Two years ago I had planned on going to Haiti, and had just about everything figured out, but it got cancelled due to problems in Haiti. (The US said it was unsafe to travel) During my freshman year here in Florida the country of Haiti suffered a major earthquake, and I got to see how the Haitian culture here in South Florida reacted to it. It was so sad to watch students who had lost loved ones, friends, or the houses they grew up in go through the grief process. After the earthquake I got to go to a candle light service that the on campus Haitian club put on, during the service they did a group prayer and listening to the students cry out to God in both english and creole was pretty intense and awesome. They had real, raw emotion. Some were angry, some were confused, some were in shock, and some were just trusting God's plan. I couldn't understand any of them, but as they were praying I was praying as well. Asking God to give me empathy, asking God what I could do, and asking Him to give me a heart for these people and their pain. Since then that candle light vigil has been ingrained in my mind and their pain ingrained in my heart.
This spring break, I finally get to go. I am going through a organization called Mission of Hope Haiti, I heard about it from Brian Pope one of my youth pastors. Growing up our church encouraged mission trips, and after being on a couple I figured out how little we do and how much God does in our lives while surrendering our time and funds to love his people. It is an addictive high, and I think it should be. When I give of myself physically, financially, spiritually, mentally, and emotionally for the purpose of going to those that need love I think God provides a joy that in incomparable. It gives us that "high" that can't be explained by science, it can't be explained by someone that is not filled with the spirit of Christ. They think it is fake, they think it is a phase, and my mistake is I let it be. Instead of coming back and serving my friends, family, professors, and even the driver that is going way too slaw for the fast lane as another one of God's creation that he has called me to love I come back, say I have done MY good for a while... now I can just care about MYSELF. And then the high goes away, because I have hidden the expression of Gods love. I let MY busy schedule, MY selfish desires, and MY tiredness, interfere with God's love for those around me that need it the most.
Don't get me wrong, I am STOKED to go on this trip, I am STOKED to help out in anyway I can and to finally be immersed in the culture my heart and Spirit have been connected to for the past 2 years, but I know there is so much more God wants to teach me and show me during my time in Haiti. I don't know exactly what I expect while I am in Haiti, but while I am there completely out of my comfort zone, I am hoping that He will just refresh and cleanse my Spirit from all of the cultural filters I have put on who He is and what He can do. I am guilty of putting him in an Americanized, humanized box and not expecting anything bigger. Sure I pray for bigger things, but I guess I don't really think he can do it. I mean sometimes it happens, and thats cool, but if I was honest many of my prayers are faithless. Right now I am just focusing on Hebrews 11:6// And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him// and James 1:6// But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind.// In these weeks leading up to Haiti I am pressing into and pleading with God to help me with my faith in who he is, what he has done, and what he has/is doing in my life right now.
Here are some of the things I am praying for, if anybody has some ideas to add just put them in the comments
1) To be completely exhausted of who I am so I can experience complete reliance on who He is
2) To be stretch to do things I am not comfortable with
2b) for him to prepare me spiritually to do these things
3) To observe/be a blessing for others who get to live a life of daily dependence upon God's provision
4) To see a God of Eph. 3:20// A God who is able to to immeasurably more than all I could ask or imagine.
Saturday, March 2, 2013
Monday, December 3, 2012
Vulnerable Valleys
I love mountaintops, I think we all do. And I think every time we get there we convince ourselves that this time we are staying up there, actually we are going to climb the air above the mountain. But then God decides to lead us into valleys, and nobody likes valleys. Especially when those valleys are deserts of temptation. See on the mountain top we get so close to touching the hand of God. We can constantly see his face, feel his presence, and we focus on His image. It is a place that is important for every Christian to experience. This mountain top is not related to our level of success, financial peace, or relationship status. Well I guess it is related to our relationship status, but only our personal relationship status with our LORD. But then it happens all the sudden we find ourselves in the desert valley and we look for the glory of God and it's gone. We are alone, well at least it feels like that. The warm fuzzy's are gone, the refuge place is gone... THIS SUCKS! I'm sorry, it does though. It is where I am right now and I don't want to be here. The mountain was awesome, it was among the highest mountains I had ever climbed! I have come to the realization that I got there because He knew I needed to be there. I needed to experience nearly touching His finger tips so that while I am here I can close my eyes and remember what is like to be there.
