The Love Circle

The first part of this is something I initially journaled during my commute to work a couple weeks ago. The latter part fell into place this morning during my extended reflective time with God.

“Esther, let Me love you.”

Those words from our Triune God have been re-echoing again and again in my mind since my birthday evening. And Paraclete {my favorite name for the Holy Spirit} has been helping me realize that, in a way, I don’t even know how to receive His unconditional love.

So it’s been something I have been praying/meditating about some. This morning it came back to mind again as I was in my prayer closet, trying not to fixate on a request I had read that morning via email. Paraclete took me back, once again, to Jesus’ Valedictory Address {John 13-17} and 1 John.

John 15:9-10 came to mind:

“As the Father loved Me, I also have loved you; abide in My love. If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My life, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in His love.”

I found myself wishing very much that Jesus hadn’t put that conditional statement in there!!! Because that’s what ends up becoming a trap to me, again & again & again—trying to feel like I have earned or deserve God’s love based on what I DO. It so easily becomes a point of pride and/or legalism. But there’s another critically important part of that verse! “Just as….”

Jesus’ example and His obedience of the Father are to be our model! And He doesn’t obey out of fear or because He is trying to earn God’s love. Jesus obeys because He is in perfect relationship with the Father and because of all the concepts we read about in Ministry in the Image of God: The Trinitarian Shape of Christian Service! {The first book we read here as part of the Servant Teams curriculum – somewhat dense, but really good with lots of practical application too!}

It’s like the heptapod language—all an interwoven circle.*

So Jesus obeys the Father because He loves Him and because They are eternally in perfect relationship {with Paraclete too, of course!!}. So love should be the driving force of our obedience, not fear & torment (1 John 4:18). But why do we love God? The very next verse tells us—because He first loved us (4:19)! And also 4:10—He showed His love for us by sending Jesus to be our propitiation (the conciliation, the act of making God favorably inclined, appeasing Him).

Abba’s love came to me through the death and sacrifice of Jesus. In my prayer closet this morning, Paraclete showed me that when I’m trying to earn/prove myself worthy of God’s love—by serving, going overseas, etc. etc.—I am acting like Jesus’ love & sacrifice were not sufficient…I am minimalizing the greatest act in all of history and acting like my filthy rags of righteous deeds (Isaiah 64:6) are better.

Oh Abba, forgive me for that egregious misconstrued view!!!

So we abide in God’s love by keeping His commandments out of a heart of love for Him, because He first loved us and reconciled us to Himself. See how it’s like a heptapod* circle??!!! Love is the goal, the means, and the catalyst!

And it’s all about You, Abba—it’s not about me or anything I could ever do.

Abba, I don’t know how to practice and apply this! But I know it is foundational and critically important—I know it’s a game changer if this lesson could sink deep into my heart and become my driving force! Again in my prayer closet, Paraclete reminded me that I can’t give what I haven’t received….

{And at that point I arrived at my destination!}

About a month ago, I joined a small accountability group at a local church here. We are going through a book called The Genesis Process together. It’s focused on helping people deal with the root causes behind addictions or other self-destructive coping behaviors. It keeps on bringing me back to this idea:

And then this morning I started working on the fourth process, and this is how it began:

I definitely learned this lesson the hard way in August 2016. That month, two men who were serving as leaders in both the organization and the church each had to resign because of moral shortcomings. The first one was an especially hard blow to me, as I had been welcomed into his home many times by him and his wife.

I remember crying in the staff meeting when his resignation was announced. And then I went home and sat on the floor of my room and sobbed for probably around 10 minutes. Grieving the brokenness of sin. Grieving the pain I was sure his wife was going through. Grieving my own hurt too. Fighting feelings of a guilt too complex to explain without sharing details of other peoples’ stories.

That day I was so tempted to make a vow of sorts—a vow never again to get so close to another family that I would open myself up to that kind of pain. A vow never to trust and admire someone as I had allowed myself to do with him—because such Christian familial love had wounded me deeply.

I thank God that I stopped myself from making that decision. I knew it was the wrong decision—a decision that would let the enemy win. And so I continued to grow in relationship with many other sisters and couples. But that wound still aches when I think of it. I think I allowed that and other things which began developing around the same time to plant a seed of hopelessness in my heart. I did my best to process and forgive….but somehow I think I closed off a little cupboard of bitterness inside my soul.

Fast forward back to today. Later in the morning, as I was outside processing through some other stuff, my mind made its way back to what I had read in The Genesis Process.

