We sang a beautiful song in choir tonight by Craig Courtney titled, Be Not Afraid.
As soon as I read the text I thought of a person I grew up with that just found out their mother has stage 3 cancer, another friend who recently lost her mother to cancer, so many of my friends who are struggling to have children... and my mind wandered on... There are so many people going through so much right now. Not just people here, or where you are, but people everywhere.
Christmas can be a wonderful season, but it doesn't negate what is going on in your life, and the holiday itself can't take any of the burden off of you...but the One for whom it is named can.
Jesus, Emmanuel, God with us, is highly celebrated not just because his birth was prophesied of, or because he was born of a virgin, or because he was a King of Heaven coming to earth, but because of what He came to do and why. We celebrate the birth of Jesus because it means God is here with us, God that created the universe loves us, and promises us that he will never leave us or forsake us. That we are worth saving, so much so that he sent part of himself to die for us, so that we may have life and have it abundantly...and when this temporary life is over and our time on earth is finished, that we have hope restored in Heaven through the gift of salvation and redemption that came through Christ Jesus.
God loves us so much that he sent Jesus to be our savior and redeemer, then we should fear nothing that stands in our paths. He is with us, and walks us through the storms of this life until we can be with him in peace forever.
Be not afraid, but be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified, for the lord your God is on your side. The fighting is done, the battle has already been won. Victory is free to all who but call on the name of Jesus. The beauty of Christmas is CHRIST. Not only his birth, not only his life, or his death, but in the purpose of his coming. YOU. me... for us all.
“Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you. For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior." -Isaiah 43:1-3
I am loving each and every one of you tonight, sharing in your heartache and your pain. Remember, God is listening to you, loving you, and holding you through these times. Trust in His goodness, in His faithfulness, and you will walk on top of these stormy seas with Jesus at your side.
It's been an emotional but wonderful last couple of days for me. A random girl's day with my mom and by childhood and longtime best buddy turned out to be a wake up call from the holy spirit.
I know who I am, I know who I've been, and I know I'm ever changing and trying to line my life up with the woman God wants me to be. But it's easy to forget how wretched I was. It's easy to forget how much grace has been gifted to me. It's so easy to forget because I am surrounded by people that love me, and that appreciate me, and that tell me how wonderful I am, which is great! But at the same time, if I lose sight of who I was without Christ, and forget that who I am and who you see me as is not me at all- but Christ himself - then what have I learned from it all?
I believe God allows us to go through things and to do things for a reason, and it became exceedingly clear to me after a wonderful talk with my mom and a few verses she shared with me.
2 Corinthians 12:6-10 "Even if I should choose to boast, I would not be a fool, because I would be speaking the truth. But I refrain, so no one will think more of me than is warranted by what I do or say, or because of these surpassing great revelations. Therefore in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me, but he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong."
God is sovereign over every aspect of my life. While he did not cause me to do the horrible things I've done, it is for his Glory that He chooses to forgive me for those things, and in such mercy and grace, His power is revealed. I have been forgiven, so I do not carry the guilt, or the pain, or the shame of any of my sins. But if I forget those things, what have I learned? Not only do I forget who I am when I'm acting out the selfish desires of 'my life', but I also forget who He is and the magnitude of what he's done for me.
I have allowed myself to sweep my past mistakes under the rug, and honestly, I haven't done it purposefully or in any way to 'hide' what I've done. But like I said, it's so easy to forget when you're loving and enjoying the life God has given you, that the cost and the path to this happiness gets lost. There is a beautiful song by Point of Grace called "heal the wound but leave the scar". The lyrics have new meaning for me know, because every time I've sung this song I honestly think of other people - which is strange - but for a singer who tries to fill each song with purpose and meaning, it's what I do sometimes to be sure the song has emotion and the message is portrayed. This is probably because I have always thought that my testimony of salvation wasn't 'interesting' enough. That I could bring more emotion to the song when I take the amazing testimony of my mom and think of how much God brought her through and how many people she has been able to touch and council simply because of the 'thorns' God has placed in her life! And how beautifully and majestically God is Glorified when she shares her testimony to people who only see her gifts, her talents and her beautiful family - that God has redeemed her from so much, and that no one is perfect, save Christ.