See for me I was led into the desert valley not really thinking it could happen, I had figured everything out. Well I thought I had, and then temptation came. When we face these desert valley's we have two choices... 1) Look up to previous mountain top and try to get back up it to be where you WERE with God or 2) Look to the next mountain top and prepare yourself for the journey to reach it. You see our God is NOT just a God of mountain tops. Jesus came to earth to be our LORD who went before us into the desert valley. When we call on Him he will show us the way to get out of the desert as a beautiful, stronger child of our Father. As Christ guides our path the Holy Spirit gives us the Power that raised Christ from the dead to defeat the demons we encounter. When we choose to stray we often fall and get scrapes, bruises and scares, which will be a constant reminder of what we have come through. Each scar has a story, sometimes those stories are more painful then the damage they caused, others remind us of the "good times" the world has to offer, and some are forgotten. These "good time" scares are from riding your bike as fast as possible down the mountain, it's fun and it's a rush, but it never ends well. Once you heal from it the experience starts to have fond memories and you are ready to do it again. So on your journey to the next mountain you search for that trill, and you find yourself back in the valley looking up at the mountain again. These scars are dangerous, these scares stunt our mountain experiences. We start ending up in the valley so often that we start to avoid the light that shines from God's glory, because the cool breeze in the shade feels nice. We try to avoid the voice of Christ and run as far away as possible so that we don't have to hear his nagging voice pestering us to get back on the trail. Now we are in trouble... when the night come it gets cold, we have no shelter, no fire, no water. Now we have nothing, well nothing other than the small voice of Christ and urging of our spirit. Now it is a pride issue. We don't want to run to Christ and have to admit that he was right, that we should have never run away, that we were wrong. Finally we realize that we can no longer survive on our own so we sit silently listening for that distant voice and we start to search it out. As we approach him we are crawling, covered in fresh and dried blood, unable to stand since we have had nothing to eat or drink for who knows how long. When He sees us He runs scoops us up and gives us the biggest hug, he then wonders from the path to a stream where He cleans and bandages all of our wounds and we drink freely. He quickly prepares a fire and we eat. We expect the darkness to come, but it doesn't. After we regain our strength He leads us back to the path and we begin the journey back up the mountain.
We all hate to be vulnerable, it just is not accepted today. It is funny though, Christ constantly cried out to his Father, to our Father. I mean YELLED out, and he was not humiliated or "weak." He just knew that in order to accomplish what he was sent to do he had to be DEPENDENT upon his father. In a world of independency it is increasingly harder to willingly depend on ANYONE, much less a being that we can not see and touch. If we had cried out to Jesus in the valley he would have come found us, but we didn't. We wanted to control some part of it. Our dignity, our ego... our PRIDE depends on control. What would your life be like if you were to surrender the most important thing in your life to God? There is only one way to figure out... Be dependent. Don't make scars that will continually lead you into a valley. If you need to.. cover them up, avoid them at all cost. Tell somebody... it is the scariest thing EVER, but in the right hands you will never regret it.
See for me I was led into the desert valley not really thinking it could happen, I had figured everything out. Well I thought I had, and then temptation came. When we face these desert valley's we have two choices... 1) Look up to previous mountain top and try to get back up it to be where you WERE with God or 2) Look to the next mountain top and prepare yourself for the journey to reach it. You see our God is NOT just a God of mountain tops. Jesus came to earth to be our LORD who went before us into the desert valley. When we call on Him he will show us the way to get out of the desert as a beautiful, stronger child of our Father. As Christ guides our path the Holy Spirit gives us the Power that raised Christ from the dead to defeat the demons we encounter. When we choose to stray we often fall and get scrapes, bruises and scares, which will be a constant reminder of what we have come through. Each scar has a story, sometimes those stories are more painful then the damage they caused, others remind us of the "good times" the world has to offer, and some are forgotten. These "good time" scares are from riding your bike as fast as possible down the mountain, it's fun and it's a rush, but it never ends well. Once you heal from it the experience starts to have fond memories and you are ready to do it again. So on your journey to the next mountain you search for that trill, and you find yourself back in the valley looking up at the mountain again. These scars are dangerous, these scares stunt our mountain experiences. We start ending up in the valley so often that we start to avoid the light that shines from God's glory, because the cool breeze in the shade feels nice. We try to avoid the voice of Christ and run as far away as possible so that we don't have to hear his nagging voice pestering us to get back on the trail. Now we are in trouble... when the night come it gets cold, we have no shelter, no fire, no water. Now we have nothing, well nothing other than the small voice of Christ and urging of our spirit. Now it is a pride issue. We don't want to run to Christ and have to admit that he was right, that we should have never run away, that we were wrong. Finally we realize that we can no longer survive on our own so we sit silently listening for that distant voice and we start to search it out. As we approach him we are crawling, covered in fresh and dried blood, unable to stand since we have had nothing to eat or drink for who knows how long. When He sees us He runs scoops us up and gives us the biggest hug, he then wonders from the path to a stream where He cleans and bandages all of our wounds and we drink freely. He quickly prepares a fire and we eat. We expect the darkness to come, but it doesn't. After we regain our strength He leads us back to the path and we begin the journey back up the mountain.
We all hate to be vulnerable, it just is not accepted today. It is funny though, Christ constantly cried out to his Father, to our Father. I mean YELLED out, and he was not humiliated or "weak." He just knew that in order to accomplish what he was sent to do he had to be DEPENDENT upon his father. In a world of independency it is increasingly harder to willingly depend on ANYONE, much less a being that we can not see and touch. If we had cried out to Jesus in the valley he would have come found us, but we didn't. We wanted to control some part of it. Our dignity, our ego... our PRIDE depends on control. What would your life be like if you were to surrender the most important thing in your life to God? There is only one way to figure out... Be dependent. Don't make scars that will continually lead you into a valley. If you need to.. cover them up, avoid them at all cost. Tell somebody... it is the scariest thing EVER, but in the right hands you will never regret it.
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