Thank God for the Fleas

I haven't written in this space in a while.

Probably because there has simply been too much to write!

I've moved back from Asia, and life has been whirlwind since then. My pace of life has accelerated drastically. I've been traveling a lot for my job, getting to meet a lot of incredible students and see some wonderful places. I am so blessed to be based in Austin, where there are still so many people from my days at UT, and where it's okay to be a little weird.

I've really had the easiest transition one could ask for. I've been staying so busy that I haven't really had much time for culture stress or most of the things one usually experiences upon returning to one's home country. Although I miss my friends on the other side of the ocean and pray for them almost daily, thinking of them is more of a sweet than a bitter ache. I love them even as I love the people who surround me now, and I am at peace with the fact that Father has not designed me to be in two places at once. I am perhaps even more at peace because I know He is still over there, and the One whose eye is on the sparrow is caring for all my friends, wherever they may be in the world. I have returned to the very support network that lovingly sent me out. I am surrounded by incredible Chinese friends who patiently listen to me talk in my worse-by-the-day Mandarin and who cook delicious food for me. Jim Elliot famously said, "Wherever you are, be all there." I am blessed that the Lord has enabled me to be all here, for now, just as He enabled me to be "all there" the past two years.

But one consistent problem has been my health.

I've struggled with immune system issues for over a year now. I have tried many kinds of Western and even Chinese medicine and seen multiple doctors. Everything helps a little; nothing completely heals. I had hoped that when I got back to my home country, I would be magically cured, by the climate, the environment, new medicine, whatever. But that didn't happen. The most heartbreaking part is the yo-yo-ing: I will think I am almost healed, see the light at the end of the tunnel, and then suddenly I will have a relapse. Two steps forward, three steps back. This has happened every time I have tried a new treatment that I thought would finally do the trick. Now I am trying a new method of healing that involves drastic dietary changes (no sugar or gluten) and many concentrated whole foods supplements (no synthetic vitamins, y'all - those are bad news). Though I have had setbacks even with this method, such as unintentionally losing 10 pounds, I have improved a lot. I have even experienced positive and unexpected side effects like more stable mood and increased energy. But more about all my recent nutrition/health discoveries another day.

Many people have prayed and are praying for me. And I am so, so thankful for them/you. It is definitely a testing time when you serve a God who can heal instantly, who holds all the power in the universe, and you have to come to grips with the fact that, for whatever reason, He has chosen not to heal you right now. Especially when you feel you've done all you can do.

It's hard to realize that, for whatever reason, in His goodness he has allowed me to endure this. He is so loving, so good, has such an incredible plan for my life, that as crazy as it may seem to my human eyes, He is blessing me with this extended trial.

That's right, I said blessing.

Because God is good, because He is perfect, it is an absolute impossibility that even the bad things that happen could be anything less than His best for me. It is absolutely impossible that my trials will not turn out for His glory and my good. He sits as a refiner of silver, watching the fire carefully to make sure His treasure comes out strong and shining. He does not look away for one second, nor does His hand waver. He will heal me at exactly the right time, for exactly the right reason. And He will teach me exactly what He needs to teach me in the meantime - no more, no less.

I will never forget a story in a book called The Hiding Place in which Corrie ten Boom and her sister Betsie are put in a concentration camp for aiding the Jewish people. While there, sleeping at night after a grueling day is a near impossibility because their beds are swarming with itching, biting fleas. Their misery is incomprehensible, and yet Betsie tells Corrie they must thank God for the fleas. Of course Corrie can't believe her sister is even saying that, but she goes ahead and thanks God anyway.

Little by little, they begin reading the Bible with ladies in the concentration camp (how it got through the Nazis, who confiscated everything they owned, is another miraculous story). Catholics, Protestants, nonbelievers, all come together to read that beautiful Book of Life. It gives them hope when all other hope seems lost. The guards don't approve, of course, but they will never cross the threshold to make them stop.

Why?

Because the guards don't want to get bitten by the fleas.

And so the fleas are the very means of God's grace through which His Light is able to penetrate one of the darkest places on earth.

Because of that story, I remember in every trial to not lose heart and to trust that my struggle may even be the very means of God's grace to me. I can't see it yet, of course. In fact, I may not ever understand why. But I trust. And I persevere, knowing that every trial I have focuses my heart less on the here and now and more on what is to come. Less on storing up treasures on earth, and more on storing up treasures in Heaven. Less on the perishable body, and more on the imperishable one. What is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. And every trial, whether small or large, enables me to empathize with someone else who is suffering but who may not know that our true Hope is not of this world.

The best way to prevent completely breaking down under the burden you are currently called to bear is to thank God for it. Though your gratitude may be shaky and feeble, though you may not actually feel it to be true, say it anyway. Thank God that He sees something you cannot see.



To read the full "fleas" story, click here.