I haven't allowed myself to have a beautiful testimony, because it has been easier to just accept the forgiveness and forget about the purpose of the thorns and scars. It was easier to put on the missions application and to tell our pastor that, "Well, I've always known Jesus, but haven't always followed Him, but now I'm back on track." But that isn't what my past was intended for. That wasn't the purpose of God allowing me to fall into temptation and wallow in a selfish, pleasure-seeking world for so many years. That wasn't why he has changed my heart and allowed me to experience the amazing feeling of forgiveness, freedom from the bondage of guilt and shame, of unconditional love and restoration - only to keep my mouth shut!
So many of you have seen me or have known me at my worst. You have heard me say things or seen me do things that make it impossible to understand why I am who I am today - or maybe you think I'm being fake. But on the other hand, so many of you have never seen me at my worst, and have only seen my best. You may think I've always been 'good' and never made mistakes, that I've never felt worthless and disgusting, that I've never sold my body to sin, that I've never hated myself and been too ashamed to even look in the mirror; that I've never struggled with temptation, that my family is perfect and untouched from sorrow, that I've never had doubts, or wondered if I was even worth saving - if I could ever be useful to a God I had ignored, slandered, betrayed, made a mockery of, completely abandoned...
But I have. You may or may not see me either of these ways. But if you do, know this. I am NOT perfect. I am NOT faking. I have NOT ever been 'good'. I have NOT forgotten that I may have gossiped about you, that I may have ignored you or hurt your feelings, that you have seen me drunk, that I was a 'tease' and 'boy crazy', that I used to cuss like a sailor while going to church on Sundays and Wednesdays. I have NOT forgotten who I was, and who I still am without Christ in my life. But I have been forgiven for those things. I have been freed from the guilt and shame when I look backward, which has allowed me to love and to serve and to live in a way that I can move forward without chains to weigh me down. I still don't know all the answers, I still mess up, but God has changed my heart. I don't want to just 'Go through the motions', and I don't want to forget where God pulled me from - because if I do, than he is so much less glorified through my life, and the last 25 years have all been for naught.
I am free. I am loved. I am forgiven, but these thorns are here on purpose - to remind me of who I am when I take the reigns from Jesus and how much I need him to lead me. To show you how MUCH God can forgive you and how BEAUTIFUL he can make your heart if you allow him to. How incredible it feels to look at a horrendous act of sin and not feel one ounce of shame because that is NOT who I am anymore. That no matter what you've done and who you've been - God can restore you and you will be useful (trust me.. if he can use me, he can definitely use you!). Your life and your past cannot go wasted, either forgotten by forgiveness or tormented by guilt and shame, because if you stay in either of those places, you do not allow God to change you OR the people around you.
My testimony has a lot of embarrassing parts, and I will have to get used to saying them out loud. But I won't have to think about anyone else when I sing this incredible song. Because my life is beautiful, and it's only because of Christ. And when I show you how weak I am - I pray that you will see how strong our God truly is.
I love you all - and if I have ever wronged you or mislead you by my broken witness, shortcomings and failures, please forgive me. I am a work in progress, continually learning and being molded by our creator. Remember, it isn't what we do or don't do that saves us --- It is only Jesus.
"heal the wound" written and originally recorded by Point of Grace, recorded and sung live on this recording by Sally Lewis.
In the mean time...I'm trying to balance out my excitement and my 'fear of forgetting something'... it's been a while since I've done this! It's been seven years since my last overseas mission
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and MAN have I missed it!
Mom and I with Katiya in 2002, orphanage in Bryansk RU
Puppets for the kids at The Church of the Ascention, Bryansk RU
Zhenya Rozhkov, Me, Kim and Pasha Rozhkov, 2003, Bryansk RU
I love the people of Russia. I love the language, the kindness, the beauty of their history and redemption, and the strength and reverence of the church. I miss the hunger, the need for Jesus and His love, and I miss being inspired and humbled by our Russian brothers and sisters and their fervor for spreading the gospel and living it out each and every day.
