Several of my friends are involved in summer missions; many of them overseas. This has brought about a challenge in my heart to be diligent in prayer for them. It has been a sweet time though as I've had the blessing to hear updates of answered prayer and God's faithfulness!
There is a team leaving for Peru at the end of this month. One of the girls recently posted an update on her blog which is so full of great wisdom! I wanted to share it:
Hello, I just wanted to shoot out a quick update as the trip is right around the corner. I’m so thankful to many of you who have been reminding me that you are praying for me and the Yagua people! I’m so excited to see and report how God uses those prayers!
Preparation has consisted of mostly checking little things off of a packing list. Since we’ll be spending at least a week continually traveling in the jungle, we have to plan to carry a week’s worth of food, a tent, pills to purify water, etc…Haha getting vaccinated for a few various diseases has also been intriguing The most exciting was ingesting pills for typhoid fever with the live bacteria inside. Many very random precautions had to be taken (such as refrigeration, empty stomach, and the temperature of the water with which they are swallowed) to insure the capsule remained intact and the bacteria was not released until reaching my small intestine where antibodies can be made effectively. Interesting huh?!
Not surprising, I can see how the Lord has been much more interested in spiritually preparation thus far this summer. Working at a restaurant as a server several nights a week has had an incredible impact on my heart. Never before have I had so many good friends of all races, ages, sexual orientations and lifestyles! These people are absolutely amazing, far more intelligent and talented than I. Many have a great sense of humor and I am continually blown away by their authentic care for me and for each other. Where does their joy come from? Yet I’m confronted with horrific sin and my heart is broken every night as I am surrounded by stories of drugs fixations, broken families, sexual promiscuity, alcohol addictions, etc….Instead of being appalled and completely disgusted, as is my normal response far too often, I am heart-broken. I see their longings, twisted and perverted by the devil, I see their hearts and they remind me so much of my own! The knowledge that I would be exactly as they, hungry, hurting and desperately grasping for fulfillment in the wrong places, apart from solely the grace of God, is such a sobering thought! Never have I felt such intense desire for people to stop giving themselves away to things that leave them hurt and empty when there is all- satisfying joy to be found! Never before have thoughts of hell brought tears to my eyes because I no longer have the ability to imagine hell as a mass populous of unbelievers but these eternally suffers now have all too vivid faces with clear voices and heart-wrenching stories.
How many days are spent so focused on my own ambitions and comfort that I am completely blind to the reality that there are lives at stake? How desperately this truth must sink into my heart that I may be ready always to jump on opportunities to give time and money and anything God’s entrusted me with to make His name known and understood. How desperately the Holy Spirit is needed to even know how to being to communicate the out of this world and unbelievable truths of the gospel.
It is my prayer that God would cultivate in all of us a heart for our neighbors, a sensitivity to their needs which will takes priority over being absorbed in our own. What a desire Christ has to use us as vessels of hope to those we brush shoulders with every day and how exciting is this most high calling that we can be used mightily to further His Kingdom!
“All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilization—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.” C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
No comments:
Post a Comment