I wrote:

Love & wounding—both are always two-way streets. Except for with God. He is the only One who loves perfectly and never wounds unjustly—with the one, all-important exception of Jesus on the cross.

In a strange, miraculous way that only God could plan, that moment in human history was both the most unjust (towards Jesus, who had done nothing wrong), and yet also the most merciful & gracious & loving towards us—we who had broken all the relationships, who have done all the wounding, who deserve nothing but eternal judgment and yet receive nothing but unconditional love. Such beauty & brokenness at the same time!!!

Now a few hours later, those words bring to mind Hebrews 12:1-3:

“Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. For consider Him who endured such hostility from sinners against Himself, lest you become weary and discouraged in your souls.”

And so I choose to continue opening myself up to love and, yes, even to the risk of human woundedness, because in so doing I am following in the footsteps of the most truly Human person who ever lived—our Savior, Jesus Christ. May His love in and through me glorify and magnify HIS beauty!

*To fully understand this analogy, you have to watch Arrival – it’s an alien film, but I found it to have deep theological undertones looking at it from a Biblical worldview! But to semi-explain the circle bit: Basically in that film, the aliens communicate through a written language made up of circles, with each circle being a phrase/sentence with multiple words...or something like that! See below for an example. The circle is formed by smoke from the heptapod's feet, and so the language is written with foreknowledge of the phrase/sentence as a whole.

Vulnerability, not Pretense

The Church is NOT a good works club, it IS a fellowship of grace! It’s NOT about what we do—period! All we have to do is to receive, openly & vulnerably; to be loved by Jesus. Works-based Christianity does NOT create sustainable faith!

The above paraphrase was the key point of the sermon I heard this morning—a sermon so good I sat through it twice! (I’m attending church with my hostess for the next several months, at Oak Hills Presbyterian Church here on the outskirts of Portland.)

Currently, the church is going through a sermon series on Acts, and this morning’s passage was about 4:32-5:11—the story of the early Church’s lifestyle of radical giving and the death of Ananias and Saphira. Jeremy (the pastor here) made the case that, at root, this passage is not really about money or giving. It’s about a deeper lifestyle choice: Pretense or Vulnerability.

The generous people, including Barnabas, showed their vulnerability by giving up their earthly security for the sake of others – demonstrating that the resurrection of Christ (4:33) had set them free from the self-protective hoarding of resources. The beneficiaries of this generosity also had to practice vulnerability, admitting to their church family that they were facing needs that they couldn’t meet on their own.

The power of Christ created a culture of radical openness and vulnerability for those who found their identity in HIM, rather than in trying to project a false image of themselves to others. Ananias and Saphira, however, made a show of spiritual heroism that was a lie – and for that they were severely punished….by death!

Jeremy talked about the word hypocrite, which comes from the Greek word for actor. In Greek culture, stage actors would wear masks to show their emotions—happy for a joyful scene, sad for a tragic scene, etc. With the masks, they projected what the scene required, while hiding what was really going on underneath.

He concluded his sermon, “the only way to receive grace is by being open and broken, trusting in God’s grace and being real with one another.”

This sermon really struck a chord with me where I am at spiritually right now. I have so very much to be thankful for, so very much to praise God for. But this year, and the past several years before, have each been the successively hardest year of my life. And so I want to share more about that here than I have so far. Not to illicit pity. Definitely not to brag on myself (quite the contrary!). But to testify of God’s Grace.

God has brought the above song to my mind multiple times in the past few months. This is who I want to be. Real and raw, yes, but for the purpose of allowing God to shine His Glory through my brokenness.

As those close to me know, most of this year has been an intense spiritual battle for me. In January I returned to my second home in Uganda, excited for another term…though also with reservations. Before I could even get back into my job at the office, I was hit simultaneously with insomnia, depression, and worse.

For the next six plus months, many days it was a struggle just to get out of bed. It felt like I was constantly fighting a losing battle with hopelessness. After two months with little maintainable progress, I resigned from my position in Uganda, said goodbye to the people who had become my family there, and returned home to Dallas. I’ve become ok over these past months with naming depression as one of my struggles. There were also other struggles I’m still not comfortable naming this publicly.....shame can be a strong enemy. [No physical or emotional harm was maliciously done to me.]

