(NET)
I am back in Texas, Praise the Lord! A lot has happened these past few months, and to sum it all up into one post will be tough, but I do believe it is possible. Hold on tight!
After graduating from the School of Discipleship in July 2010, I stayed in Texas for about a month and a half to help out in training someone else to take my place as Event Manager for the Central and Western regions of the USA; all the while living with a GFA staff family. Right after that, I was on a plane back to Pennsylvania, just in time for the beauty of Autumn on the East coast.
So began my journey in support raising to come back to Texas as staff at GFA. While I was there I didn’t feel like I fit there, because I knew I was called to serve at GFA, I felt like a fish out of water. I was asking God to please help me find some sort of ministry that I could fit into while away from GFA. Then, my mom started talking about a homeless ministry down in Philadelphia that some of the people from my church go to each Sunday. I had heard about this ministry before, but before I could start up with it, a lot of things happened in my life that stopped me from getting involved, and then I headed to GFA for a year. I prayed about it and felt tremendous peace about going, so I tagged along and was blessed tremendously.
Needless to say, God once again proved His faithfulness in providing me with a way to serve Him away from my home here at GFA. God sure is amazing isn’t He?!
Also, I got to help out for a little bit with the Youth Worship team for Youth Group, I love working with youth, so it was neat to see how the Youth Group I came from has grown, and to see the passion of the leaders as they live their lives as examples of godly men and women for the Youth. While I was there, I was given the opportunity to speak with the youth for about 45 minutes. I was planning on only taking up 30 mins max, but God laid so much on my heart to share with them that I just couldn’t stop talking! Which is so unlike me… therefore, I know it had to have been God speaking through me.
All throughout this entire time in PA, God continued to touch people’s hearts and they joined with me in reaching the lost in Asia through prayer and support. In faith, I was praying that God would have my support raised by the end of October so that I could drive down with Katie when she went back to Texas in November.
Slowly, the date was approaching, and I got the call saying that I could come back because I was at 95% of what I needed per month! Praise God! He answered that prayer, down to the exact day! So, one of my friends came, experienced an east coast Autumn for the first time, and we started our trek down to Texas.
It was a rather long drive, but I was so excited, I hardly noticed the long days that went into the trip. I was also sick with something that resembled Bronchitis, but the Lord gave me strength to push through each day. God is good! On our way down, about half way through our first day, my friend and I noticed that the engine light was on in my car. So, we pulled into the nearest gas station/ food place and made a few phone calls and continued on our way trusting the Lord to let us get to Texas safely. We got back and one of the guys checked out my car, and it was only a fluke! Praise God!
The day after we got back, I started my first day back in the GFA officially! Thanks for all that helped make getting me back possible! Praise God for the opportunity we have to make an eternal impact on the lost in Asia!
Wow, I’m surprised this all fit into one post! 😀
I don’t have the time. These are words that I have lived by. I don’t have time to read my Bible, I don’t have time to get alone and pray, I don’t have time to read that biography. After all, I work and then I have to get home to facebook and calling my family. I have to take a nap, I have to take a shower, In have to do my laundry… The list goes on and on.
We live in a culture where we are taught that we can do what we want to do – and we live by that. Not that we want to follow the worlds example but we want to be comfortable within God’s commands. We don’t realize that God calls us to be just as radical as Jesus Christ was. Paul says to “follow me as I follow Christ”. This is a pretty huge deal. I don’t want to live like Paul! Man, that guy was shipwrecked, he was beaten, he barely escaped from so many murder plots. Oh, wait, yeah, I remember now… he was that guy that got beheaded. But… he knew Christ.
My point is that being a Christian means more than just going to church and praying when people are sick. Those are good things but they are definately not what defines us as Christians. “They were first called Christians at Antioch.” Little Christs is what the word Christian means. So, as a “little Christ” what must we do? We must follow His example. We must love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, and strength.