I cannot wait to fall in love with more people, and further in love with my God. Haiti is a beautiful place with such tragedy, with such a need for love, for help, for the Word of God, and for His hope. I can only imagine that these people will be as special to me as the brothers and sisters in Russia. That, as we travel to do our best to lend a hand and a heart, we will steadily be changed and humbled by the Spirit through these beautiful people. Through their smiles amidst their adversity, through their joy and through their stories of sorrow, I pray that God will change our hearts. I pray that we will not come home unaffected by His grace and His mercy. That we will not allow our hearts to return to selfish indulgence when we know that there are people across the planet in dire need of salvation - of love - and of water, food, and shelter.
We are so excited to be traveling to Haiti with family and friends. It's the only way I've done missions up until now, and I'm grateful for the chance to do it again. God has blessed us greatly by surrounding us with people who are willing to go, willing to help, and even those who cannot go but are willing to donate and pray. You are also the hands and feet of Christ. Thank you for ministering to Brandon and I and to the rest of the team.
We will have a commissioning service for the Haiti team this Sunday at 10:45 (normal worship time) at Vineville Baptitst Church, Macon. If you are able to come and pray with us, please do so! We will be leaving June 2nd (before the crack of dawn) and will return June 8th.
The first big step in our journey is so close I can taste the sweat already... :)
BRING IT ON! We are ready, Lord!
a video about the organization we will be traveling
Ok, tonight I'm going to offend someone! Yay! Truly, I hope to avoid that completely, but if you are offended by anything in this I do hope it is a holy offense (meaning something that makes you uncomfortable and eventually changes the way we look at life, in Christ). I want to talk about two enemies in our churches. I want to talk about two enemies in our homes and in our everyday lives. I am talking about the enemies of convenience and comfortability.
To start off I will tell you where this is coming from. Sally and I were speaking with someone over the weekend about our call to full time missions. I really do not remember who it was, as we saw a lot of people over the weekend, but as we were talking, the person said something to the effect of, "That is so great and its at a good point in your life. I mean, you guys don't have kids yet and you are still young." Mind you, this person meant well, and I don't even know if it came out right, but what they said really stuck with me. We are a people of Christian convenience, Sally and I included. What the person said above was a very sweet thought of, "wow God called you while it was still convenient for you guys." Wrong. No he didn't! Yes, it was convenient for us in our sense of the word, but God doesn't call us in convenience. God doesn't even have convenience in accordance with his will, because with God's will the time it was set to happen is always the time its going to happen. Convenience is man-made. God calls us when God is ready. God called us at the only time God was ever going to call us to respond to a lifetime of missions, I believe, since we accepted that call and of course He has complete foreknowledge and knew exactly when we would finally surrender. Therefore, His plan has always been and will always be at the perfect time and place in our lives no matter what our outlook is on the situation.
We revolve around convenience and it's brother comfortability. If its easy for me to do and doesn't take much sacrifice for me or my family, then I am all about it. Take up my time, though, and we gotta problem. That is evident in our churches today as we plan our church calendar around when people will actually show up. Things like football games, school functions, dinner parties, piano lessons, gotta brush my teeth at this time every night, (and on and on ....) take up our time during the week and then we let God have whatever is left, if there is anything. I'm here to tell you that this is not the original plan that Christ came to tell us about. When I think of Christ I think of reckless abandon. RECKLESS ABANDON!!! A love for our Savior and a love for our God that says, "I'll give you EVERYTHING!" Jesus said, "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me." Hear that? We don't get Saturday off. "Daily", he says.
The key phrase in that statement by Christ is 'he must deny himself'. What does it mean to deny oneself? I think of it as putting ourselves last. So God comes first, then others, then ourselves. That is a very simplified list of denial. Now the tough part is that the second group in line still comes after God. Yes, that means your family too. Jesus tells us to love Him so much that it is like we hate our family members. He doesn't say hate them, but that the love we have for Him has to be so great that it pales in comparison with those we love on earth. Therefore, sometimes we even have to deny our families things for the sake of doing God's work. You say, "Brandon, surely God wouldn't put me in that position." Wrong. Ask Abraham.
