She Has All of Her Teeth

"Your teeth are as white as sheep, recently shorn and freshly washed. Your smile is flawless, each tooth matched with it's twin." Song of Solomon 4:2
This is one of my favorite verses (random, I know) for several reasons. The first reason is that I have some kinda messed up teeth, I've always been self conscious about them, and I just adore how Solomon compliments his bride in this way. Second, it speaks to the perfection of the body of Christ, The Hebrew in this verse means "not one is missing". Most of the members of my family do not know the Lord and this verse comforts me to know that when the Bride of Christ stands before Him, not one part of her will be missing. 2 Peter 3:9 says, "The Lord isn't really being slow about His promise as some people think. No, He is being patient for your sake. He does not want anyone to be destroyed, but wants everyone to repent." It's very comforting to know that the lord is in control of saving people. Third, I love this verse because it says "each tooth matched with it's twin." Recently the Lord has been showing me how he has knit His body together. It is an amazing thing to hear the same things coming out of the mouths, lives, and minds of our dear brethren around the world. It speaks to His magnitude when people we haven't seen in over a year and spoken to sparsely during that time can come to us and we are all on the same page.
Our missionary friend, Warren, left for Kenya for sixteen months yesterday. Unfortunately between packing and saying goodbye to family, phone tag was less than effective and it wasn't until two hours after he had left his final message that we actually received it. My husband and I wept as we heard his voice for the last time tearfully encouraging us in the Lord and asking us to pray as he was fearful. My husband called him back and left him a message just hoping that maybe he would hear it eventually. We turned to the Lord and put our trust in Him. We committed our dear friend into the hands of his Father and will continue to do so as the months go by. What we do not doubt is that when we see Warren again, while he will be different, we will be the same kind of different. Because His bride has perfect teeth, each one matched with it's twin. What a glorious and mighty God we serve!

