A Matter of the Heart

I feel like I haven’t been posting as much lately. The reality is a lot has happened in the last few weeks that I don’t feel fully capable of describing over a blog post. I even find it hard to describe to people over the phone. The truth is, God has been moving in my life, and even if no one else gets anything out of this DTS, I know that this DTS has forever changed my life, or at least, that is what I pray. God moves in unusual ways, but I’m finding that He only speaks to us in ways that we can handle. In addition, He speaks to each of us in a unique way. When He speaks to me, it is a message particularly catered to me.

In the last few weeks, I have spent more time at Greenhaven Farm, with my roommates, and with God. My focus has shifted in the past few weeks, and I can only pray that the Lord allows me and gives me strength to be real and authentic everyday, and that He allows me to see more of Him; to meet Him in my heart and not simply in my head.

I have been finding over the last few weeks that I knew God before only in my head and not in my heart. I guess this might seem like a strange statement to those who know me, but God wants our hearts not our minds. Yes, ideally, He would like our minds too, but that is not where revelation of who He is comes from. He doesn’t live in our heads. He doesn’t even care about how much knowledge we have or don’t have because if we have a heart that is not in full surrender to Him, we aren’t going anywhere. We will be stalled by our knowledge…. I guess I’ve been learning that knowledge is all well and good, but that doesn’t mean that you truly understand what He has done for you. I didn’t.

I have spent years of my life doing. I have spent so long trying to earn salvation, without realizing it. I thought that God wanted me to always be doing things for Him. I had two hands that were willing, but I didn’t have a heart that was open to Him. God uses our hands, but that isn’t what He is after. Just today, our speaker Frank Naea mentioned a verse that sums this up pretty well:

“I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may

give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I

pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may

know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in

the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is

like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised

him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far

above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be

given not only in te present age but also in the one to come” (Ephesians 1:17-21

NIV).

This is a matter of the HEART! It is a matter of God reaching us in the very depths of our being… suddenly, life is no longer about constantly moving, mental aerobics, or doing as much as I possibly can do in one day. It is about the condition of my heart, which I can testify my heart is in pretty sorry shape in relation to my Father in Heaven. I don’t, or I should say didn’t, know God in way that reached my heart. I had all this knowledge about God, the Bible, theology, society, people….but nothing about WHO God is. Nothing. There are many reasons why I never let God take root, and one of them just happens to be that I was too busy doing to stop and allow God into my heart. It also goes back to pride and the idea that I never wanted to let anyone hurt me ever again, so I didn’t. I built walls around myself, my heart, which kept all out; including God. It left me a robot, shell of a human being.

Even as I write this, I can hear the voices of those of you reading this, saying, “No, this isn’t right…they must have brainwashed her…” “This couldn’t be true, she is so servant hearted…” and on and on and on and on…. You don’t have to agree with any of this, but you don’t see my heart. Only God knows what has happened, how I came to this stage, and what He sees as my next steps. He alone can save me, and only He can tell me who I am and who I am not. Amazingly, I don’t feel pain writing this.

It really is about our personal relationship with God the Father. He saved me. SAVED me. He saved you too, but do you feel it? Do you feel the weight of your chains lifted? I do. Do you feel it in the depths of your heart?  It really hit home today that believing in God in your heart says that the blood of Jesus is sufficient, that the grace of God is sufficient for me. I don’t have to do. I don’t have to prove myself to God. I just have to allow His grace to flood my heart, and I have to daily give my life over to Him. It is hard. Even now as I still struggle with my relationships with some of the girls here and back home, I have to hand those over to God. I have to focus on Him. When I feel like I’m being overwhelmed by everything that I feel like I need to work on, I just hand it over to God. The work He has started in me, He has also finished in me through the cross…and that is enough for me. It is not by my works that I am saved, but by His grace.

In other more exciting news, just last Sunday, we had a JAMM Café, which is an opportunity for my DTS to take over a church service and get our message about human trafficking out. We led worship, read poems, had a small skit about human trafficking, and asked for financial support…which God more than supplied our needs…we asked for $1500, and God provided much more than I or anyone else ever expected. His provision has been huge thus far.