Suffice it to say, the fact that I am currently walking in relationship with God is in itself a testimony to God’s abundant Grace, lavish Love, and constant Pursuit towards me. He did this using so many amazing people both in Uganda, Dallas, and other places who didn’t give up on me…who kept loving me, praying for me, speaking truth to me, and fighting (spiritually) on my behalf. If I started naming names I couldn’t quit…so I won’t start, except to say that my parents are at the top of the list. :)

The fact that a month and a half ago I moved half way across the country, to a place where I personally knew no one; that I am now in an intense program of learning and serving, and that I am {mostly**} flourishing here—that is an unimaginable miracle of Christ’s mercy and transforming power.

When people hear about my life since graduation from college in May of 2013—most of that time spent rooted in the red soil of East Africa—they can quickly and easily tend to put me on a pedestal. I’m here to tell you today, I am NO super hero. I am not applying that title to myself—one well-meaning person has told me that missionaries, me inclusive, are. On the contrary, I am just as flawed and broken as anyone else….if not more so (in the spirit of Paul, expressed in 1 Tim. 1:15). Any good that has come of my life is all God’s Grace.

Yesterday morning, I spent more than three hours journaling…processing…praying…grieving. My Good Shepherd has led me on a road that has been full of both the very good and the very hard in these past five years, since I first knocked on the door labelled “Uganda.” But He has been with me every single step of the way, both on the sunny mountaintops and in the darkest of valleys.

This year’s breakdown didn’t come out of nowhere. It’s seeds were sown from my personality and character flaws…from circumstances and situations which affected me…from my failure to name what I needed and ask for help (at least not until it was too late, humanly speaking)…from organizational and personnel challenges. The pressure really started building in August of 2016…so it was a long time coming.

So that’s my practice at being open and vulnerable. And maybe very few people will take the time to read this. But I process best by writing, and so hopefully composing this blog post will better free my tongue in personal dialogue. Please feel free to ask me questions. Christ’s healing of my heart is finally bringing me to a place of being more willing to speak of these things. But these previous paragraphs are not the whole story.

Here is the “My Story” version:

Hope that wouldn't let go: My Savior never lost a grip on the wheel of my life, even when it looked to me like it was chaotically spinning out of control. And HE has restored my hope in Him, in His time and way.

Love that never gave up: These past three weeks, my Lover has been calling my heart to be willing to receive from Him and from others. Not that I should try to earn or deserve anything, simply to receive…and THEN to give.

Life, but it wasn't mine: “Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s” (1 Cor. 6:19-20).

The grace that is greater than all my sin: If I spoke of God’s Grace—in loving me and redeeming me from sin—for every hour of the rest of my life, I wouldn’t have time to tell it all.

When justice was served: But not to me; to the perfect, sinless Son of God. There are times I want to call “FOUL!” on my life, times I say I wish there had been justice in a given situation. But that’s only because I fail to remember what true justice really demands.

Where mercy wins: Every single day, every breath of my life, is as a result of the mercy of Christ.

The kindness of Jesus that draws me in: The opposite of what I in myself deserve…but He showers His kindness instead.

Victory over the enemy: The victory has already been won!! It’s not my battle to fight—it’s a gift the Christ already waged the war for, that I am simply to allow HIM to apply to and live out in my life.

Freedom that was won for me: Freedom from fear. Freedom from failure. Freedom to be known and to know. To be loved and to love. To be served and to serve. Freedom as a gift from Him, applied by Him, in and through this weak vessel.

Life overcome the grave: Our Savior is RISEN!!! And that resurrection power is at work in each and every one of His children!

This is my story, this is my song,

Praising my Savior all the day long.

One more thing that is finally getting through my thick skull: There WILL be more challenges in my future. More twists & turns in the road. More apparently deep, dark valleys. Maybe even tomorrow. But, Lord help me, when those times come I want to turn more quickly to Your Truth. To root my confidence deeply in You, not in my comfort or things going my way. To say with Mary, “Behold the maidservant of the Lord! Let it be to me according to Your word” (Luke 1:38).

Please join me in praying that for me and, if you dare, maybe for yourself as well.

**Three weeks ago, I heard I had to leave my initial/temporary housing by the end of September. And that I couldn’t move into the house down the street—that I was sure was ideal—because of a logistical detail. My emotions and insecurities proceeded to throw an internal hissy fit. A night of zero sleep followed, and for several days the fear and despair and hopelessness came rolling back over me.

