Equally effective

Does God ever teach you through your own prayers? I was praying for a friend who's on a mission trip this morning when I prayed something for their team that was not from me! I stopped and pondered what I had just prayed, amazed! This was a revelation! 

I was praying for effectiveness in ministry, and praying against discouragement, should their natural eyes not see what progress they were making. My team in Australia struggled with this, as we had no salvations during our trip. The majority of our ministry was conversations about God and who He was, planting seeds in the college students of Brisbane. But it came to me to pray that they would know that the seed planters are just as effective as the harvesters. When I prayed it, I stopped to think about what I had just said. The seed planters are just as effective as the harvesters. I think a lot of times when we talk about planting a seed in a person, we basically think of it as a nice way of saying, "You didn't do all that much," or, "You didn't make any progress with that person, but someone else might later." 

Just think about a farm. Since I live in Indiana, I'm thinking of corn. Imagine two different farmers are working a single plot of land. One's job is to plant the seed, and the other harvests it at the end of the season. Let's say the first farmer observes other farmers planting seed, and, seeing no difference in the ground after the farmers plant their seed, decides not to plant any seed at all, saying to himself, "This is a waste of time. I'll just relax and let the other farmer harvest later." 

Why doesn't this scenario work? Because there HAS to be seed. The seed is that of which the harvest is composed! And the thing about the two farmers is this: if they both do their job, they are equally effective. If one skips out on his job, it is just as devestating to the crop as if the other did. 

To Know Him is to love Him

As I was worshipping one night at camp this past week, I looked around and contemplated the beauty of God as the noise of a hundred people praying for each other and worshipping filled my ears. Seeing everyone experience God so beautifully, my heart ached as I wondered how every year, I watch most of the kids go home and go back to living exactly how they had been before. The services are so life-changing, it causes some confusion as to how and the world anyone can experience this, go home, and act like it never happened. 

God revealed this to me: To know God is to love Him. He Himself is love. So if you know Him, you will love Him. You will love Him passionately because of who He is, and you now know who He is. Out of that love then springs obedience, because when you love someone, it is your greatest desire to live a life that pleases them. Then the obedience is not forced, but done with a willing and joyful heart, because you are pleasing the One you love. The ultimate problem here is not the lack of obedience. The greatest need is not to free people of bondage and addictions (though that is vital) or to teach them what things are sin and preach against them (although this must be done). The ultimate problem is that people are not seeking God. In Matthew 7:7, Jesus promises that he who seeks will find. When we find God, we will begin to know Him. When we know Him, we will love Him. When we love Him, we will obey Him. This is vital, because if we only pray for freedom of bondage and addictions, they may get free, but if they don't seek God and know Him, they will return to their bondage or find a new one. If we only preach against sin and teach what is sin, they will learn, but they will have no motivation to follow through, or will try in their own strength, fail, and give up.

We need to teach them how to seek God on their own, and when they find Him, they will start following Him. If we do this from a young age, we could watch and see even the need for freedom from bondage and addictions drop as the youth prevent the bondage from even happening by following Jesus. 

All I need is You

"All I need is You." I hear this a lot in worship songs, and it's a statement that I think often doesn't get a lot of thought. As Americans, we don't get a lot of chances to see if this rings true for us. Rarely, if ever, do we get to a point in life when we literally don't have anything but Him. Or even mostly nothing but Him. 99% of the time, we have everything and Him. We say "All I need is You," but we act as if we need everything else, too. 

Sometimes, God calls us to places where all we have is Him. It is then that the sincerity of our proclaiming, "All I need is You," is tested. Most of the time I think we either aren't listening for His voice calling us into situations that demand we rely completely on Him or we hear Him and pretend we didn't. This can come through material possessions or money, God calling us to give away large sums of money or give up our lush homes and excessive possessions so we can be in a better position to help others. But this doesn't always come through material things. Sometimes God calls us to a place that demands that He is our security mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. 

For example, God recently told me that I'm not to go to the Honor Academy. If you don't know me well, this might sound like a small thing. Let me tell you, this is no small thing.  I have been planning to go to the HA for 3 years now, and I've been fundraising for a year. I've raised somewhere between eleven and twelve thousand dollars to go. And now God, just out of the blue, tells me not to go. What?! Amidst all the craziness of having to re-adjust my thinking and having to tell everyone that I'm not going, God whispers. He says, "I AM your security. I AM your destination and your journey. I AM your abiding place, your safe refuge. The HA is not your security. You do not rest in knowing that you are going there. You rest in ME." 

