Abstract art & complete trust

Tuesday night there was an enormous thunderstorm at about 3 in the morning, and the thunder and downpour of rain shook the whole house. Exodus 19:16-19 gives a picture of the glory of the Lord on the mountain and His infinite holiness and how the people trembled at the display of it all. I'm reminded that He is the same God today as He was then. I'm amazed at what Jesus's blood really did. In Exodus 19:10-13, it says how no one could even touch the mountain that the Lord had descended upon or they would have to die, and no one could even touch that person. In Chapter 20 verse 19, the people beg Moses to tell God not to speak to them, for hearing His voice would kill them.  We serve the same God today as they did then, but the cross enables us the hear His voice. How incredible is that? 2 Corinthians 3:12-13, 16 says, "Therefore, since we have such a hope, we are very bold. We are not like Moses, who would put a veil over his face to prevent the Israelites from seeing the end of what was passing away …whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away."

I think we often forget who we serve. Can the clay ask the potter what He's doing? We are often frustrated by what God chooses what to do, such as heal people or do wonders, but we would do well to remember Who God is. We are but clay in His hands. We have no right to ask what He's doing. He is good, and He is worthy of our trust.

I am the clay, and He is the Potter. I don't always understand what He's forming my life to be, but He can make my life into abstract life if He wants to as long as He's the one shaping it.

Despite Risk

To love someone is extremely risky.

 

I'm not even talking about romantic love. Of course it applies in the same way, but I'm talking about the kind of love Jesus referred to when He said, "A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another." (John 13:34) To love someone like Jesus has loved you is not easy, safe, convenient, or pain-free. Jesus's love took Him to a cross to be tortured and killed, and even then His people have rejected and continue to reject Him. That's risky love. To love someone like Jesus has loved you means being willing to love that person no matter how they treat you, no matter if they completely reject you, no matter if they leave you. To love someone like Jesus has loved you means never requiring any love in return. To love someone like Jesus has loved you means to be willing to forgive that person of every single thing they might do to hurt you. To love someone like Jesus has loved you means never giving up on them, ever.

 

The love that Jesus requires us to have for one another sees the risk and it loves anyway. It acknowledges that you stand to lose everything and to be hurt intimately, and it loves anyway.

 

What does it look like to love like that? Ephesians 4:1-2 says, "As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love." Romans 9:3-4 says, "For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my people, those of my own race, the people of Israel." 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 says, "Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails."

 

When faced with an opportunity to love someone whom I know may reject me or may not be in my life for very long, I am tempted to hide myself away and choose not to love that person like I should. I want to give them a surface love, hiding away the deepest parts of myself and not really giving them the Christ-like love that bears all despite fear. Ephesians 5:15-16 says, "Be very careful, then, how you live - not as unwise, but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil."  Every opportunity to love is a gift from God. We are Christ's ambassadors on earth (2 Cor. 5:20), and we are responsible for loving people like He does. I believe we will be held accountable for every squandered opportunity (see the parable of the talents in Matthew 25:14-30; see also Revelation 20:12). We are only given a small amount of time on this earth, and some relationships are even shorter than that. Psalm 90:12 says, "Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom." I think sometimes God makes us painfully aware how little time we have with people so that we will make the most of every opportunity to love them. When we are faced with a reminder of the shortness of our days or the amount of time we have with people, there are two ways that we can respond: by throwing walls up around our hearts to keep them from being hurt, or to open them up completely and love with all we have in the amount of time that we have. I have had to face this concerning my housemates here. Some of us are staying for 6 months (leaving in August), and some are staying for the full year (leaving in December). We aren't 100% certain who's leaving when, and my heart wants to throw up walls to protect myself from intimately loving people who might leave halfway through the year. But God is teaching me to love anyways. To love despite the risk of being hurt, of being rejected, of being left. Because love is always worth it.

How never to be content again

There's a loose sting on the end of my jeans, and I've been meaning to cut it off for at least a week now.

 

This is an insanely simple, yet accurate description of how crazy busy my life is.  I am an extremely disciplined person, and my housemates would laugh at how much of an understatement that is. I make lists of lists of lists, and checking things off of said lists is like crack to me. This to say, it's not because of airheadedness that I haven't cut that little string off of my jeans. Frankly, it's because I don’t have any time. I feel like every second of every day is filled with something. And being in full-time ministry is exhausting in every way: mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. However, I want you to know that being a missionary is, in some ways, just as mundane as any other career path (if being a missionary counts as a career path). I go grocery shopping every Monday. I do my laundry on Wednesdays. Once a week I make dinner for our whole intern "family." Our weekly schedule looks more or less the same every week.

 

There is mundane in every career path.