A Call to Die

Let's start at the beginning: When I was....about 16 years old, I became a disciple of Jesus Christ. I had been a believer for a while, but it wasn't until I was 16 that I truly began to seek hard after the heart and the will and the glory of the Lord. At this time in my life, the Lord began to impress on me the bigness of the world. That there were floating villages in Peru, skyscrapers in China, secret coves in places I can't even pronounce, places and people and lives all happening simultaneously with mine, and the Lord knew every bit of it. I fell in love with the idea of travel, something that up until that point in my life had been something I never would have dreamed of doing. At this point in my life, it became a very distinct yearning to go and to see all of these places to find myself in a land completely foreign to myself and everything I had ever known. This surely was nothing short of romantic fantasy, a longing for adventure and danger, at this point I simply desired to be well traveled and well cultured. Shortly hereafter though, the Lord gave me an image in my mind of the world as a dark place. Where His children were gathered was bright with the Light of His Presence, for instance a church gathering or a worship service would be positively luminescent with all of the little lights shining brightly all together. At the same time, however, He showed me that with all of these little lights together, one tiny light wasn't going to make all that much difference. Like if you were to take one grain of sand from the beach, one wouldn't even notice it was gone. If you put that same grain of sand in someone's eye however, they will take note. In the same way, the Lord told me that a little light could make a world of difference to a very dark place. He called me to take the light of His gospel to the darkest places I could find. This floored me, I had never even considered the possibility of myself as a missionary. I just wanted to be the normal Christian, ministering to the people I worked with, raising a family, and going to church twice a week. "Missionary" was a foreign word to me and at first, I didn't even want to claim it. I decided that United Market Street (where I worked at the time) was the darkest place around and I was just supposed to share His light there (come to find out, while I was supposed to be faithful in this way and the Lord did want me to share Him with those around me, United Market Street is rather alight with people who call on the Name of the Lord). So, I struggled greatly with this call for awhile, not really being sure of what it meant. The Lord was so gracious to put around me the best possible influences: my two best friends, Katie Bobbitt and my now husband Brandon who had both received similar callings. Together we searched the scriptures, prayed earnestly, and tried to live in a missional way that was pleasing to the Lord in the meantime. My friend Katie got her answer in the form of a call to serve in Uganda. Brandon and I at this point decided that maybe we were supposed to serve in Africa as well as his best friend Warren had also been called to Uganda. Wherever we were supposed to go, the Lord never let us doubt that we were to go. During this time, the Lord called me yet again to a life of not-normalness. It was literally a violent ripping away of myself and my heart from the world and it's offerings: I had to chose between a life of reckless abandon to my Royal Husband, or a boy who claimed he loved me. After struggling for months over this decision, in a heartbeat, I was won over by the call on my life. I remember telling my mom the night I broke up with this kid "I can't live in a nice house with a minivan and a white picket fence and a little dog and five kids. I wasn't made for that". The Lord called me away from normalcy. I later married my best friend Brandon, which I never would have done had we not shared the same call and the same passion for Jesus. At the time our hearts were very hard, we stubbornly told the Lord we would go anywhere as long as He didn't tell us to stay in Amarillo. This showed our hearts and He really had to break us down on this point. It had become less about glorifying the Lord and more about leaving our po-dunk town behind and living an adventure, we were behaving much in the same way as I had when the Lord showed me the bigness of the world. We wanted to go for going's sake, not for the Lord's or the gospel's. Recently, (praise Him!) He has broken us, transformed our minds, and caused so great a surrender in our hearts and minds that we both were brought to a place where if we were called to serve in Amarillo for the rest of our lives, we would do it with a love for the gospel on our tongues and a song in our heart, praising the Lord and serving Him wholeheartedly. At the same time, through studying the gospels, the book of Acts and 1 Corinthians together, we began to feel a burden for the unreached. Those 6,000 or so people groups that are perishing daily without ever having heard the name of Jesus Christ and His gospel. Brandon and I have loved Asia for a long time. If I could go anywhere in the world right now, it would be China. I LOVE China! I was fortunate enough to go there a couple of years ago and have since become slightly obsessed with the Chinese underground church. They have experienced the biggest church growth in history-I find this fascinating, but am assured that China needs no help from foreign missionaries. Someone once asked "Why should anyone hear the gospel twice when there are those who have not heard it once?" The other night the Lord showed us that He wants us to shed our blood for the gospel in Asia. I know there are people like K.P. Yohannan who claim that foreign missionaries are not needed in Asia, and I think he has a great point. There are places in Asia where foreign missionaries simply are not allowed to go, at which point national missionaries and evangelists are necessary. However, Romans asks the question "How then can they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach unless they are sent?" Romans 10:14-15. The fact is that two out of every three people alive on earth lives in Asia. There are 100,000 missionaries in the world, and only 2% work among people groups classified as "unreached". 70% of Asians have never even heard the name of my sweet savior. The harvest is ready, but the workers are few. Hudson Taylor, founder of the China Inland Mission once said "The Great Commission is not a possibility to be considered, it is a command to be obeyed." As disciples of Christ who have been called to go into the darkest corners of this earth with the Light of Christ, we find that the darkest corners exist in the House of Buddha and the House of Mohamed among the Asian nations. In some of these places, evangelism is completely outlawed. In Tibet for example, the Buddhists who are typified as being peaceful and accepting have a past soaked in the blood of martyrs who gave their lives to see their killers saved. If I have to die, I would die a martyr, but that is not why we go. We pray that the Lord's Spirit would be poured out on us that we may witness boldly to the Truth and that we may give a courageous testimony as we seek to know only Christ and Him crucified. Please pray with us for the Lord to lead us and for us to know Him more. May the Lamb that was slain receive the reward for His suffering!!!