I’m so thankful to our team leaders and my team mates for supporting me through that. And I can now say I’m thankful it happened, because God used it as a catalyst to push me out of the comfortable coasting (from two months of almost all great days) and back onto the road of proactive, intentional healing. Also, in a stroke of divine irony, the new home I moved to, where I initially didn’t want to be, has been an amazing fit and a real gift. So I was fighting God, when of course He knew better all along!!

Confidence

Confidence.

This is a word that has been coming to my mind a lot the past week or so.

Usually, thinking about it makes me think of that song from Sound of Music. You know, the one where a nervous Maria is coming to the Von Trapp family home for the first time. “I have confidence in confidence alone; Besides which you see, I have confidence in me!”

But there’s a pretty big problem with that song. And I have been experiencing it a lot this year. If my confidence is in myself, I set myself up for trouble.

As Paul said in Philippians 3:3-4, we should have no confidence in the flesh, even if humanly speaking we have lots of good reasons to.

This morning I did a brief study about what the Bible says about confidence. And it was both encouraging and convicting! These passages point to having confidence in Christ and in His work in us, not in ourselves.

Here are the passages that my study brought to light. I hope they encourage you as they do me!

Psalm 118:8 – “It is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in man”—including myself!

1 John 3:21 – Our confidence is toward God, not toward ourselves.

Proverbs 3:25-26 – “Do not be afraid of sudden terror, nor of trouble from the wicked when it comes; [when, not if!] For the Lord will be your confidence, and will keep your foot from being caught.”

Proverbs 14:16, 26 – The fool is self-confident, but strong confidence is in the fear of the Lord, a place of refuge to His children.

2 Corinthians 5:5-9 – Our confidence is not in this physical life, but in our spiritual future with Christ. Our aim is to please HIM!

1 John 2:28 – Abiding in Christ gives us confidence!

Hebrews 10:32-39 – Don’t allow suffering and hardship to make you cast away your confidence! Don’t draw back, but continue believing unto salvation!

Ephesians 3:11-13 – Our boldness and confidence come through faith in Christ!! And that enables us to not lose heart in tribulations.

Philippians 1:6 – Be confident in the work that HE is doing in you! It is a good work, one that continues up to His completion.

Hebrews 3:6, 14 – We are called to hold fast our confidence to the end!

2 Thessalonians 3:3-4 – The Lord is faithful to establish and guard us! And so our confidence is in Him.

Psalm 27:1, 3 – “The Lord is my light and my salvation; Whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life; Of whom shall I be afraid?....In this I will be confident”!

1 John 5:14 – We can have confidence that God hears us when we ask according to His will.

And so I’m asking Him to renew my confidence in Him. That I would be steadfast and certain, not in my own talents or abilities—but in His faithfulness and strength. Humbly abiding in Him, not relying in myself. Because “In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and confidence shall be your strength” (Isaiah 30:15).

Being IN CHRIST

This is something that God has been bringing me back around to the past several months….and I am finally sitting down to flesh it out and share it!

It started when the Holy Spirit brought 2 Cor. 5:17 to my mind:

“If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away, behold all things have become new.”

At first I didn’t really think about the conditional that starts out the verse…“IF anyone is IN CHRIST.” But when I noticed it I realized that is the crux! I can’t make myself be renewed or transformed! That is what the Holy Spirit does in me as I rest in and yield to Him!

As I was spiritually chewing on that, the first verse that came to mind was Phil. 3:9—

“and be found IN HIM, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith IN CHRIST, the righteousness which is from God by faith.”

The verse before that gives the context:

“Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ.”

All my achievements, all my striving, all my idols—I am to count them all as loss & rubbish, so that I may gain Christ and be found IN HIM!

So often I fail at that. But the verse that brought this whole idea back to my mind this morning speaks to that!

“There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are IN CHRIST JESUS, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.” (Rom. 8:1)

The following three verses speak to the freedom from the law of sin & death that the Spirit of life IN CHRIST JESUS brings us. This is because Jesus already fulfilled the righteous requirement in us!

So how do we practice being IN CHRIST? My mind immediately jumped to John 15!

Verse four tells us that we can only bear fruit when we are abiding IN CHRIST! And how do we abide in Him? By keeping His commandments (vs. 10). What commandments? Loving one another (vs. 12)!

So love of one another is central to abiding IN CHRIST, which is where freedom is found! But I cannot rightly love others in my own strength…it requires practicing humility, looking out for the interests of others (Phil. 2:4). The next verses command us to have the same mind as was IN CHRIST JESUS: making Himself nothing to serve others. But again, there is no way that I can continually do that in my own strength!!!