Thank you as always for your support and prayers… this is going to be my last blog posting for a long while due to lack of computers on outreach. However, some of my fellow DTSers are going to blogging about our journey in Japan and Thailand for the group…the link is: http://jamm2011.dinstudio.com/

Check it out, book mark it, add it to your favorites, and find out how I am doing and more about our outreach!!

Female Infanticide

I did my research project for DTS on Female Infanticide, which is the killing of innocent babies (generally of the female gender). It occurs all across the globe. However, it is culturally engrained in India and China; though the practice is illegal in both nations. Here are two short videos to learn more about the practice. I hope you enjoy, or at least learn more about infanticide. 

This one is very difficult to watch, though demonstrative of how potent infanticide is: 

   

This video has more facts about the situation in India:

This is a topic that really breaks my heart, and I hope that it breaks yours a little too. Please pray for the daughters being born in India and China right now; that God would change their society to see them as worthy members created for a purposed. They were made beautifully in His image.

Thank you!

A Powerful Story

Hello!

Here is a powerful story about one man's journey into the world of sex trafficking. Don't worry, it isn't gruesome or gross. It is a great testiment to the power of God's grace and His revultion at this horrible trade.

http://player.vimeo.com/video/31795904?autoplay=1

Please Pray

Hello all of my faithful prayer warriors,

I guess this really isn't an update because I don't feel comfortable giving out details. However, I ask that all of you pray fervently for the people in my DTS. In my last post, I mentioned that I believed that our DTS was under spiritual attack, and I still believe that it is. Recent events have made me aware evermore that this DTS isn't just an ordinary DTS. We are currently under attack for whatever reason. Planned speakers don't show up or have to cancel, people leaving (currently 2 out of the original 16 DTSers have left), unusual situations have presented themselves. We are under spiritual attack. I have been told that most DTS's don't have nearly this many problems, and I have also been told that as a group we are one of the most talented that has come together at this particular base. Once again, I can't give details, but I hope that you can bring our DTS and every individual forward in prayer. I am specifically praying for unity among the group because I feel that many of the attacks have been toward dividing the group. I also am beginning to get a sense that each of us can do great things for the Lord, but we are being thwarted. One thing after another has come up to stop our plans or hinder us in our efforts. I know that the Lord has already completed the work that He has started. He promised that through the cross, and I don't know if we are to go through the fire in our testing or if we will be rescued from the fire. However, I ask that all of you prayer warriors bring us before the Lord in prayer. Ask for our protection, strength, courage, and endurance. Ask for unity amongst individuals. Pray for us, please. I know that the Lord has a plan for everyone, but the verse Eph 6:12 has come to mind specifically that we are not fighting against flesh and blood but against powers of this unseen world. Please just pray for our victory today and in these coming days. Thank you.

The 5th Floor

What to say about the 5^th floor…it is an interesting place, but it isn’t very pretty. It has lumpy carpet with dirt ground into it, and the walls have bubbles where water or some other unknown substance has caused the plaster to move away from the actual wall. To the normal viewer, it is probably the one of the “grosser” floors because of the lack of maintenance. In fact, I walked down it the other day, looked up with a smile and realized that they finally replaced some of the burnt out light bulbs. Let’s just say, our hotel is anything but classy. (I should note that roof over our head is definitely something worth being grateful for.)Despite all of its deficiencies, the 5^th floor is a very special place to me.

Oddly enough, I don’t live on the 5^th floor and I probably never will. I’ve lived on the 3^rd floor, and I currently occupy an apartment on the 4^th floor (much to the chagrin of my downstairs neighbors, fellow DTSers). J But, my high opinion of the 5^th floor remains the same. 

This week has officially been rough, and it is only Thursday. Even though we’ve had the chance to color pictures and try to see who can find the difference in the pictures the fastest, this week has been full of those awesome rollercoaster emotions that I mentioned last week. I feel as though the Lord has mainly been speaking to me about forgiveness and reconciliation, can we all jump up and down and clap our hands now? Yeah, I thought so, no one really likes this topic. That is okay, neither do I. :D Oddly enough, we have been learning about forgiveness and reconciliation from the book of Philemon, if that isn’t what you got out of the book of Philemon take another look. J I started out this week (Sunday actually) receiving a letter from one of my fellow DTSers telling me how much I had hurt her; I will be the first to admit, I can be rather blunt. Her full length letter went on to tell me that she felt degraded by me and that I made her feel insignificant. My heart broke as I read the letter. I do not believe that anyone wants to hear that they have hurt someone else in any way. She then finished the letter off by asking for my forgiveness as well. It was a difficult pill to swallow, for sure! I can tell you right here and now that my gut reaction was to throw the letter away and NEVER deal with this issue. The problem: there are only 14 DTSers….avoidance is not an option! After a couple of minutes, I knew I needed to apologize, but my pride was definitely in the way of this situation. I didn’t really WANT to apologize especially after some of the things that she wrote. I walked up and down my hallway (4^th floor) for a good 20 minutes before I knocked on one of our staffer’s door to talk about the letter. I needed a 3^rd person to give me some perspective into this letter because I was most definitely not being objective…