He will still love you.

"we love because He first loved us."
1 John 4:19

Come, come, whoever you are
Wanderer, worshiper, lover of leaving - it doesn't matter,
Ours is not a caravan of despair.
Come, even if you have broken your vow a hundred times,
Come, come again, come.

O to grace, how great a debtor
Daily I'm constrained to be.
Let Thy goodness, like a fetter,
Bind my wandering heart to Thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love.
Here's my heart, O take and seal it,
Seal it for Thy courts above.

Oh what a scandalous love God has shown us. "God is not proud. He will have us even though we have shown that we prefer everything else to Him." - C.S. Lewis

That the sinner, deep in his heart, should never love God of his own volition is a fact. We can never love God or love purity and goodness simply by willing ourselves to do so. We love to fool ourselves, thinking we can love well, thinking we can be good enough for Him on our own...but we will always fail.

Even when I began to follow Him, it was because I wanted Him to stop my pain, not because I wanted to be holy. I wanted to be liberated from depression and anger and loneliness, not from slavery to self.

And this is where His love comes in.

This is where He whispers, this is where He woos.

This is where He comes to us in our deepest fears, in our deepest heartache, when we are confronted with all the crooked places in our hearts, and asks, "Will you let me love you? Will you let me restore you? Will you let me call you my daughter?"

And though we say no, He will still ask a thousand times.
He is a constant lover, who never gives up.

Because He knows that death to self, true repentance and new life, is the only way we can get all the other things our hearts seek. It is the only way we can be truly free, truly alive. It is DIFFICULT, yes. But it is WORTH IT. So difficult, and so worth it, in fact, that He is the only one who can do it.

Gently, gently, we are led to repentance. We can never change by ourselves; if that were the demand, if we who love darkness were to FIRST genuinely love the light to receive it, who then could be saved?

No one.

And that's what makes His love so scandalous.

Ridiculous, even.

He was ridiculed on the cross, and He continues to be ridiculed today.

He doesn't care.

He doesn't love us AFTER we change...He loves us BEFORE.

He loves us while we still hate Him, while we're slandering Him, mocking Him, joking about Him in a bar and then crying to Him from our beds that same night.

He loves us in the middle of our hypocrisy, when we're confronted with the emptiness of our lives while knowing full well how we should be spending them.

He loves even the loveless places in our heart that would make everyone else hate us and turn away, were they to view them.

Even if you never surrender to His love your entire life and curse Him on your death bed, He will still love you.

Even if you turn away and follow your own will, your own way, and walk the wide path of destruction, He will still love you.

Even if you scream at him, angry about your life, about a friend's betrayal, about a tragedy in the family, about the atrocities committed to the helpless around the world,
He will still love you (and He will still love them).

And this love, it is not just a feeling
(though He does dance and sing over you, and angels rejoice because of you; like I said, He is not proud. He is not afraid to show His love).
True Love is not a feeling anyway.
He does not stand on high smiling warmly and thinking good thoughts about you, wishing you well. Prosperity! Happiness! Go in peace!

No.

He will not only lift a finger, He will lift mountains and turn the world upside down to rescue you.

He has hands and feet.

He has a Body.

And His power is beyond all imagining.
It can create planets, it can form humans, it can raise the dead, it can mend the heart, it can cause kings to fall, it can cast out demons, it can heal diseases, it can (will) restore this planet,
And it can change you.

Forever.

Oh, a forever love...isn't that what we all desire? If I could be loved forever, by the Only One who has power to even make my life worth living...what more could I need? What more could I ever want?

When your hair begins to turn gray, and you cry as you look at your deepening wrinkles in the mirror and feel how un-beautiful you are next to younger women,
He will still love you. Cherish you even. Call you beloved, the apple of his eye.

When you have been in a foreign country and haven't worn make-up in ages and feel too fat and too tall and too weird, or like you always have to hide from the stares and whistles that follow you everywhere,
He will still adore you.

When you return home and cry because you want to go back to that other country, because you left a piece of your heart there,
He will still love you.

When no one else understands your feelings or experiences,
He will still understand you.

When you are addicted to something and have tried everything in your own power to fight it, when you have deluded yourself about the magnitude of your own power and self-control,
He will still love you...and yes, even heal you.

When you run, He will pursue.

When you cry, He will hold.

When you scream, He will whisper.

When you are hurt, He will rise in power.

When you are lost, He will find.

Still. Still. Though you break your promise a thousand times, though you wander, though to all others you are a lost cause,
Still.

I pray that out of His glorious riches He may strengthen you with power 
through His spirit 
in your inner being,
so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.
And I pray that you,
being rooted and established in love,
will have power, together with all God's holy people,
to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ,
and to know this love that surpasses knowledge - that you may be filled to the measure of all the
fullness
of God.

