verse that grabs my attention at first is the fact that the author changes his attitude so quickly. He goes from saying that his soul is downcast and disturbed to saying that he will hope in God and praise him as his Savior. I don’t know it’s almost like he is giving himself a pep talk or something. He is saying that yes things are bad but instead of focusing on the bad he wants to put his hope in Christ and praise him as his Savior. I guess all in itself the verse is not earth shattering and then I kept reading and I saw that as I continued to read to the end of chapter 43 this very same phrase is repeated again two other times (42:11, 43:5). For the Psalmist to repeat this phrase three times in the span of a few short chapters makes me think this was a point he really wanted to get across. I don’t know it’s like the more I read or think about the words David used in these Psalms the stronger they become. I can just picture the man after God’s own heart sitting there weeping and pouring out his heart to God, crying out to God for His mercy, His love, and His very presence. There is just something so powerfully moving and challenging about it all. I pray that I would thirst for the presence of God like it was the last glass of water on earth and I was dying of dehydration…

Giving God our stuff or giving Him our lives…

Tonight God gave me the opportunity to share at my old churches youth group about my trip to Ethiopia. I did your typical telling about what we did and showing some pictures and then I told them about some things that God has been laying on my heart. I thought maybe I would share those things with you here as well.

Since I’ve been back from Ethiopia God has been working on a lot of things in my heart. One thing that continues to attract my attention and hog my thoughts has been the poverty of Ethiopia verses the almost overwhelmingly materialistic lifestyle of most Americans. I know that I have struggled with the need for stuff, as have many other people I’ve talked to. But as I came home and traveled directly to California and then came back home it was like I was smacked in the face with stuff. I mean I came home and sat in my room, looked around and almost got sick to my stomach at how much stuff I have been able to accumulate in my years on this earth. All I could think was this is all so unnecessary. Sunday I heard two sermons, which once again pounded this theme into my head. The thoughts I shared with the youth group were not necessarily about our personal struggles with materialism but more about how materialism may effect us a church.

When I was in Ethiopia I saw some of the most pure worship I have ever seen in my life. I mean I sat in rooms with people who basically had nothing but they poured themselves out heart and soul before God. This what God was talking about when he said he wants us to worship him in spirit and truth. Their worship just seemed so untainted by the things of this world. They didn’t have or need power points, bulletins, fancy sound systems, or stained glass windows they just had each other and time they had set aside to come together and worship God.  I think sometimes as I sit in churches in America that we almost let our things pervert our worship to God. I know that God has allowed us to live in a land of plenty and I’m not saying we should necessarily give up everything and live lives of poverty. What I’m trying to say is that we should be giving God the best of ourselves, not our stuff. I think that maybe we have let our worship become us saying, “Here God, take the best of my possessions as my worship.” And instead God is saying, “I don’t want the best of your possessions, I want the best of who you are. I just want you.” I think that instead of always giving God our stuff we should be pouring out our lives as an offering for him. God has all things in this world already, what he wants is your pure and undivided worship and love of Him. So I guess the challenge is this: Don’t let the things God has allowed you to have taint your worship, love, and reverence for Him. I think when we follow after Him and worship and love him with all of who we are everything else will seem so much less important.