Quiet Time

"Be still and know that I am God." - Psalm 46:10

This week I was asked to house parent for the week for six beautiful girls. So that is what I have been doing this week, parenting. I do not have any adventures to share or any real crazy stories to tell, but that is life is it not? I am learning what it is like to be a mom. I am wrong a lot, I do not do things the way the girls are used to, I clean the same things over and over, I have not gotten through a day with a clean shirt, but it has been in this time of uneventful work that I am learning most.

I am discovering two things that I would like to share. The first is that I am selfish. Have I ever done something for God not because it was my duty, nor because there was anything in it for me besides my love for God? I love the song by Sidewalk Prophets “Live like that”. It talks about a life that is recklessly abandoned, holding nothing back. I feel like there are times when it seems as if God watches to see if I will give Him abandoned tokens of how genuinely I love Him. I think sometimes I focus more on looking holy than acting holy. Abandon to God is of more value than personal holiness. So I must set to work each day because of my love for Him and nothing else. It is never a question of being of use, but of being of value to God Himself. When I am abandoned to God, He works through me all the time.

The second thing I am learning in this week uneventful day to day living is that this is when I must dig deeper and take root in truth. How I long to live a life that never stops seeking the Lord tenaciously. Tenacity is more than endurance, it is endurance combined with the absolute certainty that what we are looking for is going to happen. Tenacity is more than hanging on, which may be but the weakness of being too afraid to fall off. I am called to be spiritually tenacious, not just to hang on and do nothing, but to work deliberately on the certainty that God is not going to be defeated. And in this time of waiting on the Lord to speak, I must remain hopeful. If my hopes are being disappointed just now, it means that they are being purified. “There is nothing noble the human mind has ever hoped for or dreamed of that will not be fulfilled.” – Oswald Chambers. One of the hardest concepts to grasp is the strain in waiting for God. “Because thou has kept the world of my patience.”

Jesus loves the little children

“None of us liveth to himself.” Romans 14:7

God is good all the time. But last week I struggled with Him. I am sure most of you know the song, ‘Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world, red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in His sight. Jesus loves the little children of the world.’ But I saw something last week that, for a moment, really made me doubt that simple truth. We went to visit the children’s hospital. I knew it would be tough seeing sick children. What I was not prepared for was the room full of sick children with no parents sitting with them or visiting them. Some of the children were there for months with TB and had parents who rarely visited. Some had been left there because there bills were too high. As we handed out beanie babies to the children, I just looked at them and felt hopeless for them. Does someone love them? We proceeded to the next wing and entered a room with several babies laying in beds. They looked perfectly fine, so I asked the nurse what was wrong with them and she replied, “Nothing, they were just abandoned here and have nowhere else to go.” So these babies lay in bed all day. I went to pick one up, who was probably a couple months old, and he just shook in fear because he was not used to being held. He did not have someone to love him and hold him.

 At first I was so upset at God for allowing this to happen to an innocent child. But as I sat there praying and journaling, I thought of the kids that I am responsible for. I have thirteen lives that I am supposed to provide for emotionally, spiritually, mentally, and physically. I was convicted because there are days that my selfish attitude does not allow me to provide well for them. So they suffer, like the children in the hospital, when I do not let the love of God shine through me because of my sin or I become lazy because I am tired. My goal each day needs to be to give 100% for the Lord, to be broken bread for Him. It is not good enough to say, "I am here helping the orphans so that is good enough". My life as a worker is the way I say “thank You” to God for his unspeakable salvation.

One Month

1 Corinthians 1:7-9, "God himself is right alongside to keep you steady and on track until things are all wrapped up by Jesus. God, who got you started in this spiritual adventure, shares with us the life of his Son and our Master Jesus. He will never give up on you. Never forget that." the Message.

I have lived in Africa for one month now. I am sitting here trying so hard to think of something profound that I have learned or something really spiritual to say, because that is what missionaries are supposed to do right? For the first time in my life, I am at a loss for many words. The truth is, this last week I have been really homesick. The culture shock has worn off and I am settling into a schedule and routine. A schedule and routine that is completely new, and contains nothing from my life in the United States. It has been a roller coaster of emotions because I am still experiencing new and exciting things, but also missing things from home.

Today in church Louie, one of the missionaries, spoke on idolatry. He used the reference of Jeremiah 2:13, “My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.” This homesickness that I am experiencing is causing me to realize how much worth I put in relationships back home, comfortability, and familiarity. So now, that these things are not so easily accessible in my life, I am realizing that they truly never satisfied my heart in the first place.  Time and again, I have looked to relationships to fill me up. I am learning, that God truly is the only one who can satisfy the deepest part of my soul. Everything else is a broken well that cannot hold what will satisfy me. It will leak and run dry. I will run dry if the Lord is not who I depend on for my every need and also the satisfaction of my soul and its deepest desires.

Here in Africa, my soul must be rejuvenated with my imagination of God. It says in Isaiah 40:26, “Lift up your eyes on high, and behold who hath created these things.” Isaiah was reminding the Israelites to take their eyes off the idols they had created, and look at all the Lord had created, nature. I am blessed to be in such a beautiful place to be reminded of this lesson. My idolatry causes me to lose sight of all that God has done, and my imagination of God is starved, and when I am up against difficulties I have no power and can only endure in darkness. Lord please awaken this dead heart and help me to turn from the face of my idols!

 I love this quote from Oswald Chambers, “Imagination is the power God gives a saint to posit himself out of himself into relationships he ever was in”.

Mother

“’As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort You.’ says the Lord.” Isaiah 66:13.

This past weekend I experienced my first time of house mothering six children all by myself for four days. Let me confess something, I am SO ignorant about parenting, and I definitely do not feel mature enough to be responsible for six lives. If I had a reality show about this whole experience, it would be called “I just cleaned that!”. I learned that kids are the experts in this situation. Experts in making a mess, experts in pushing boundaries, experts in trying your patience, experts in ignoring you, but most importantly, experts in making you love them no matter what. The love I am developing for these children is the love of a parent, unconditional love. Love that is so deep, that it almost hurts your soul.

There was a point in the weekend where I asked one of the girls to go do something, and she told me she wanted to do it her way, not mine. It made me think of my attitude in serving. When God asks me to do something, do I continue to seek His guidance and provision or do I set out on my own path? I am learning this humbling lesson through parenting, that God has to destroy my determined confidence in my own convictions, “I know this is what I should do” and suddenly the voice of God speaks in a way that overwhelms me by revealing the depths of my ignorance. I have shown my ignorance of Him in the way I serve Him. I serve Jesus in a spirit that is not His, I hurt Him by my advocacy for Him because it is not of Him. My words sound all right, but my spirit is that of the enemy. “He rebuked them, and said, ‘Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of.” If I feel I have done my duty in serving Him, and yet have hurt Him, it was not truly my duty because it has not fostered a quiet spirit, but the spirit of self-satisfaction. Sometimes I imagine that whatever is unpleasant is my duty. But, my attitude should always be “I delight to do Thy will, O my God!”.

Thankfully God is good all the time. And, at least in my life, He has a great sense of humor. There are definitely rights of passages one experiences when being welcomed into motherhood. I had the pleasure of experiencing one during church when the one year old bit off the end of her bottle and shook its contents all over my shirt and then not more than an hour later continued to pee through her diaper all over my lap. Needless to say I did not have a lot of people come up and talk to me after church. But I found no greater purpose in my life than in this last weekend because it was ordained by my Father who loves me like one of these children.