All I need is Him. I don't need the "security" of knowing where I'm going. All I need is Him. 

Abba, let this ring true more every day.

I love the rain-but not really.

I recently saw a quote by Bob Marley that said, "You say you love rain, but you use an umbrella... So that's why I'm scared when you say you love me." As I sat in my grandparent's screened-in porch listening to the Florida downpour, I contemplated this quote. I love the rain. I love to listen to the gentle tapping on the roof, and I love to curl up with a book and some tea on a rainy day. But I use an umbrella. I try to avoid walking in the rain. I run through, laughing, trying to stay as dry as possible. Do I really love rain? I came to this conclusion: I may love rain, but mostly I love the idea of rain. I love the idea of a midsummer drenching, and of playing in puddles, and arriving home soaking wet, a large grin on my face. But the truth of the matter is that I only really love rain when it's convenient. I love rain when I'm inside to listen to or watch it, but when I'm forced to go walk in it, or stand in it, I may not be quite so happy to see a dark sky filled with heavy clouds. You see, it's very inconvenient to get drenched when you have somewhere to go or something to do. I don't always have the time to run outside during a rain shower and play in the puddles. Most of the time, rain is inconvenient to me. So I use an umbrella.

I got to thinking, do I love God the way I love rain? What if I mostly just love the idea of God, or the idea of obeying God? The idea of someone throwing their whole life away for the Gospel is utterly romantic. I swoon over the thought of giving everything to serve Jesus. My heart leaps in excitement at the thought of obeying Christ when it's hard, but that's just the thing: it's hard. It's inconvenient, and sometimes I just don't want to. I love the idea of going hard after Christ; I love the idea of obeying Him wholeheartedly without thought to my own wants, needs, or safety, but when it comes down to it, I think most of the time I only love the idea. At the moment that Jesus exposes something I must give to Him, or shows me something I need to do (or stop doing), I shut down. All those dreamy thoughts of the mystical wonder of obeying are now gone, and all I want is to do what makes me feel the most comfortable right now. 

Abba, give me heart that loves You, not just the idea of You, and that is willing to obey. Show me, like you showed Paul, what things I must suffer for Your Name, and give me a heart that is ready and willing to do those things. 

I love You. 

164.8 Million

The other day I saw a post on social media about a guy who won the lottery recently, a jackpot of 149 million dollars. The person who posted it made a comment about how lucky he is and how they wish they had that money. Can you imagine having that much money? It's almost unspendable. Even if you bought a 23 million dollar car (do those even exist?), that's not even a fourth of the whole amount. Who could possibly spend that amount of money? 

$149 million dollars is so much money, most of us could not even fathom the amount. If you have a $50,000 per year income, that's about 3,000 years of income. Three thousand years. 

Friends, the point I'm trying to make is this: even though we cannot even begin to fathom how much money 149 million dollars is, there are 164.8 million suffering or dying children in the world. If you had 149 million dollars, it would not even be enough to have one dollar for each child. Did you get that? Can you wrap your mind around that? Are you beginning to understand? Even at your very worst, when you are very sick or uncomfortable, you are SO much better off than any of these kids, and there are 164.8 million. Right now, 164.8 million real lives are suffering and dying. This is not a guilt trip, or a sad infomercial. This is reality. This is real life. The truth is that if you have a house, clean water, and food, you are among the world's wealthiest people. You cannot sit in your extreme luxury and ignore the millions who are hurting and call yourself a Christian. 

"Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world." James 1:27

Katie Davis says:

"The truth is that the 143 million orphaned children and the 11 million who starve to death or die from preventable diseases and the 8.5 million who work as child slaves, prostitues, or under horrific working conditions and the 2.3 million who live with HIV add up to 164.8 million needy children. And though at first glance that looks like a big number, 2.1 billion people on this earth proclaim to be Christians. The truth is that if only 8 percent of the Christians would care for one more child, there would be no statistics left."  (Emphasis mine)

Now that I'm pretty sure I've given you a picture of the need, here's the solution: YOU. You, whether you want to believe it or not, are extremely, unbelievably wealthy. You literally have before you the choice to give life to hundreds of people or not to. It may seem easy to ignore them, but they are just as real as you, and they are just as human as you are. 