The Holy Spirit next took me to Ephesians, where Paul frequently talks about what is positionally true of us IN CHRIST.

• 1:3 We are blessed with every spiritual blessing
• 1:4 We are chosen to be holy and blameless before Him in love.
• 1:6 We are made accepted IN THE BELOVED
• 1:7 We are redeemed and forgiven through His blood, according to the riches of His grace!
• 1:11-12 We obtain an inheritance, one of praising and glorifying Him!
• 1:13-14 Trusting and believing IN HIM seals us with the Holy Spirit, the guarantee of our inheritance
• 1:19-20 IN CHRIST’s resurrection, God works His mighty power…power that is now directed toward us!
• 2:6 We are raised and seated in the heavenly places
• 2:7 We are shown the exceeding riches of His grace and kindness
• 2:10 We are created for good works prepared beforehand
• 2:13 By His blood, we who were far off have been brought near!
• 2:18 through Him (and His finished work), we have access to the Father by the Spirit
• 3:12 We have boldness and access with confidence through faith IN HIM

These are beautiful, precious promises that I want to cling tightly to…especially the next time life throws me a curve ball!

One more passage to finish off with:

“For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, and of love and of a sound mind. Therefore, do not be ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me His prisoner, but share with me in the sufferings for the gospel according to the power of God who has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace which was given to us IN CHRIST JESUS before time began…” (2 Tim. 1:7-9)

Please pray for me in the coming weeks and months, that I would be submitted to Christ, allowing Him to live His life in and through me!!

Waiting on God

God is good – All the time;

All the time – God is good.

While this can be a cliché statement in the church, and thus carries the danger of minimization that clichés can have, it doesn’t change the fact that it is TRUE. And it’s a statement that my mind is reminding my heart of tonight and will continue to do so in the days to come.

On Friday I was informed that my presence was needed (as the minutes taker) at a meeting at our other center starting on Monday. Sunday after church, I found out that the car I was riding in would be departing at 4 a.m. the next morning. No, I wasn’t thrilled…as I’m sure you can imagine! But I’m always excited to spend time with the Kobwin family so I was looking forward to that.

As my mom says, “expectations will get you every time!” :P

I don’t remember when my cough had started this time. I know I came down with congestion & a cough on May 13^th after reporting a long event. But thanks to the nasal adjustment my osteotherapist gave me the next day, lots of vitamins and a few doses of Nyquil, I didn’t feel too bad during my safari trip that Mon-Wed.

This past Sunday afternoon, I again ended up reporting a long event. I came home absolutely exhausted, and at some point the cough had come back. So I took it with me to Kobwin.

In the meantime, one of my sisters here had walked through the painful loss of her first (early-term) pregnancy. She spent almost a week in the hospital before the staff confirmed that the baby was no longer alive or inside. Watching her and her husband walk through that was painful. But in the last week and a half, I have also been encouraged by their example and testimony. No, it’s not easy. It’s HARD. But I’ve seen them lean on God, give their baby back to Him, and grow stronger in their relationship with one another.

So on Monday of this week, I woke up really early and boarded the car. It was packed, since it was also serving as transport for a staff family moving back to that general area. We ended up making three unplanned stops – two dealing with tires (one tire went flat) and another for an hour and a half on the side of the road after a hose pipe busted (or something along those lines). Instead of reaching our destination at lunch time and starting meetings then, our van didn’t reach there until around 6 p.m.

I was exhausted and ready to crash, despite having slept some in the car. But the decision was made to meet from 8-10 p.m. that night. And I was staying with a Ugandan staff member in her house rather than at the guesthouse like I expected. Which was good, because otherwise I would have hardly seen her at all, but it came with its own challenges (namely, bathroom facilities).

I think it was that night that I felt how inadequate I was for the situation – and I started praying for God’s grace to sustain me through the next days. My hostess made apologies for the dust from the roof (papyrus matting) and for the rats that lived in the roof. Thankfully I really didn’t notice the latter, but I think the former exacerbated my cough.

A young boy who came with his dad in the van I was riding in had slept almost all day on Monday. That night, he had a high fever. So as I went to bed that night, that was my prayer focus – as well as thankfulness for a very positive update I had heard in the meeting.

The health of my relationship with God has really been under fire in the past months/year. I’ve kept trying to press through, and I’ve talked about it with my mentor here. But nothing had seemed to be shifting noticeably. In the past 2.5 weeks, I’ve been going through a Beth Moore Bible study, “Believing God,” in preparation for co-leading it with another lady here starting next week. Both this study and a book my mentor and I are reading through has been bringing to life the reminders about God that I’ve needed to hear again.