May It Not Return Void

Today we took my students to a conference in Lubbock, TX. I had been praying that the Lord would bless it. I have the privilege of working in what is probably the most economically, socially, ethnically, and spiritually diverse school in my city, so I knew that my students have been raised in strikingly different religions or faith systems, or whatever you want to call it ranging from Pentecostal to Mormon to Muslim. With this knowledge and having pretty good relationships all around, I took the initiative to strike up a conversation with one of my students regarding his religion. He answered all of my questions as a young man who was very informed about the teachings of Mormon, and strikingly misinformed regarding the Bible which is what Mormonism claims to be based on. He seemed a little nervous as I asked honest questions that I have had for a long time about his faith (I turned out to be slightly misinformed on a few points)even laughing to us that "Gosh, it sounds like it's a cult or something". I was surprised by his honesty and blessed to hear the Spirit speaking through me Truth over the lies that his religion has taught him. The old lie is still alive and kicking and it made me sad to hear this bright young man talking about someday him, being able to create life. That he would one day be the same as Jesus. The old lie, by the way, being that we can become like God, the lie that the serpent deceived Eve with in the Garden, the old lie that has become the new age as I heard one pastor say of the teachings of Eckhart Tolle and the "Church of O". This is why the Bible says that we are to "walk humbly with our God" and the world says to "Walk proudly with our heads held high". The Lord has been challenging me to ask Him to make Himself more real to me than He has ever been. I pray this over every brother and sister I know as well and also for this world in general. When we stand before the Lord in judgement, there will be no doubt that the words from the, ahem, epic tale of Rudy hold true "There is a God, and I am not Him". This is something that I have to keep reminding myself of, and even more that He is not what I make Him, that my ideas of the Lord are not necessarily what He is. That I have at least to some degree up until this point been at least in part, in love with my idea of God, and not necessarily with Who He is. I want so desperately to know Him and to be known by Him. Even today, as I have been walking with the Lord for over four years now, I feel like a baby Christian, like I'm just now beginning to start to get ready to begin making some progress in getting down to the nitty gritty with the Lord. That's cool and scary and sweet...and scary! I hope and pray that the Lord would clear up the thorns of my ideas, cleanse me of all unrighteousness and transform my mind to be in love with Him in truth. I pray that the conversations that went on today between myself and my students and my students and my other students would at least make them think. His Word never returns void, I pray it wouldn't return void in me. I've been really off- subject-y here maybe, but I said what I needed to.

So Great a Cloud......

So recently (ok, more like yesterday) I spent a large chunk of time freaking out, a hobby I have been out of practice at recently, and it did not feel so good to stretch my legs and try it out again. The freak-out-age was over what most people freak out about: money. One of our best friends, Mr. Warren Sterling, also known to some as simply "G" is one of the coolest most Jesus lovin' folks you'll ever meet, and he also happens to be a missionary. He's spent the last couple of years at the Bethany College of Missions in Minnesota where my best friend Katelyn is also at school, you can find the link in my "check this out maybe" section. Anyway, Warren leaves in January for Kenya, Africa to spend the next 16 months doing in depth cultural study and mission work which rocks because this brother has been called to Uganda and it's really cool for him to get this close to his future destination. Anyway, Warren was having a rough time the last time he was here ( a couple months ago, I think) with fundraising, as every BCOM intern has to raise 44,000 big ones to go on internship. He was also selling his laptop for $500 so we told him we would buy it from him. He shipped it here and we got it the day before Christmas Eve, by which time, we as the consumer driven Christmassy people we were (also known as crappy stewards) we had run out of money. So, we just decided to pay Warren in January as long as it was before he left. The Lord threw a good ol' wrench in this plan however, as it turns out this Friday (way before we had planned on having the money) Warren, Katie, and Katie's dad Greg are all coming to town. This is fantastic news to me in one way (the four of us haven't been together in over a year)and frustrating news in another (my pride didn't want to see Warren and be like "Oh yeah, we owe you some money, but funny thing is we spent it"). So I have been praying hardcore for some days now that the Lord would somehow, someway provide the money for Warren to go to Africa, even if it didn't come from this measly little $500 that we didn't have. Well, the day comes to decide where the money will come from (as rent is due) and low and behold, we don't have enough, at least not before this Friday when we'll see Warren. Boy was my face red, I began regretting every single Christmas present I bought and resolved to super over simplify Christmas next year (i.e. Advent Conspiracy, make all my presents style). I fight with Brandon who for some crazy reason thinks it's more important to pay the rent than it is to pay Warren (which of course, he's right about, but I still felt awful). So we get in a screaming match in our apartment hallway (SO spiritual)and I wind up locking myself in my fortress of solitude (the bathroom). As soon as I lock the door, like literally, that same second, I hear Brandon's phone go off and guess who it is? Warren. Turns out, the Lord has gotten him 80% of his funding, he's not hurting for money, and he's totally fine with us paying him whenever we are able. Wow. I am a complete idiot Lord! This is a huge clump of lessons I had to learn, not the hard way, but the stupid way, maybe its just the Lord's way and I'm just plain stupid, I don't know. I learned that Christmas should be more meaningful and less expensive, stressful, and wasteful. I learned that the Lord truly is Jehovah Jireh, God Will Provide, even if it's in a way I totally don't understand (i.e. not through me or by my strength, I'm such a dunce). And I learned the sweetness of having a brother who is truly trusting in the Lord for everything. Warren is a very Godly man, and it totally edified me to know that he's trusting in the Lord like he is as he goes across the world to serve Him for His glory. We do truly have a great cloud of witnesses. That's why I love Christian biographies more than Christian theologies, we learn so much better from stories than from ideas, at least I definately do. The Psalms say "See in our history the faithful love of the Lord" that is why stories are important, they remind us that there is a very personal God of the Universe and that He has been faithful and will continue to be so.