Facedown in an Omelet

First week at UT, and there I was, facedown in an omelet.

Well, not in the omelet...I just said that because it's a much more humorous picture. Actually, my face was on the table, exactly eye-level with the ham-and-cheddar omelet, at 3 am in Kerbey Lane as I contemplated life at the beginning of freshman year with a friend I would rarely see again (what UT student hasn't had a moment like this?).

I had recently left a party, was very tired, and THAT WAS THE BEST OMELET I'D EVER TASTED!!11! I ate some pancakes too. The waiter came by and told me to get my head off the table at one point because they'd had too many students pass out in the restaurant recently.

I had just come back from a party with people I barely knew, and was now eating with people I barely knew. Everyone was someone I barely knew, including myself. I mean, a few months ago I could identify myself as a scholarship recipient, cheerleader, leader in the youth group, and Valedictorian, among other things. I'd had an identity and a history. Maybe not one I always liked, but I had one nonetheless.

And here, I was the girl who was being told to not pass out on the table.

I had recently attended Camp Texas, this magical place where everyone seemed to be smart, athletic, good-looking and confident all at once. I'd been completely overwhelmed. Most people already seemed to have a plan - a major, a country in which to study abroad, and even which sorority they would join. My first week at UT confirmed that I was constantly surrounded by smart, driven students. While I loved the new environment in which I found myself, I also let it threaten who I knew myself to be. Jesus couldn't be the same here as he was in my one-stoplight town in West Texas, could he?

I was at a crossroads. I could live for myself in college, or I could live for the God who redeemed me at the age of 13. This was a test. Was he real? Was I serious about this?

All through freshman year, I don't think I was quite sure. I had one foot in the world and one foot in the Kingdom. This was not the first or last time my life would be like this. We all have moments when we have one foot in the world and one foot in the Kingdom, one hand holding God's and the other holding money/power/people. I wanted to have everything. Jesus was not my only Pearl.

Then, I ended my first semester with a 3.4 GPA. Even though I'd been Valedictorian in one of the tiniest schools ever, I still had delusions of the unshakable awesomeness of my brain. That even at UT, I could do everything and still make the grades I wanted to make. That wasn't the case.

Don't get me wrong, a 3.4 is not awful. Having a 3.4 instead of a 4.0 is definitely a "first world" problem (as many girls don't even get to go to school), but at the time, being the product of the first-world system and the middle-class family that I was, I felt like my world was shattering. My identity was gone. I wasn't the best. I wasn't even close. I was one of 50,000 students who had all been at least the top 10% in their high schools, and I was competing against them. Sure, I was in an honors program, but so were many others...some who had already started their own nonprofits that cured AIDS and written a Tony award-winning play about it (maybe slightly exaggerating there).

And then my idolatry smacked me in the face. In high school, I had grown to love Jesus. But I still wanted to love the things of this world. I wanted to be the Christian girl, the beloved girl, the smart girl, the successful girl, and the creative girl. The blow to my pride in the form of a 3.4 GPA was almost more than I could take, as pathetic as that sounds. The kind of girl I wanted to be was not the kind of girl who had a 3.4. She was the girl who had a 4.0, yet somehow managed to still be the lead in a play, a leader in a Christian organization, an intramural sports player, obtain a coveted internship, learn a foreign language, and study abroad...perhaps even obtain a perfect boyfriend while doing so.

When all this did not just magically happen, I needed to reevaluate who I was. Who I wanted to be. In a one-stoplight town, there are seemingly only so many choices, but in a big, diverse city like Austin, you can be whoever you want. The possibilities are endless, and you can always find people to agree with you. You have to throw the sand away and choose your pearl.

If this were your typical "success" story, I would say it was all an uphill trajectory from there. That I chose to be a follower of Christ and stuck with it. That I got my head in the game, as Zac Efron would say in High School Musical 3, and never got out of it. By God's grace, my GPA got much better, it's true; I whittled down the things that were good and focused on things that were best; Father blessed me with brothers and sisters who walked beside me through good and bad.

But the truth is, even now at any moment I know I am just a change, a mood swing and a bad choice away from being facedown in an omelet. There were still awkward moments after that, over omelets or pancakes or other late-night fare. There were entire months when I genuinely believed God didn't want me to be happy or care about me. There were times when I got angry at people who had been nothing but good to me, when I had thoughts that I'd be ashamed to tell even the devil, when I let my joy succumb to worry. When I found out I would officially be going overseas for 2 years, my first reaction after the momentary rejoicing was to cry my eyes out. Fear gripped my heart, I'm ashamed to say, more strongly than the love and faithfulness of my Savior.