That means giving up our time to spend it with Him. Not because we must but because we want to love Him more. This King of the universe who came down as a man to redeem my soul… why wouldn’t I want to know Him more?
So look at my life and what do you see? Probably someone who’s time is spent in a lot of different ways. Some of it serving Christ, some of it wasted. What do I want to become? Someone who’s life is consumed with loving my King. You spend time on the things you value. When you say “I don’t have time”, you’re really saying that it’s not on the top of your priority list.
Let’s give Him our time… Let’s give Him our love!
While I was out support raising, I was SO curious to find out what I would be doing when I got back to Gospel for Asia. Right up to when I applied for my apartment, I had no idea what I would be doing. However, I couldn’t have asked for a better place to be placed. God is good! I’m am working in the media department. I helped out there a little bit when I was in the School of Discipleship.
At the moment, I am learning how to use a Mac, work in After Effects and Final Cut Express. Other than using a Mac, I’d say I love my job! Although I will miss the Volunteer department , I am soooo excited to see how God uses me in this area of the ministry, and I get to do what I love each and every day!
I’m so blessed because this job is an opportunity I had been waiting and praying for for a long time, and now God’s placed me in the exact place I wanted to be!
GOD IS GOOD! AND GOD IS FAITHFUL TO PROVIDE!! 🙂
3:7 But these assets I have come to regard as liabilities because of Christ. 3:8 More than that, I now regard all things as liabilities compared to the far greater value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things – indeed, I regard them as dung! – that I may gain Christ, 3:9 and be found in him, not because I have my own righteousness derived from the law, but because I have the righteousness that comes by way of Christ’s faithfulness – a righteousness from God that is in fact based on Christ’s faithfulness. 3:10 My aim is to know him, to experience the power of his resurrection, to share in his sufferings, and to be like him in his death, 3:11 and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.
3:12 Not that I have already attained this – that is, I have not already been perfected – but I strive to lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus also laid hold of me. 3:13 Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself to have attained this. Instead I am single-minded: Forgetting the things that are behind and reaching out for the things that are ahead, 3:14 with this goal in mind, I strive toward the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
(NET)
I’ve been learning a lot lately about being the bride of Christ. And a lot about trusting God–fully and implicitely. Because you shouldn’t marry someone unless you trust them completely in every area, right? 🙂 That was always my assumption anyway.
But that assumption was challenged by a comment from Charlotte Lucas in the movie Pride and Prejudice: “He does not know her character as we do. . .but there is plenty of time for us to get to know him after they’re married.” The idea, in a nutshell, was that since Jane Bennett and Charles Bingley were well acquainted enough to trust each other on a superficial level (and since they were obviously in love), they should go ahead and tie the knot because, after all, they will get to know each other better after they are married. Of course, the story is set in a time when marriage was a much higher priority on everyone’s agenda, so sometimes people got married for less chivalrous ideas than love and romance, but still. . .it seems a logical plan of action, as long as you take into consideration that any relationship founded mostly on emotions is bound to be tested at some point. There comes a time when you have to trust each other’s character when the emotions aren’t there.
I’ve been struggling with learning to trust God well enough not to question His ways. I’m trying to learn to trust God’s character, even when it seems like what He’s allowing me to go through could hardly be an expression of His love. To trust that He really is working all things for my good, even when I can’t possibly see what that good might be. I know that a certain level of blind faith is involved, but I also want to have something to base that trust on. And hearing that quote made me see a parallel: when I initially began my relationship with God, all I needed to know was that He loved me SO MUCH, and that He could save me when I could not save myself. Essentially, God knows that I need to trust His love first of all, and then learn to trust His character as I get to know Him better.