Though He Slay Me, Yet Will I Trust in Him

I am currently reading a book appropriately titled "China's Christian Martyrs" by Paul Hattaway who also edited The Heavenly Man and Living Water by Chinese Christian Brother Yun. In doing some outside research it encourages, humbles, and stirs up a fiery jealousy in me when reading about the church in China. A little under two years ago, I took a trip to Guangzhou, China with a family who was adopting a little girl. Though I was confined to one city in China rather than traveling the whole country as I would have liked, I discovered that to see and learn about everything in this one city would take near a lifetime to do. There are 7 times as many people in Guangzhou than there are in New York City. Wow! That's a lot of people! While in Guangzhou, I visited the Sacred Heart Catholic Church, the Church of Christ on Shamian Island, and The Temple of the Six Banyan Trees, a working Buddhist temple. The Church of Christ had an English service and I was fortunate enough to get a firsthand look at the difference between true Christianity, and the Christianity prescribed by the People's Republic of China CCC movement. The government sanctioned churches in China are not allowed to preach, among other things, Christ as supreme over government, the resurrection of the dead, and the atonement for sins. Wow! That's like the whole gospel! To read about the true underground church in China and to see the actual Three Self Patriotic Movement in action is really eye opening. It's almost like The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis: the Narnians were persecuted, not for being Narnians which they were free to do, but because they believed in being Free Narnians. Anyway, what I'm getting at is how inspiring it is to me to think of the Chinese House Church Movement- the believers in China are persecuted daily (though their government claims they are not as they have "freedom of religion") and they have grown exponentially because of it! I used to want to be a missionary to China and while I still desire to go visit there again, and if the Lord were to call Brandon and I, we would certainly go, there is not doubt in my mind that China needs no Western missionaries, they have it down way better than we do! Back to the book though: I am so inspired by the stories of these brothers and sisters who were not afraid to lose their lives. I find me putting myself in their shoes: would I be so brave as to sing while about to be hanged? Would you be so brave? Is it even about bravery? I think that there is something about persecution that makes the Christian heart fiercer in it's working. If it gets to the point where people want to behead you for Christ, it means you're finally doing it right! Why stop then? I think it's a very dangerous thing indeed when the "empire gets baptised" as Shane Claiborne puts it. When Christianity became the official religion of Rome and therefore the rest of the then known world, it became corrupt, mandatory, and dead but for those precious few who were true followers. In America, we thank the Lord for providing us with huge buildings in which to worship and learn about Him, I face no persecution other than that which I bring upon myself by being a jerk. What if we did? What if we started living like Jesus? What if we let Him turn our worlds upside down? What if we counted our lives as nothing? Knew nothing but Christ and Him crucified? Paid as much attention to promises in the Bible like "They hated Me, they will hate you also" as we do to "I will never leave you"? What if we spent less on buildings (like none) and instead spent our money on furthering the Kingdom? On Blessing people? What would happen......