And so often, it still does. I constantly struggle to love the people I should love easily. I'm faced with the prospect of yet more dear friends leaving our city, after saying goodbye to so many local friends going off to college. I'm faced with the prospect of nothing being the same when I get back home in a year, the uncertainty of where I will live and who will be there for me. That all-too-familiar demon of loneliness always hovers close at hand, never quite vanquished and always ready to pounce. That fear of being alone for the rest of my life, of never having permanent community, of always bouncing around without clear direction or purpose or guidance. There's that too.

My point in saying all this is: I haven't arrived. You haven't either. I know that every day I'm growing more and more, growing in freedom and love and peace. But we've never arrived until we cross over that river and possess the kingdom prepared for us since the creation of the world. As long as we are here, we are sojourners. There is no destination here, only the journey. Here, we travel, we grow, we struggle, we sin, we love, we forgive, we taste and experience the kingdom we have not yet fully known or possessed, and sometimes we pass out in omelets. And the minute we think we have sufficiently distanced ourselves from that omelet is the minute we slip on a giant one that just happens to be frying on the sidewalk. And we think we've made a big fat gooey mess of our lives.

Thankfully, Jesus has an even bigger spatula.

"I am Eighty-Two Years Old!"

Yesterday I met a beautiful woman.

We were walking around a park, witnessing the creation both of the Father and of His "sub-creators," as J.R.R. Tolkien would say. 

We loved watching the mothers strolling around with their babies while the elderly, behatted, sometimes bespectacled people sat around stone tables, chatting and playing games.

In one gazebo, we saw yet another group of sweet elderly people. But one of them, rather than staring or even smiling, actually beckoned us to come over. The wrinkles deepened in the corners of her eyes as she waved her fragile yet strong hands.

As we walked in, she and her friends began laughing; she jumped up and down and clapped her hands for joy. Her friends gathered round to take pictures with us, but she was interested in more than that.

She wanted to dance.

So she grabbed my friend's hand and began twirling herself around, laughing the whole time. She then skipped over to another friend, and then another, grabbing each person's hands and twirling.

When she would stop to take a picture with one of us, she would wrap her wrinkled arms around our unwrinkled faces, deepening her own wrinkles with even more laughter.

And then, as I began conversing with her, she clapped and jumped up and down as she said, 

"I am eighty-two years old!"

Her friends laughed and commented on how happy she was; I commented on how healthy she was. She couldn't care less about our comments, regardless of their content. She was too busy dancing.

When I turn eighty-two years old, I want to look back on eighty-two years of softening and enlarging my heart, of keeping it open to my Creator and to all people but closed to cynicism, of keeping it open to thankfulness and grace but closed to self-pity. I want to laugh and clap.

I want to be too busy dancing.

Why Meeting in Homes is Great

Having church anywhere is awesome, but I thought I would just compile some of the reasons I love meeting in homes:

1. Your can have a dog in your lap.

2. You can drink coffee while listening to the lesson.

3. The coffee is free.

4. You can have refills.

5. Sometimes people bake muffins.

6. They are also free.

7. If your baby starts crying, no need to take him outside; someone else will be glad to hold him for you or at least help you cheer him up. Everyone around you is your friend, after all.

8. If that doesn't work, you can always stuff a free muffin in his mouth.

9. Just kidding. Do not stuff a muffin in your baby's mouth.

10. A/C too high? You don't just have to sit there and bear it in your dress and high heels ("why didn't I bring a cardigan?"). The blankets are in the basket over there.

11. Oh, and by the way, you're probably not wearing high heels because you took them off at the door. Or you were smart and didn't bring them. Or you're even smarter and don't own a pair.

12. When you walk in, you are prepared to listen, but also have the comfort in knowing you will be listened to.

13. Flexibility. If someone has an urgent need, everyone stops right then and there to lift it up. If a song is laid on someone's heart, it can be sung. If a word is laid on someone's heart, it can be read or said.

14. Not. Intimidating.

15. Inviting someone to your home feels easy and natural anyway.

16. The bathroom is, like, right there. Which is good because you just had about 3 cups of coffee.

17. I should probably also say something about the whole authentic community thing.

18. People genuinely knowing you, and yet still loving you, is an awesome feeling.

19. You genuinely knowing other people, and finding that you are now willing to forgive, love, and work at relationships where before you would have run away, is an awesome feeling.

20. And even if no one else in the home loves you, at least you still have the dog in your lap.


None of this works, though, unless people are willing to make it work. The home is not some magic place in which people suddenly stop sinning or being selfish. We have to be willing to get into each other's messes and actually enter into each other's lives, to care for each other as family and sacrifice for each other. To give until it hurts, and receive until it hurts our pride.

Because Jesus makes his home in us, we make our home in each other. And that is how the world knows our true home is elsewhere.