 

It is easy, even living in South Africa, to lose yourself in the routine of everyday life.  It's easy to wake up on a normal Wednesday, go to Diepsloot extension 12, recite some rehearsed lines about God and the Bible all day, probably hang out and wash clothes with some people along the way, load up at about 4:30, go home, do my laundry, eat dinner, do homework, and go to bed. Every Wednesday. Over and over and over.

I have to ask God every day to make me excited about ministry. I have to ask Him to keep my heart open and learning and sensitive to the Holy Spirit. I have to ask Him to keep me from becoming hard, each day just trying to make it to the time when we load up and go home.

 

Here's the point I'm trying to make:

Your life is NO different than mine.

 

Sure, you probably don’t live in a foreign country. Ministry probably isn’t considered your main occupation. You probably don't find yourself eating mopani worms, ostrich, or zebra, or washing someone's clothes by hand in a squatter camp on a normal day. But the contents of your day do not determine what you can do with that day. I can say with confidence that you have every opportunity to share the Gospel and/or God's love in your day that I do in mine.  You're a stay at home mom? Cool. Did you know that you are the main source for the message of the Gospel to your kids? Did you know that the way you raise them can set them on a path that will glorify God or turn away from Him? Did you know that your kids were born with a sin nature, and that your influence will likely be the one that leads them to Christ?? That sounds pretty missionary-ish to me. You work in an office? Awesome. Did you know you could be the only representation of Jesus some of your co-workers experience on a daily basis? Did you know that you have the ability to show them the love of Jesus?? Did you know that your influence can reverse all the bad experiences they may or may not have had with the church? Did you know that if you are intentional, you can be the vessel God uses to change someone's life and turn their hearts toward Him? That sounds pretty missionary-ish to me.

 

Please, please, please, if you get NOTHING ELSE out of this blog post, please understand that the great commission is not an option, and it's not meant for a special elite group of people called missionaries. It's meant for you, specifically. There are people who, every day that they live, are marching towards the gates of hell unless someone throws themselves in their way and gives everything they are to stop them. And yes, though the majority of people who haven't heard the Gospel are outside of the United States (or even South Africa for that matter), God has placed you where you are, and until He calls you elsewhere, you have the responsibility to lead people to Christ where you are.  I wish I could reach through my keyboard across continents to your heart right now and make you feel the absolute desperation in my heart.

 

Know this: God's love is fiercely jealous, and He is pursuing every soul that isn’t following Him. He wants desperately to give you His heart for the lost. Sometimes this whole thing is overwhelming. Sometimes it feels like there are so many unreached and unbelievers that we could never reach everyone. Sometimes it feels like there isn't even enough love and passion for the lost to go around. But just do this, and see if God does not give you a burden for the lost: ask Him. That's it. Ask Him to give you a heart for the lost.

But receive this warning: if you ask, He will give it to you, and you will NEVER be content to just sit around and wait for people to die and go to hell anymore. The passion He gives you won't allow it.

What no one wants to hear about being a missionary

Believe it or not, missionaries have bad days too. In reading different missionary biographies in the past, I've gathered that, as a whole, the church doesn't want to hear about the bad days. They don't want to hear about weeks without a single salvation and days when you feel discouraged as heck. They don't want to hear about when the language barrier is too intense to keep up a conversation or when people you've visited for weeks won't come to their door to talk to you.
I'm here to tell you the truth:
Missionaries have bad days, too.
I want to be able to tell you that everything has been perfect since I've been here. I want to be able to say that every ministry day has been filled with amazing conversations and conversions and healings. I want to be able to tell you that I haven't struggled with my self-worth, that I've been completely confident in sharing the Gospel, and that there hasn't been a moment when I wanted to just go back home where I'm comfortable. But that's not the truth. Yesterday I had a bad day. It was a field work day filled with shack-to-shack ministry, and I felt like nothing significant happened at all. We talked to one lady we have visited before, but her English is so limited, we could hardly hold a conversation. Then we went to another family we met two weeks ago, but our conversation about the Gospel was pretty much non-existent. The last place we went, we ended up waiting for one of our friends to get back home to talk to them about a Gospel of John we gave him, and ended up waiting there with his family for over two hours. Sometimes conversations just don't go anywhere.
Even only being here for a month and a half, I feel the pressure that most missionaries feel: to make everything look good. It's not so much an appearance thing as it is a validity thing. You ask for an enormous sum of money to go make a difference in a foreign country, and you feel the pressure to show your supporters that you are. But the truth is, it's not our place to determine if we're making a difference or not. The majority of the time, God works in ways we can't even see. The most impactful encounter I have this year may be one to which I never give a second thought.
God has been teaching me to value the hard moments. Every encounter, every hard day, every time I wish I could just be home, God is using to refine me and teach me new things. He's growing my endurance so I will obey Him even when it looks like nothing is coming of it. He's teaching me to be vulnerable and just come out and say it: I have bad days, even on the mission field in South Africa.
The point of all this is just to say that God uses everything. He works through things we may never place significance on. So trust God. He knows what He's doing, even if it looks like nothing is happening. He's working everything out for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purposes. We just need to rely on Him for every breath, every day, every conversation, praying and asking God to work through us, even in ways we can't see.

