So my month beginning in Ghana Africa has not been what I expected. Hmm, God is funny. I have been asking God to break my heart more. Today God asked me will you allow me to break your heart for what I want to break it for? Seems so simple, but yet, I realized I was expecting Him to work a certain way. So, I said okay. God has been breaking my heart, burdening it in ways I didn’t expect. I expected to be broken for all the nations and every single ministry situation I find myself in. Not that I haven’t been, but I’m just finding that He’s breaking it for things I never anticipated. In month two, my heart broke for our team for the first time, and then in Vietnam again, and now in Africa. God began placing this longing in my heart, which is His longing too, to truly be the body for each other.
I have thought I’m here on this race mainly for these countries, but I’m realizing I’m here for a lot of other things. Things I certainly didn’t expect. God has been pressing on me His heart for community, for the church. God is showing me his longings. He designed the body of the church. He made it and oh, how He wants us to know it. Why, because it’s His design. He designs things that are perfect, beautiful. He designs things and loves to show us them so that we in turn give Him adoration and praise. I have never felt so strongly that ONE of His purposes for me, for us on this trip is to learn His heart towards community and relationship. And He is so loving that He will stop at nothing until we KNOW IT TOO. Why, because it is a display of His love and He wants us to KNOW HIS LOVE. The body moves as one. Without someone who is the arm or the leg, how can the body function? He made all parts for a reason because we NEED all parts to function. We need all of what each other has to be complete. I am discovering this community living at a whole new level. And it is somewhat scary because it is about letting what’s inside, our deepest struggle and our spiritual gifts, out for all to see and know too. I feel His heart His intense longings for His design to be displayed. I see Him smiling, saying I can’t wait to show you what I have created. You will be excited and amazed. I see Him wanting the adoration for His design because it is so magnificent. I encourage you to look up the spiritual gifts; they are alive and real and are needed for one another. He wants us to function as the body, for the mouth to give a word of knowledge to a hurting heart, for the healing hand to lay hands on another. God is speaking, allow me to show you my ways at the level of your own community before you go out into the broader community. If you do not have it right at your own family level, how will you get it at the broader level? The Holy Spirit enables the gifts and God wants and is unleashing it to produce an ebb and flow that is unlike anything you’ve seen, that is unlike a UNITY you’ve ever seen. For this is God’s UNITY and HIS FLOW. The creator of the world’s design.
I see Him beginning, birthing this process. I won’t give up because His longing is mine and I long to see it through to see it happen because I feel my spirit will not be satisfied until it happens.
So I say we will know God’s design for the body. We are His design. What is hidden in our hearts, the gifts, the treasures, will come out, will be brought forth, will be birthed, and will spill over onto others. The gifts will manifest themselves. A union between God and the body will be known, a marriage between His design and us will occur. A welcoming, a willingness to go deeper to have open soil for the roots of His body to be established IN US IS occurring, an unleashing of the Spirit IS taking place. We will function fully as whatever part of the body God has made us to be.