Driving vs Riding

I went with my mother in-law to Palo Duro Canyon today to pick up my husband's sister. It was a beautiful evening, we caught one of those uniquely Texas sunsets. Besides my family I think that Texas sunsets are going to be the thing I will miss most about Texas when and if the Lord calls us away. Anyway, en route to our destination, I realized something about myself: I was not paying attention to the sunset. I was looking straight ahead, watching for semis, keeping my eyes on the speedometer, making sure we were going the right way. About halfway through our little trip, I decided to just relax. lay down my back seat driver impulses, and just ride like I did when I was a kid, look out the window at how beautiful it was outside. About six months ago, my husband and I were in a series of wrecks very close together and ever since then I have been the worst backseat driver ever. I cringe, I over react, I criticize everything in general. I realized today that it has been a long time since I have actively ridden in a car and it felt seriously unnatural when I finally did. It is a trust issue for me.
This issue of trust while someone else is driving echoes one of the struggles of my life. When I get to a really sweet place with the Lord, I am so afraid of losing that that I over spiritualize my entire life. I make sure that I make sure that I am in the Word, that I am in prayer, even if I don't mean my prayers with my whole heart, even if I am just doing it out of habit, I must do it because what if I don't? This, as the Lord showed me today, is not freedom. It is not what He asks of me nor is it what He gives to me. It is bondage and it is religiosity. The Lord deserves so much more than to be one of my habits; He deserves to be worshiped in spirit and in truth, not in superstitious fear, which is what this fearful life of habit becomes. It is a self fulfilling prophecy. I fear to lose my real, deep time with Him, and it is this very thing that chokes it out and makes it lukewarm. Even in writing this post, it shows that I still fear this thing, but that I am going to "try" a different method of preserving that which I fear to lose. I want to be wholly surrendered to the Lord, this is what He deserves. He deserves to be sought hard after, but not out of habit. I guess that's what I'm trying to say. I pray that the Lord would transform my heart so that I would truly trust Him when He says that He will never leave me nor forsake me. I will not live a life of pretend, of playing the Holy Spirit. I don't want to be afraid of being poor in spirit because Jesus called those "Blessed". If I lose my life while someone else is driving the car, it won't matter whether I was freaking out the whole time or not. I have so much fear of being "ok". While it's sweet to be in a good place with the Lord, it's so much more dangerous to be on the mountain top than in the valley.

More Undignified, More Unafraid

So during our study tonight (1 Corinthians 1) we talked about the foolishness of the world and the wisdom of God, and about the base and foolish things of the world being used by God so that no flesh should glory in His presence. I love how the Lord does this; it's like He's reading my mail....I wish I would be as attentive to Him as He offers to be attentive to me. Anyway, for me, the application for this scripture really applies to my last post. The Lord has called me away from the life of normalcy proposed by this world. What this looks like specifically is yet unknown, but as of late, Egypt has been tempting me back into that place where I just plain don't want to look foolish to anyone whether it's for the Lord or not. The enemy is trying to convince me that I can be the "cool" girl for the Lord. This is especially true in my work environment. I am employed by a woman who I think loves the Lord. Other than that, my working environment is very wordly-there is a huge gossip epidemic in our tiny office and my fear daily has become that I will be the subject for the day. Yes! You heard (read) correctly! I am afraid of being the weird girl because I know these women will shred me with their words. This fearful, fleshly part of me wants to hide behind normalcy. What a shame! I hope and pray that the Lord would give me boldness to become undignified in a life or worship to Him, and after that to make me even more undignified! I want to have the heart of David, to dance like a wild woman because of who my Savior is! I believe the world is hungry for this experience! The church is so normal- it looks so much like the rest of the world. Think about statistically, how many people in your congregation actually truly know Jesus in a real surrendered sort of way? The church tries to reach people by being and acting just like them, at least that's what I do. This is not how I am supposed to live for Jesus! This is not how Jesus lived: He stood against the hypocrisy of the establishment of the day and did not make Himself just like the sinners He ministered to (except for making Himself human, but hey, I've got that one down) He was strikingly different than everyone else around Him. They don't crucify folks for being normal, for playing Christian and going to church. They crucify people for being weirdos and while I don't necessarily WANT to be crucified, I DO want to glorify my God. This means being a weirdo just like Him. An interesting point that came up in the middle of our conversation tonight was that Paul says that he was "all things to all men" and if we are to be so different, how do we fit this in? The answer, I believe is that we come to a place where we are relate-able in our strangeness. I need to find places to connect with the women I work with without being just like them. Basically, what the Lord taught me today is something that is so fundamental, that I know, but that I desperately need to remember right now and that is this: That in my unperfection, I am fearfully and wonderfully made by a God who knows what He's doing.
I used to make art when I was a bit younger- I did a lot of pen and ink stuff to try and channel my teen angst :) I never wanted to show it to anyone because I was afraid they would make fun of me or think it was horrible or stupid or something. Now, I don't know if I ever made any good art, but I did learn something from my mother (an artist herself and one of the bravest people I know) through this process of hiding. She told me that it was not fair of me to take a gift that I had been given and hide it from the world. My weirdness is my me-ness. It is my testimony and it is foolish to the world, it is glorifying to God. The Lord asked "who lights a lamp and hides it under a basket?" That is what He is asking me now.