The thing with Satan is that he doesn't operate in extremes. He would never come to you with the idea of spending all your money on worthless things so you no longer have the ability to bring life to God's people. Instead, he convinces you one item at a time. Just this one coffee, this one concert, this one soda, this one pair of shoes, until suddenly the offering plate is being passed and you have no money. One coffee becomes a caffeine addiction, one concert becomes an obsession, one soda becomes a frequent craving, and one pair of shoes leads to another. Soon, our entire budget is nothing but indulgences, and we can't even see anything wrong with it. 

 

It's time to stop. This is real. In the The Hunger Games series, there's two kinds of people: the poor, oppressed, starving, dying districts, and the fashion-obsessed, wealthy, extravagant, uncaring, and oblivious Capitol. Even though the heroine is a part of the districts and everyone wants to identify with her, does this situation not sound like first world and third world countries? Should we not more identify with the Capitol, who could care less about the districts as long as they have their entertainment, lush homes, extravagant food, and high fashion, even if it costs the districts in order for them to have it? 

If you want some real perspective on this issue, I suggest you read The Hunger Games books. While I'm not sure that this is what the author was trying to portray, she did an excellent job of it. 

The point of this long post is to call you to action. I encourage you to question every purchase you make. Is it wrong to buy things for pleasure? No. But the real question is, is it okay to make a habit of buying things only for pleasure when so many people die every day without experiencing Jesus's love?

Why this lack of faith?

Last night I stayed up way later than I should have drawing a picture. The amazing thing is, I never really draw. I'm not very good at it, so most attempts are met with frustration. But a couple weeks ago, I got an idea for a drawing, and last night I decided to attempt it. To my utter surprise, it actually turned out alright (I was ecstatic). This morning while worshipping, God gave me a blog post to go along with it! He is crazy good, is He not?!

Luke 8:22-25 is the story of Jesus calming the storm: 

"One day Jesus said to his disciples, 'Let's go over to the other side of the lake.' So they got into a boat and set out. As they sailed, he fell asleep. A squall came down on the lake, so that the boat was being swamped, and they were in great danger. The disciples went and woke him, saying, 'Master, Master, we're going to drown!' He got up and rebuked the wind and the raging waters; the storm subsided, and all was calm. 'Where is your faith?' he asked his disciples."

I'd like to point out something specific about this passage. Jesus would have been perfectly fine just sleeping through the storm all the way to the other side of the lake. The disciples, however, were not okay with that. They thought they were going to drown. Jesus said at the beginning, "Let's go over to the other side of the lake." By saying this, he implied that they were actually going to get to the other side. He's Jesus; He's God. He wasn't surprised by the storm. Not even a little bit. He knew it was going to happen. 

A lot of people, I think, use this passage to illustrate the fact that Jesus can calm storms. And this is true. He can, and sometimes He does. But from my small amount of experience in life, most of the time, He doesn't. Now before you all scream heresy and stone me, let me explain. First of all, if you haven't read my posts about trials and suffering, do so. This is a HUGE reason I believe Jesus doesn't always calm storms. Because He knows that we will make it through the storm with His help, and that this trial with actually draw us closer to Him, He lets the storm rage. Notice also, that when the disciples woke Him, He called them out on their lack of faith. Sometimes, when we call out to God in the midst of a storm, expecting Him to calm it, I think He calls us out on our lack of faith. Did He not say not to fear? Did He not say that He would carry us through? Why, then, this lack of faith? God knew this storm would come. It did not surprise Him, and it is not beyond His control. He will carry us through. Do not fear. 

This is the drawing I did last night: (the writing at the bottom says, "She did not fear the storm before her, for she was a lioness, a daughter of the Lion of the Tribe of Judah.")

Not the answer I was expecting

I came to God today stressed out by the next two weeks I have coming up. I just sat and said, "God, I can't do this by myself. This is crazy. I need You." And it was instantaneously that God replied, "You asked to need Me. Here you go." I just smiled and laughed. He is so good!

For the past couple of weeks I have been writing blog posts about trials and how they make us need and want God more and how they're so great for us, and on top of that, I have been asking God to help me need Him more. A lot of the time I feel so complacent towards God and I feel like I don't really need Him. My life is usually slow-going. Usually, my struggle is not finding time to spend with God, it's finding the desire to. I hate it, but it's the truth. So the past couple weeks I've been asking God to give me a need for Him. Then He plops all this in my lap and I freak out! I can only laugh at my foolishness.

God's answers to prayer are not always what I think they will be! Sometimes, they stretch me. Sometimes, they make me want to cry (like today looking at my coming weeks). But they always draw me to God and bring Him glory. And that is beautiful.