I whined today at church because of how hot it was in the sanctuary. Yep, people are dying from dehydration due to lack of good water. Freaking, WATER!!!, and I'm whining because it was 78 in the sanctuary. We sure live in a comfortable society. So does God call us to live comfortable lives and coast on through? Nah. Jesus sends us out as sheep among wolves. Comforting, right? He says not to worry about man because all they can do is kill you. Whew, that's all? These are not comforting statements unless we are recklessly abandoned to Christ. Christ did not call us to be comfortable. He just said to follow.
Let's step out as a church and get uncomfortable. Let's talk to people about our faith (God knows I need help with that). We struggle to talk to people about Jesus. I know this because I struggle a lot with it. Man, I can invite them to functions and dinners at church, but talk to them about the Savior of mankind and I clam up. Guess what, Jesus never said invite people to church. I'm not saying that we shouldn't (please don't hear me saying that). I'm saying that WE were meant to share the Gospel with others. We think, well that's my pastor's job. Wrong. It's ours. If we are going to believe what the Bible tells us and follow our God then we are going to be uncomfortable and inconvenienced. It will be like wearing wool underwear at jury duty.
Did you know, that a blind chameleon still takes on the color of its environment even though it can't see anything? The first thing I think of is, "what a waste of those cool eyes!" However, as I was thinking about this fact I started to contemplate on how God calls us to be in the world, but not of it. What's that you say? How, do I get blind lizard to God's calling us not to be of the world? Stay with me.
John 17:13-19: "I am coming to you now, but I say these things while I am still in the world, so that they may have the full measure of my joy within them. I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world. My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world. For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be truly sanctified."
First thing to note is that this is that top shelf RLS. I am talking about that Red Letter Stuff (sigh....if you still don't get it, Jesus is speaking here so yeah.... letters... red). Jesus is praying for his disciples. He prays to his Father "not that you take them out of the world..." and therefore implies that he could do just that. However, what would have been accomplished by that? Well for starters, I can tell you that you could kiss the book of Acts goodbye. So what does Jesus want? He says, "I have sent them into the world"; but just because he is sending us in the world, does not mean that we are to be of the world.
Ok, thanks for that Brandon! There's nothing like hearing an 'easier said than done' message to really get my engine going! So how do we do this? Simple, become sanctified. Duh! Sanctified here is the greek word hagiazo which means set apart for sacred use or make holy. So we are to be made holy. Ok, how do we do that? That answer, my friends, is two-fold. Both parts are in the scripture above. The first step comes from the end of the scripture and is the most important message in all scripture. JESUS! That is the first part of becoming sanctified. It says, "For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be truly sanctified." Jesus offered His life so that we might be set apart. The second part of becoming sanctified is by the truth, God's Holy Word. Psalm 1:2 and 119:11 along with Joshua 1:8 speak of the importance of staying in the Word. The Word is life. Deuteronomy 8:3 says, "...man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord." I don't know about you, but I normally try to eat every day. Don't you? You think God used that analogy on purpose? Let me sleep on it, YES! Be in the Word of God constantly. After we have part one we never lose it! Praise God!! However, we need to stay in God's word, the truth, to continually set ourselves apart from the world.
So now you see the connection between the lizard and God's call, right? No? Fine. Moving forward.
The blind chameleon is a picture of what it means to be a product of your environment. Even though the animal can't see a thing, the outside world, somehow, soaks in and turns him a brown poopy color. (On a side note the little red line popped up under poopy. Really, spell check? You don't recognize the word poopy?) God does not want blind chameleon's out of us. He wants us to be what the world soaks in, not the other way around. That means WE are to be the examples. WE are to be sticking out like sore thumbs. That's scary isn't it. We all want to blend in like a chameleon. Don't get me wrong, we are not supposed to go around with our noses in the air correcting what everyone is doing. We are to be a light. We are to be LOVE. Jesus, earlier in John 13, says, "A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another." Pretty cool, huh? But he goes on to say, "By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another." That's the message, if we are to be in Christ then we are to be love to one another thereby making us holy and set apart. Here is the downside, though. In being like Christ we are going to be persecuted for this holiness. We are not always going to be accepted. We are going to be looked down upon or be told that we are close minded. Hallelujah, because Jesus also says, "Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." All this is to say, be in the world and live among the people of this world shining a light to the lost, but don't be a blind chameleon.