Hold on to your heart

Hold on to your heart
though others may say
a big heart
will just bring pain one day

Hold on to it
though so many believe
it's better to rip it out
while you grieve

The Maker rejoices
when searching he sees
One heart that still
refuses to freeze

One heart unashamed
to know others' pain
That for so many, so often,
dying is gain

One heart that can still
rejoice in a small
victory that to others
may not matter at all

One heart that can still
with warmth wrap its arm
around another
who can return nothing but harm

One heart that is steady
assured, brave, and strong
to stay and fight
when leaving wouldn't be wrong

Don't listen to those
who would have you hide
who are made uncomfortable
by your lack of pride

Don't listen to those
who think it is strange
that you leave such power
in such close range

When a heart is on fire
it can raise dry bones
bring life from death
warm flesh from stones

Some think it a danger
inconvenient to care
But their cold hearts are now
even now in death's snare

The heart is a weakness
or so it's perceived
but only by the heart
has one ever believed

And only by love
can we overcome hate
can we overcome death
and re-learn to create

So hold on to your heart
though the whole world may mock
though your cross may become
a laughingstock

Your heart is a treasure
a wellspring to guard
to cultivate and nurture -

Don't let it grow hard.

The Vision

So this guy comes up to me and says "what's the vision? What's the big idea?" I open my mouth and words come out like this… The vision?

The vision is JESUS – obsessively, dangerously, undeniably Jesus.

The vision is an army of young people.

You see bones? I see an army. And they are FREE from materialism.

They laugh at 9-5 little prisons. They could eat caviar on Monday and crusts on Tuesday. They wouldn't even notice. They know the meaning of the Matrix, the way the west was won. They are mobile like the wind, they belong to the nations. They need no passport.. People write their addresses in pencil and wonder at their strange existence. They are free yet they are slaves of the hurting and dirty and dying. What is the vision ? The vision is holiness that hurts the eyes. It makes children laugh and adults angry. It gave up the game of minimum integrity long ago to reach for the stars. It scorns the good and strains for the best. It is dangerously pure.

Light flickers from every secret motive, every private conversation. It loves people away from their suicide leaps, their Satan games. This is an army that will lay down its life for the cause. A million times a day its soldiers choose to lose that they might one day win the great 'Well done' of faithful sons and daughters.

Such heroes are as radical on Monday morning as Sunday night. They don't need fame from names. Instead they grin quietly upwards and hear the crowds chanting again and again: "COME ON!"
And this is the sound of the underground
The whisper of history in the making
Foundations shaking
Revolutionaries dreaming once again
Mystery is scheming in whispers
Conspiracy is breathing… This is the sound of the underground

And the army is discipl(in)ed.

Young people who beat their bodies into submission.

Every soldier would take a bullet for his comrade at arms. The tattoo on their back boasts "for me to live is Christ and to die is gain".

Sacrifice fuels the fire of victory in their upward eyes. Winners. Martyrs. Who can stop them? Can hormones hold them back? Can failure succeed? Can fear scare them or death kill them?


And the generation prays


like a dying man with groans beyond talking, with warrior cries, sulphuric tears and with great barrel loads of laughter! Waiting. Watching: 24 – 7 – 365.

Whatever it takes they will give: Breaking the rules. Shaking mediocrity from its cosy little hide. Laying down their rights and their precious little wrongs, laughing at labels, fasting essentials. The advertisers cannot mould them. Hollywood cannot hold them. Peer-pressure is powerless to shake their resolve at late night parties before the cockerel cries.

They are incredibly cool, dangerously attractive


inside.


On the outside? They hardly care. They wear clothes like costumes to communicate and celebrate but never to hide. Would they surrender their image or their popularity? They would lay down their very lives - swap seats with the man on death row - guilty as hell. A throne for an electric chair.

With blood and sweat and many tears, with sleepless nights and fruitless days,
they pray as if it all depends on God and live as if it all depends on them.

Their DNA chooses JESUS. (He breathes out, they breathe in.) Their subconscious sings. They had a blood transfusion with Jesus. Their words make demons scream in shopping centres. Don't you hear them coming? Herald the weirdo's! Summon the losers and the freaks. Here come the frightened and forgotten with fire in their eyes. They walk tall and trees applaud, skyscrapers bow, mountains are dwarfed by these children of another dimension. Their prayers summon the hounds of heaven and invoke the ancient dream of Eden.

And this vision will be. It will come to pass; it will come easily; it will come soon. How do I know? Because this is the longing of creation itself, the groaning of the Spirit, the very dream of God. My tomorrow is his today. My distant hope is his 3D. And my feeble, whispered, faithless prayer invokes a thunderous, resounding, bone-shaking great 'Amen!' from countless angels, from hero's of the faith, from Christ himself. And he is the original dreamer, the ultimate winner.

Guaranteed.

 
-- 24-7prayer.com

Wake Up.

"Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you." Ephesians 5:14

I have been meditating on this verse for a long time. Thankfully, it is not just a command to us; it is also a promise for others:

"Your dead shall live; their bodies shall rise. You who dwell in the dust, awake and sing for joy!" Isaiah 26:19

Jesus has awakened me, and I am thankful. But I want the other dead to live as well, to wake up and embrace the lives they have been given rather than live in fear. Why do we have so many dead people walking around?

How many people I know who have resigned themselves to occupations they don't like, to hating work and then drinking alcohol to forget work and then drinking coffee in the morning to stay alive for work. Students hate school and yet let it master them, being anxious and jealous, never feeling smart enough or good enough, and putting down fellow students to make themselves feel better. Americans eat well, drink well, and work hard, and yet are starving.

What is wrong with us? Have we no hope? We only have 80-something years to live if we're lucky, and we're spending it like this? And all too often, if we do quit school and go off to "find ourselves" or "truly live," we only end up in poverty, drinking all the time to forget our actual lives. Why are we so dead, and how do we resurrect ourselves?

I thought about how to best sum this up. Of course, Jesus is the one who conquered death, who raises us from the dead, and who will grant us eternal and abundant life. But what is it about Jesus that makes his promises so eternal and steadfast? Faith, Hope, and Love. It's no coincidence that "faith, hope, and love abide (1 Corinthians 13:13)." What does "abide" mean? It can also be translated as "remain" or "will last forever." Haha! I think we have found our definition of LIFE! We need to put ourselves in situations where faith is necessary, hope is possible, and love is a choice. Life must be so uncertain that we have to live by faith. We must be working so much for change that we allow ourselves to hope again. And we must surround ourselves with people we choose to love, not people we are genetically predisposed to love or people who are exactly like us. This is how to come alive.

We'll just take a hypothetical person. She graduated in the top 10% and now studies at UT, where she feels mediocre because she is no longer "the smart girl" in class. She's only average here. So she joins a sorority trying to find belonging and meaning, but instead only feels more insecure as she tries to fit the mold of a beautiful, successful, intelligent, "all-around" kind of girl. She is enslaved to comparing herself to others. Then she graduates to work in a PR firm, where she still fails to find meaning because she spends her day helping a corrupt client gloss over its human rights violations. At the end of the day she goes out for drinks with her girlfriends, laughing unnaturally, telling herself she is living the good life but wishing she could meet just one decent guy at these bars she frequents who won't just abandon her. She's too scared to leave the country or to even talk to people who are different from her (not to mention her friends would think she is weird). And she wonders...is this the American Dream?

Let's take that same girl and instill her with faith, hope, and love. Going to UT is still really hard, and she fights the urge to feel that she's worth nothing compared to the many successful friends she's made. But rather than giving into the temptation of self-hatred, she decides to have faith that she has a purpose here and hope that she will fulfill it. She realizes that she can study her hardest and there will still always be people who seem more intelligent than her...but then, when she looks at Jesus and at what He values instead of what the world values, she begins to look at her hands rather than her body or even brain. She puts these hands to use loving people, using her communications skills to teach English to refugee families and hanging out with unloved people on the streets. She finds peace with who she is, and therefore continues to have peace when she graduates and looks toward her uncertain future in a struggling job market. Although she ends up waiting a while to find a job and endures many moments of feeling she has failed her parents, God, and herself, she eventually begins doing PR work for a local nonprofit that helps the homeless. She still hasn't found the love of her life or, for that matter, her dream job, but is resting in God's promises and learning that his love is more than enough. She is now studying a foreign language and dreams of ending poverty in that area of the world.

Is her life any easier? Not by a long shot. But is it more abundant? Does it have eternal significance? You bet. The first version of this girl was deadened and saddened, while the second version was awakened to her true calling and purpose.

What's sad is, some of you will read this and then go away thinking it doesn't apply to you. "Well, I AM one of the few who is called to be rich and comfortable" or "That sounds nice, but being idealistic gets you nowhere." When Jesus says he has come that we may have LIFE and have it to the full, what does he say before that? "The enemy comes to steal and kill and destroy" (John 10:10). The lives of Americans are being stolen and destroyed, and quite successfully. We're perpetuating the enemy's deceit and theft through the paths we encourage our children to take and the lies we continue to tell ourselves - namely, that comfort and security will bring us the abundant life. They never have and never will.

I have to add one more thing here, along the lines of comfort and security. If God has told you to do something and you haven't obeyed because you "love your family too much," you are flat-out sinning...not to mention missing the abundant life God has for you. Whether you are close to your mother and father and don't want to leave them, or whether you want to "protect" your children by raising them in the United States rather than, say, Uganda, it is still sin if God has tugged your heart elsewhere. We are commanded to love others above ourselves, and we are to honor our father and mother and care for our children - these things are true. But Jesus says very straightforwardly, "Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me" (Matthew 10:37). And he means it. Probably when you have said these excuses to fellow Christians in our culture, you have been met with understanding smiles and nods: of course you should feel that way and it is only natural and of course God can't expect you to put your kids in danger. But disobeying God is far worse than taking your kids to Africa.