So on Monday night as I prayed for the little boy, I was so encouraged to notice a difference in my heart’s attitude. There’s not a concrete way to explain it, but my belief and faith were stronger that God could and would intervene, in His time & way. That encouraged my heart, and I know it wasn’t because of ME. It is God’s grace.

The next morning (yesterday), I was so blessed to hear that he was doing ok, and that he and his father had slept well (one of my specific prayer requests).

The meetings started at about 9 a.m. and continued with only three 45-minute breaks until 9 p.m. The heat at Kobwin (especially inside buildings during the day) meant that we met outside. Which also meant that my computer battery life ended up being something of an issue. So during the last two breaks I had to walk a few minutes away to the office, the only place with sockets at the center.

By break time (10:30 a.m., which always includes tea and snacks in Uganda), I noticed that I had a headache. Thankfully I always carry ibuprofen with me, so I took one. And the rest of the day, I found myself watching the clock for when I could take one again. Each one gave me about two hours of relief, enough to carry on my responsibilities, but I was not feeling great.

The meetings finally wrapped up, and I was told we would be getting up at 5 a.m. to leave for the long drive back home to Kasana. Oh bother. I was sad that the hectic schedule meant I had barely said three sentences to any of my friends there other than my hostess. Additionally, one of the families that I’m closest to wasn’t even around, they were on leave (vacation).

I went back to the house where I was staying, packed things up, and got myself to bed as fast as I could since I was once again exhausted. My cough kept me awake longer than I wanted, until the cough drop I took started helping. Then just a few hours later, I awoke again. My skin was hot to my own touch, but I was shivering in violent spurts. I pulled the heavy blanket over me, and tried to pray and sleep again. Twice, as I prayed for peace, I immediately felt my tense, shivering body relax. Thankfully it didn’t take too long to fall back asleep.

We got on the road at around 6 this morning, and thankfully the trip back was much less eventful. The van was also roomier, since obviously we weren’t taking back the load we had carried on the way up. So I was able to stretch out on a bench seat and sleep some. But coughing and the bumpy road were not kind to my headache, in spite of still being on ibuprofen.

We safely reached home at about 2 p.m. This afternoon was our weekly staff fellowship, and I went even though I still didn’t feel great. As I forced myself to unpack to clear off my bed, I couldn’t help but think about how the last time I felt healthy for an extended period of time was probably in early March, before my last Kobwin trip and before rainy season started.

Rainy season here for me brings frequent sneezing fits (especially in the morning) and a drippy nose. Probably a reaction to the cooler temperatures and mold.

An example of the latter: I have a pair of sandals I have worn very frequently over the past year and a half. Recently, I didn’t put them on for a couple weeks because I needed to do a bit of sewing on them to shorten the elastic straps. In the meantime, mold started to grow on my sandals.

On Sunday I had given them a good scrubbing (Oh, maybe that’s why my cough came back??), and they look so clean now! It’s funny how you don’t fully realize just how dirty something has gradually gotten until you clean it thoroughly.

Anyway, It’s been a rough three months, full of ups and downs health-wise. In my room, I have a calendar with the names of God on it. Interestingly, May’s name was Jehovah Rophe, “The God Who Heals.” As I looked at the calendar this evening, preparing to flip it, I had just taken my temperature to find that I have a slight fever for the third or fourth distinct time in the past three months.

My heart wanted to scoff at the promise I had welcomed so hopefully at the beginning of May. But then I re-read May’s verse: “Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits, who forgives all your iniquity; who heals all your diseases” (Psalm 103:2-3). I was struck by the order of that. It’s not God’s physical healing that has priority. No, it’s the spiritual healing that every believer has received which is primary. And it’s on that basis that I can proclaim God’s goodness tonight.

So even when I was struck by another fit of shivering as I wrote this post, even though I still have a fever (101 now), I can and will continue to proclaim God’s goodness. I can and will choose to be thankful for the many blessings I have received from God, which are too innumerable to count. And I can and will rest in my salvation by grace. On our long journey north on Monday, we witnessed multiple evidences of what a blessing that is. But that’s too long of a story for an already-mammoth post. Check out my ministry Facebook page on Friday for that.