Long story short, I apologized, received forgiveness and gave forgiveness…the process of reconciliation had to take place, but not before I took the matter to God on the 5^th floor. Not before I came to a place of utter and total peace about this person as well as my role in unintentionally hurting this person. I had to come to that place where I realized that I could be friends with someone who had hurt me and I didn’t really get along with…sometimes, personalities do not always mesh. However, as adults, as members of the Christian community, the Church, the Body of Christ, I had to take that initial step of reaching out and jumping over a hurtle that stood between us. I had to choose the right way to respond rather than the way I would have liked to respond in that specific instance, and I reached this understanding with God on the 5^th floor.

For me, the 5^th floor is both a physical place and a metaphorical state of spiritual worship. It is that space where we come to stand before our Lord and worship Him alone. It is the place that we wrestle with the things the Lord is teaching us or wanting us to do, the place where we cry out for mercy and forgiveness, and the place where we allow God to heal us and each other. It is that place that we take a step beyond ourselves and focus only on the Lord. He is in that space.

Later in the week, as we were reading through Philemon, but seemingly inspired by God, I was pushed to consider reconciliation with a few others that I know. Actually, the class was instructed to go through the process of forgiveness and reconciliation, but God revealed to me that I am really good at forgiving people, then forgetting literally everything…the transgression…the person…everything. I felt God ask me to step beyond simply forgiving, but also reaching out to those around me and maintaining a friendship despite past hurts. Thankfully, I had the renewed friendship from earlier in the week to use as motivation to really make a change. Thanks God for giving me a picture of something that I didn’t really want to do, but had to do anyway as a model for what I am supposed to do for the rest of my week….let’s just say, I have a little bit of homework to follow in Philemon’s example of loving Onesimus.

Then, on Thursday night, my dear friend, a fellow DTSer decided to leave our DTS!! It was horrible to watch her pack her stuff, place it on the baggage cart, roll it to her car, and drive away. My heart was broken because this girl has been a dear friend to me. When I am down, she is the one I turn to for a good laugh, a hug, and a warm smile. Instead of wallowing in the sadness, we decided to get together as a DTS and pray for her. We decided to pray that her journey be safe, her road would be straight, and that she would get into a Canadian university. However, even more powerful was our time of worship afterward, we felt called to praise God even in the confusion and hurt. In essence, we went to the 5^th floor to praise Him for being in control and for giving us peace in this time of heartache. I know it sounds insane to be this sad about someone leaving after having only knowing them for a month, but DTS is a time of getting to know each other very well. And a family atmosphere has already taken root amongst our small band of Christ followers. Prank phone calls should be enough of an example of brotherly and sisterly annoyance and affection. We have grown together. To have one of our own severed from us creates sad feelings, confusion, and brokenness. However, we also feel that the Lord will strengthen us during this time. He will use this situation for His good and bond those of us left together even tighter than before.

As a final note and prayer request, please pray for our DTS. Pray for our staff, all of the DTSers, our speakers, and our outreach. The fact of the matter is, our DTS has been under attack from the moment we got here. First, one of our male DTSers left after the 2^nd or 3^rd week. Then some of our speakers cancelled, got delayed, or were unable to meet us here in Canada. Then, we had to swap rooms in an effort to balance the girls out. Finally, another DTSer has left; for whatever reason, Satan wants this DTS to end. He wants to break our spirits and leave us in despair! We have chosen a road of joy and praise, but we ask for your prayers to combat any continued attacks. We claim victory, unity, and above all peace in the arms of Jesus. I’ll be taking this issue before the Lord on the 5^th floor, I hope all of you do too! Thank you.