That said, God certainly does not want you to abandon your family in their time of need. 1 Timothy 5:8 says, "But if anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever." If you have a child, it is your top priority to provide for him or her, and if you have elderly parents whose health is failing, likewise. Although there are many who have been called to go and yet stay, there are also some who are itching to change the world but in the process neglect the responsibilities God has already given them. Remember what Jesus says in Luke 16:10: "Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much." Be a faithful steward of what you have now, and trust that if God has given you dreams he will fulfill them in his timing and as your faith grows.

If you do not yet have a family and are waiting to obey God until he provides you with a husband or wife to comfort you, this too is a sin that betrays a lack of faith in the sufficiency and providence of Christ. Luke 16:10 also applies to you. And there is a second part to those two verse at the top that I want you to notice: "Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you." "...You who dwell in the dust, awake and sing for joy!" When God wakes us up from our safe and comfortable lives and sends us on uneasy journeys that require faith, hope and love that can only come from him, He also shines on us and gives us joy. He provides everything. When I think of the phrase "shine on you," I think of the sun with its warmth, happiness, and comfort. If Christ shines on us, it is as if he turns his face to us in approval, and his blessings come down just like rays from the sun. And when we awake, we then sing for joy because Jesus fills us with such abundant life that we are about to burst with blessing.

So believe his promises, and ask him right now what waking from your sleep and rising from the dead mean for you. You may need to simply notice someone you ignore on the street each day, you may need to change jobs, or you may even need to move your entire family overseas. Are you living the abundant life?

We Need You.

I think a lot of people have left the church because they have either felt useless or abused. We have corrupted the image of the Body as a group of interlinked, codependent parts, and instead have exalted some parts above others. This is my humble plea as a member of an aching Body in America.

Many people spend years consuming sermon after sermon and song after song without ever knowing the satisfaction of working for the Lord, walking in the good works He has prepared in advance for them to do (Ephesians 2:10). Sometimes this is out of laziness, but I think more often it's because they don't feel needed or equipped. Even though "His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness" (2 Peter 1:3), we sometimes believe the lie that we are simply dangling limbs being carried by the preacher rather than active, moving parts of a dynamic Body. We sometimes feel that a seminary degree is a prerequisite for service, even though such a requirement is never found in Scripture. In fact, Paul, even though he proves at the Areopagus that he is certainly knowledgeable about Greek culture and philosophy, deliberately tries to suppress all knowledge not related to the Gospel when preaching because he has "resolved to know nothing while he was with [them] except Jesus Christ and him crucified" (1 Corinthians 2:2). Wow. So just know that simple fact and you're ready to do some pretty amazing stuff.

The fact is, no single part of the Body is expendable. You are not expendable, and we are depending on you to fulfill the mission Christ has for you specifically. All have infinite value and God promises to use every branch that is connected to the vine of Christ to bear fruit - in other words, to heal souls in the same ways Christ did while He was here (John 15:5). What an incredible mission, and what an terrible tragedy that people connected to Christ forget they have this power! So many have turned away because it's so easy for us to doubt our worth simply because a few other people (who have but a breath in their lungs and wither like the grass, according to God!) make us feel small. Don't believe the lie any longer that you're just a money-spewing consumer at church, because you are in fact a vital part of the mission of expanding the Kingdom of God on earth.

Those who have not necessarily felt expendable have been abused. Abuse can come in many forms - gossip, taking others for granted, or prejudice, to name a few. Some have been taken advantage of because of their willingness to volunteer for the jobs no one else will do. Some have been the victims of people who care more about what they can offer (ex. money and time) than about who they are as beloved children. Others have attended "prayer meetings" only to find that they were really gossip groups, or been looked down upon because of teen pregnancy or family problems. Whatever the cause, many have been wounded. And so many attempt to continue their relationship with God without the Church.

The problem is, we can't live in obedience to God if we do not meet with believers regularly, nor can we be filled up with all the blessings He promises us. Not only does He command that we "not give up meeting together" (Hebrews 10:25), but He has formed us to need each other. You not only need us, but we need you! Solomon, the wisest man in the Old Testament, knew this well as he wrote in Ecclesiastes, "Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their work; if one falls down, his friend can help him up. But pity the man who falls and has no one to help him up!" Not to mention that we are told God will be in our very midst if we have two or more gathered in His name. Jesus was hurt by many, many people, even his closest friends, and yet He didn't use that as an excuse to wall himself in on all sides.