My weakness is His strength

Wow. I can't believe it's been three weeks tomorrow since I got on the plane to come here. Somehow it feels like so much longer yet so much shorter than that. We now have our ministry placements, the area of ministry with which we'll primarily be working for the next 6 months to a year. Now that we know that, our schedules will start to take on some form of normality. I'll be working with Impact Kids, which has three different preschools in the communities of Diepsloot, Kya Sands, and Kwagga. My job will include planning events for the preschools, finding sponsors for students whose families can't pay for their schooling, and following up with and discipling the kids' parents. While it may seem odd that Impact Kids only has preschools, I've learned that it's very important for a child to go to preschool, because that child is 60% likelier to graduate high school if they attend preschool. 

This week we start our Zulu classes! So far I've learned only simple things like sawubona (hello), Unkulunkulu uyakuthanda (God loves you), and salle kahle (goodbye). I can already tell this is going to be really challenging. 

God has been really challenging me to rely on Him and showing me how I really can't do anything outside of Him. The truth is, I'm not all that good at evangelizing. I walk up to talk to someone and my mind goes completely blank. I can hardly keep up a conversation with a stranger at home in the US, let alone in South Africa with cultural and language barriers! But through this God had shown me how much more I need Him than I ever thought before. And the best part is, He chooses people like me who are horrid at this kind of thing to do it because through my weakness, He will glorify Himself. 1 Corinthians 2:3-5 says, "I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling. My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit's power so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but in God's power." Praise God that it doesn't depend on me! Please pray that the Spirit will move in power through me and that God will ultimately receive the glory for what's happening here in South Africa. 

Communities

February 6, 2015 

We have only been here for a week and God is already doing amazing things. We have now visited the communities of Diepsloot (pronounced deep-sloot) and Kya Sands, walking through to get a feel for the people and cultures there, learning all sorts of tips and safety stuff, and meeting some of the people Impact Africa has met and discipled over the years. The communities are just that - communities. They are completely self-sustaining. Impact Africa has actually met people who haven't left there in months. You can get everything you need there: clothes, food, household items, anything. All these are bought a from little shops run out of shacks called Tuck Shops, or if it's big enough to walk into, Spazas. Today as we walked through Kya Sands, we stopped at a Tuck Shop and got come cokes for R6 ($0.60). Almost everything you can buy from the tuck shops is okay to eat except for meals that they prepare for you and anything you eat the skin on (apples, etc.). 

Some of you had asked me before I left the States if the water here in South Africa is okay to drink. The answer is yes! Joburg's water is the second cleanest in the world, so we're perfectly fine drinking the water. 

All the interns have all jelled really, really well together. Our Intern Advisor Katie said that she had never seen an intern class get so close so quickly. We've been taking turns telling our life stories almost every night, and it's created a bond that is already so strong. I'm excited to see how we work together during ministry and look forward so much to making awesome memories.  

Something that God has really been exposing in my heart just in the past week is my lingering insecurity. I have always had deep self-worth issues, and I thought that they had pretty much all gone, but I'm finding that they were only buried and ignored. He's pulling them up out of my heart and laying them before me, daring me to ask Him to do something about them. I love that God is already working in my heart after just a week. 

Second South Africa Update

January 31, 2015 

We have been in-country for 3 days now. So far we have been settling in, trying to beat the jet lag, and started getting to know the ministry, staff, handbook, expectations, etc. There are only about 10 American staff and 20 African staff, so it won't take long to get to know everyone. Yesterday we went grocery shopping for the first time. The ministry gives us food cards each month, and we have to budget out a certain amount for each week's grocery shopping. The South African currency is Rand, and 10 Rand is the equivalent of a dollar. So basically if you move the decimal place over once, you get the dollar price. We get R2000 a month, which is R500 or $50 a week. I have never planned my own meals before or done my own shopping, and doing it for the first time in a giant foreign grocery store that has the organization of a toddler's playroom is stressful to say the least, and that's not even touching on having a time limit, budget, and constantly converting rand to dollars in your head to make sure everything's a good price. 

Tomorrow is church, and I'm excited to see what it's like. After that we'll either go see a waterfall and have a picnic or play some volleyball. This next week will be more training and we'll get to actually go into the squatter camps to see some of the ministry areas and we will probably get our ministry placement, which is the area of ministry that we'll be working with all year. 

I love and miss you all and I will try to update you as often as possible!