As I close tonight, yes I would appreciate your prayers. But I find in my own heart the courage to pray “God, let Your will be done” rather than demanding that I feel perfectly fine when I wake up in the morning. First item on tomorrow’s agenda, sleep in. Second item, go get a malaria test. For the third time in as many months. If it’s like the other two times, the test will come back negative, but I’ll still feel crummy for an unknown length of time. But God is still good, ALL the time.

Thursday evening update: The blood test for malaria did come back positive this time, but that was almost a relief as then the treatment is obvious. I took my second dose this evening, four more to go.

Why Do I Love & Worship?

Happy Resurrection Sunday to all my brothers and sisters! :-)

Today, God has been working something in my heart and mind that I want to share in case it can also encourage/convict others.

Pop Quiz about your knowledge of Bible stories: Which of the two thieves who died on either side of Christ asked to be saved?

Thought about your answer yet? Ok, I’ll wait a minute ;-)

If you’re having trouble remembering, check out Luke 23:39-43 (emphasis mine):

Then one of the criminals who were hanged blasphemed Him, saying "If you are the Christ, save Yourself and us." But the other, answering, rebuked him, saying, "Do you not even fear God, seeing you are under the same condemnation? And we indeed justly, for we receive the due reward of our deeds; but this Man has done nothing wrong." Then he said to Jesus, "Lord, remember me when You come into Your kingdom." And Jesus said to him, "Assuredly, I say to you, today you will be with Me in Paradise."

As you can see, it was the first thief—the blasphemous one—who asked to be saved. I don’t know about you – but that’s not what I would have thought the answer was to that question. If I were some Bible scholar, I would maybe have a better understanding of what was implied by the second thief’s request for Christ to “remember” him. But I’m not…so I don’t.

But this realization in church this morning followed on the heels of a conviction this morning in my ‘prayer closet’ which was along similar themes.

Let me first back up a bit. On Good Friday, I spent a couple hours out under a tree at our Enterprise Farm journaling about something….. something that came up about a year ago from my young childhood. I felt last year that I needed to work through it more, but had delayed and delayed. God used a couple different things to bring it up again last week, and a day off work provided a good opportunity to prayerfully write about it.

As I sat down to write, I wanted to do it from the right perspective and foundation. I didn’t want to write about it out of self-pity or a ‘victim’ mentality. I wanted to write about it in a way to open my heart to Christ’s healing and redemption, which He accomplished on the Cross 2,000 years ago. And so even though I didn’t plan it that way, Good Friday helped me think about it in that framework.

Then yesterday morning I was reading Psalm 67 in my devotional time. I couldn’t help but notice, while I read, that the Psalm talks about urging all nations to praise God…..but it begins and ends with the expectation that God will bless us. So was the admonition to praise God based in selfish motives, just wanting the blessings from Him? My mind noticed it, but then I went on with my day. And when a friend later asked me what Jesus was speaking to me that day, I couldn’t think of anything – I just said I wasn’t listening well enough to hear.

Back to this morning’s conviction. I had been thinking of my friend’s question off and on. And as I was there in my ‘prayer closet,’ Paraclete revealed a piece of my heart. On Friday I felt close to God in a way I haven’t as much recently, because I was bringing to Him something that was weighing on me. I recognized that I needed healing in an area, and I was asking Him to do that in me.

In other words, my motivation was partly/primarily selfish.

So this morning, the question that came to my heart and mind was “Have I been ‘loving’ and ‘worshipping’ God for who He is? Or for what I receive from Him?” In other words, haven’t I been doing the same thing the author of Psalm 67 appears to have been doing?

It’s such an easy trap to fall into. We do need God, desperately. And because He is a loving God, He does enjoy lavishing His children with gifts of His grace (Eph. 1:7-8). But our love for and worship of God should be so much more than that….shouldn’t it?

Because the God we serve is indescribably glorious. Enthroned in Majesty. The Creator and Sustainer of all things – in ways we can’t even imagine. He is the definition of Awesome.

But our eyes are so very easily fixated on our own lives, our own problems – the things we want God to fix in us or the material things we want Him to bless us with.

Is that not asking God to save us for our own selfish reasons, as the thief on the cross did? Is that not following Jesus for what we can get out of Him, as Judas ended up doing (John 12:4-8)?

Shouldn’t we instead recognize Christ for who He is—the one who “has done nothing wrong” and who has a Kingdom where He rules—as the second thief did? Shouldn’t we pour out our most valuable and precious things simply for the sake of anointing Christ, as Mary did (John 12:1-3)?