As I was journaling and praying, trying to make sense in my mind what exactly I was asking from God, I felt silly asking the God of the universe to prove Himself before I could trust Him; but I feel that trust, by definition, is something to be earned, not just given. And it seemed as if Jesus read my heart and sent me the answer I was looking for–in an entry from My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers:
“God wants you to understand that it is a life of faith, not a life of emotional enjoyment of His blessings. Faith by its very nature must be tested and tried. And the real trial of faith is not that we find it difficult to trust God, but that God’s character must be proven as trustworthy in our own minds. Faith, as the Bible teaches it, is faith in God coming against everything that contradicts Him–a faith that says, ‘I will remain true to God’s character whatever He may do.’ The highest and the greatest expression of faith in the whole Bible is–‘Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him’ (Job 13:15).
So, simply believing in God is easy. The difficulty in trusting God lies in when I am waiting for His character to be proven trustworthy, when I can’t see what He’s accomplishing through my hard times. And that’s when I have to remember that He does love me, so much. And I can rest and put my trust in His love.
“But I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation. I will sing to the LORD, for he has been good to me.” ~Psalm 13:5-6
The students and alumni got to meet Elisabeth Elliot.
The other day I was walking on the stone path that winds around a nearby lake, and I came across two sweetly shy girls. They had a plastic container that held a grasshopper and they were busily hunting in the grass for more of the little critters. I asked them what they were planning to do with them, and this is what they said: “We caught some yesterday and gave them to Auntie, and she fried them and made grasshopper fry.” Not the answer I expected! The grasshopper was unwittingly facing its last moments. Content, not realizing its coming end. Tragic.
Someone told me that grasshoppers “are crunchy and taste kind of like shrimp…” I was almost convinced that they didn’t sound too bad until the description continued, “…but the legs are scratchy.” I don’t think I’ll order grasshopper anytime soon.
Sometimes finding myself in a different culture is an interesting experience! Grasshoppers are not the only things I’m learning about, though. Recently, an Asian missionary energetically challenged my roommate and I, “Throw your life. You will gain it back. These are the Master’s words. ‘Whoever finds his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will gain it.'” This is from a brother who has faced the rigors of rugged missionary life and whose burden is for a people group that has been very closed to the Gospel. Sacrifice for the sake of the Savior is worth more than it costs.
There you have it, sacrifice…and grasshopper fry.
3:7 But these assets I have come to regard as liabilities because of Christ. 3:8 More than that, I now regard all things as liabilities compared to the far greater value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things – indeed, I regard them as dung! – that I may gain Christ,3:9 and be found in him, not because I have my own righteousness derived from the law, but because I have the righteousness that comes by way of Christ’s faithfulness – a righteousness from God that is in fact based on Christ’s faithfulness. 3:10 My aim is to know him, to experience the power of his resurrection, to share in his sufferings, and to be like him in his death, 3:11and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.
3:12 Not that I have already attained this – that is, I have not already been perfected – but I strive to lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus also laid hold of me. 3:13 Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself to have attained this. Instead I am single-minded: Forgetting the things that are behind and reaching out for the things that are ahead, 3:14 with this goal in mind, I strive toward the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
(NET)
Su
nday, on 10/10/10, I got to be part of the coolest event that day! Michele J. and Shelly, two GFA staff writers, and I represented Gospel for Asia at a birthday party in Fort Worth. But this birthday party was a “Living GFA Christmas Catalog!” This young couple with four kids decided that they would instead invite families to their house to purchase Christmas catalog items. They were so fun and creative, they made signs from blown up pictures of last year’s catalog for each of the animals in the petting zoo. Also, tables were set with stacks of Bibles or blankets with signs and information about sponsoring a missionary or Bridge of Hope child.
I got to video record the interviews we had with parents and kids. These parents just wanted their kids to not be absorbed with material possessions and realize there are people completely different from us that need help and they haven’t heard about Jesus. I recognized in these parents what I’ve seen elsewhere, a growing desire to have something real, a real faith, and to be away from the materialism and stuff. A growing knowledge that in the US many live a decent Christian or moral life but not in a way where they actually need God; self-sufficient yet knowing we do need God. It was good seeing these families depart from the cultural norm and hoping to see God work.
Here is this years Christmas video!
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