Holy Spirit Fire…that’s what was all over and rolling in this church service late New Year’s Eve.
My team and I left Phnom Pehn the day after our briefing on the culture and people of Cambodia. We took a tuktuk (pulled by a motorcycle) about 45minutes out of the city all mashed up on each other and all of our packs.
We arrive at House of Love, a building with blue “shutter” with giant white hearts. We were told that we would be staying on the second floor and that they had a church service for the New Year, we were very welcome to come.
The team went and it was glorious. Worship started and it felt like full of joy and most of all we felt life. Hillsong was blaring from the speakers and all the youth and kids stood in the very front praising God. I didn’t know the Khmer words, but I sang along in English and even in Spanish at one point. It felt like home. Kyle, Ashley and Kirsten and I joined in and danced before the Lord with the youth and it was great.
Life. Churches need it, should ooze it. It not about the music or the sermons and especially not the denomination. It’s an atmosphere the people create and foster. Life comes from God. He spoke and created life. He breathed and life was alive. I want to be life. I want to be life to the people around me, I want to bring life into every situation I am in. I want LIFE!!
Throughout the race, God has somehow led us into LIFE filled churches around the world. Sometimes they are not easily found. Life was this small young church in the park baptizing in Ukraine, a small Hungarian church in Romania that was full of smiles , at a historical Presbyterian church in Northern Ireland with wisdom and hospitality, in the young adults of a church in Kenya, in a small town and even smaller church in Uganda. Life was in the joyful dancing of a Christian church in the middle of a Muslim town in Tanzania, it was in a Christmas party in a hotel in Thailand, it was the church in Cambodia.