This morning, Uncle Jonnes pointed out that the two thieves on the crosses show the two types of responses to Jesus, paralleling the contrasting responses of Mary and Judas in John 12. But which category do I really fall into? As a not-yet-fully-sanctified human, I need to be continually examining my own heart and listening for the input of the Holy Spirit in this matter.

Because this morning, there in my prayer closet, the question came to mind: “If you got NOTHING from God, would you still worship Him?” And my selfish heart had to answer a quiet “no.”

All day today, when my thoughts have gone back to these points, there’s a simple line from a song that keeps coming back to mind: “I will worship You for who You are.” And that has been the cry of my heart today. To worship both our Savior and our Father for who He is as God. Not only for what I receive as a result.

To quote my college president, “May it ever be true of us.”

Trusting God in Unwanted Circumstances

I’ve been reading through the Psalms recently. Yesterday morning, one of the ones I read was Psalm 53.

The fool has said in his heart, “There is no God.”
They are corrupt, and have done abominable iniquity,
There is none who does good.

God looks down from heaven upon the children of men,
To see if there are any who understand, who seek God.
Every one of them has turned aside;
They have together become corrupt;
There is none who does good, no not one. 

Have the workers of iniquity no knowledge,
Who eat up my people as they eat bread,
And do not call upon God?
There they are in great fear where no fear was,
For God has scattered the bones of him who encamps against you;
You have put them to shame,
Because God has despised them. 

Oh, that the salvation of Israel would come out of Zion!
When God brings back the captivity of His people,
Let Jacob rejoice and Israel be glad.

At the first read through, this Psalm kind of seemed disjointed. I didn’t initially see the thread of connection and flow through it all. But after looking at it for a bit, I could see it. Basically, the summary of this Psalm could be “Foolish men no match against God’s salvation.”

It made me smile as I saw it, and I thought about how encouraging that is. So often, we get focused on the rascals who seem to be able to do whatever they want. And yes, sometimes God allows evil men to have sway for a while. But in the end, they will be filled with great fear, “For God has scattered the bones of him who encamps against you.”

Not long after reading that, as I was walking to work, one of my fellow staff members stopped me. He asked me what other names I go by…..and I thought I knew where this was headed. When I told him my Luganda name, he told me that he had met a stranger on our campus – that spot being only a one minute walk from my house – who was looking for me by that name.

The stranger who talked to me once in the nearby town.

The creeper who has been stalking me.

He had been onsite, and not far from my place.

That was evidently a couple weeks ago. I think before he got my number and called me, and I told him “Do NOT call me again.”

On Wednesday, my fellow staff member had been in the nearby town, and three people had walked up to him and blamed him for keeping their friend (the creeper) from seeing “his friend” at New Hope (me – though I would NOT call someone “my friend” after one brief encounter).

My fellow staff member made the comment “I didn’t know I had any enemies in [the nearby town], but now I guess I do.” I explained the situation to him, and told him I was sorry he had gotten involved in it. And I did (and do) feel somehow guilty for it. The number of times my mind has tried to go back through that initial interaction, to see why this creeper thinks he can be so persistent….

But I have to keep reminding myself that I am not to blame for his unwarranted actions. My mom always says “you can’t ‘should have’ anything” – but I think it’s just human for us to think that way.

I feel like my privacy has been violated by this creeper. And now at least two of my staff members have been a bit hassled by the local people because of it. And yes, it is so tempting to be afraid.

It wasn’t until I lay down to go to sleep last night that my mind suddenly put two and two together. All day, the worry would try to come pressing back in. All day, I was waiting to talk to the church elder who has been walking through this situation with me. All day, I had been trying to remind myself not to let fear control me. But all day, I had forgotten the Truth that I read that morning:

“For God has scattered the bones of him who encamps against you”

And so last night, I finally prayed a Bible-based prayer about it – for the first time in all the weeks this has been going on. I prayed that God would scatter these outside ‘enemies’ who seem to be bent on getting me and this creeper together. That God would place a hedge of protection around my friends and around me. That God would place a fear of HIM into the heart of this creeper. I have no idea where he stands spiritually – and I do pray that God would work in his heart….not only to cause fear, but even to cause repentance.

So often, I fail to connect what I read in the Bible to real life. But this morning, as I read a couple more Psalms, the Spirit gave me the eyes to see it. And so I begin a new day, choosing to rest and trust in the God of my salvation. The One who can and will hear my prayers; the One who can grant me deliverance. Selah.