This doesn't mean that you should fling your burdens on people who can't bear them. Deliberately look for people who are truly following God, who love Him as you do. I promise they do exist. Dare to dream of a group in which each member "considers others better than himself...not looking to [his] own interests, but also to the interests of others" (Philippians 2). I promise you're not the only person who desires this. In fact, talk to just about any Christian, and she longs for a deeper, intimate community of believers that is upheld by trust and purity. We all want this. We all want to be surrounded by "a great cloud of witnesses" so that we can "throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles" (Hebrews 12:1). Forgive those who have hurt you, as Christ has commanded, and dare to allow yourself to be loved again.

We need you back. Unfortunately, churches (because they're made of people, and groups of people in general tend to do this) sometimes act like clubs that require a rite of passage. Take all those reproaches you've heard in the past for not going to church and throw them away. I know this sounds funny because I myself am encouraging you to go to church, but what I mean is that often we invite people to church with an attitude that it's "their obligation" or "their duty," and we take it as an opportunity to demonstrate what good Christians we are by inviting them. BUT our attitude really needs to be one of need, not giving a guilt trip! We NEED you back in the Body. We need more people to encourage us and who will run the race for God with us. God has appointed you to minister to people. There are so many hurting souls who have yet to hear the good news, so many hungry waiting to be fed both physically and spiritually, so many young people who need you to disciple them, so many older people who need you to inject fresh, youthful passion for the Lord into their hearts. So many who would LOVE to have you in their lives and share your struggles and triumphs.

"Now the body is not made up of one part but of many. If the foot should say, 'Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,' it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body...The eye cannot say to the hand, 'I don't need you!' And the head cannot say to the feet, 'I don't need you!'...But God has combined the members of the body and has given greater honor to those that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other." - 1 Corinthians 12

Posters

In this apartment, our posters like to fall off the walls. Frances and I have lived here for almost a full year now, with many days punctuated by shiny rectangles of inspiration crashing to the floor. Those double-sided Scotch squares never hold, white sticky tack never holds...and we even got that annoying orange Elmer's sticky tack that stains the walls, and it never holds.

I was proud of one poster in my room that had never fallen. It's right above my desk. It's a picture of a serene seascape with clouds up ahead and mountains in the distance. Your point of view is from a beach with a docked boat. The boat is pointing at this awesome jungle-y looking island looming in the distance, like Madagascar. It looks awesome. It's like a giant forested thumb rising out of the ocean. It makes you want to grab that boat and sail to that thumbish island, until you look down at your glowing screen and remember the English paper you're writing and your ears reawaken to the lovely Cain & Abel's soundtrack downstairs.

But then I came home the other day to discover that it had finally fallen.

And you know, the funny thing about these posters is that once they've fallen, they never stay up as well again. No matter how you re-roll the sticky tack and firmly press the shiny sheet against the off-white wall, it's always so much easier for the poster to fall down the second time, and the third time. My beautiful poster had held up almost a whole year before falling, but now that it's fallen off the wall once, it's far more likely to succumb to gravity again. It may take only a few days.

"Let us not lose heart in doing good, for in due time we will reap if we do not grow weary."

There's probably something you're struggling with, something that keeps tugging at you. Something you've been fighting for years. We all have our temptations, addictions, and rough pasts. You've been consistently practicing self-control and giving your burdens to Him, sharing little daily victories with God. But maybe right now that thing looks really good, or maybe you've hit a rough spot with God and just don't care much about pleasing him right now. Maybe now it's hard for you to have hope that you will reap rewards because it doesn't look like God is taking care of you.

Please don't fall. Don't allow gravity to take hold of you. The thing is, once you've taken one fall after climbing up for so long, it's so easy to fall again...and again...and again. We kinda have a lot in common with thin sheets of paper when it comes to God. I mean, we are that weak compared to His strength. Because we live in a world that is often hostile to Truth and Love, we constantly have to fight, but the gravity pulls and pulls and won't stop until we die. We get tired, and it's understandable. We're flimsy by ourselves, with no foundation and no purpose. No matter how independent we like to pretend we are, we need to be held up by our Mighty Fortress. Day by day by difficult day.

There will be times when we have no idea why we're following Him anymore, when we have no idea why we continue to obey. That kind of obedience is best, the kind that seems to go unrewarded, that pushes through when there appears to be no incentive from God and every possible reward from the world.

In The Screwtape Letters, a demon says,
"Be not deceived, Wormwood, our cause is never more in jeopardy than when a human, no longer desiring but intending to do our Enemy's will, looks round on a universe in which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys."

Keep holding on. Trust. TRUST. Don't fall back into what you were saved from. This could be one of the most important stages of healing - when your temptation is being flung in your face with all its riches, with all its seductive power...and succumbing looks so good, or so easy, or even the only option. Of course the enemy would love to make you fall, right when you're about to reach the top and conquer what he's enslaved you to, right when God is about to do something so great that you would not believe it even if He told you. Remember who is the author of lies and who is the author of Truth.

"No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him."

Hold on, and God will blow you away.