It’s hard to imagine that 5 1/2 weeks just kind of flies by and you never have time to really catch it. Sometimes when I’m eating here in the restaurant there’s a fly buzzing around that I’m never able to catch or shoo away. I kind of feel like that was what my time was like in India; not quite able to catch it or forget about it. And I’m not saying I want to write off everything about India, it was a great month in which I learned a lot, but it was also incredibly challenging. If I had one word to describe my experience in India, it would be: heat.
Heat, not only because it was blazing hot most days, but “heat” because that seems to be what God put me through… and all for the sake of imparting more life into me. I felt like in stepping into India I was stepping into the desert of testing into who I really was. Right after Jesus’ baptism – full of the Holy Spirit – he was led into the wilderness (Lk. 4.1). The purpose was that he might be tested, that he be put through the “wringer”. And of course the devil, being an opportunist, was going to take full advantage of him and question Jesus when he was at his weakest. Satan questioned Jesus’ identity; the core of who he was:
“If you are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread…”
“If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here…”
“I can give you all their authority and splendor…”
But because Jesus was so grounded in this, he rebuked the devil every time. When he returned to Galilee, Luke tells us that Jesus was “in the power of the Spirit” (4.14). He wasn’t just full of the Holy Spirit, but he was in the power of the Holy Spirit. Jesus came out of the wilderness empowered.
Our sonship MUST be tested in order for us to be empowered in it; because even until Jesus’ sonship was tested, he didn’t walk in power. It wasn’t until after his testing that he was healing the sick, driving out demons, and bringing the Kingdom of God.
If there was one thing that I learned in Africa, it was this: that I am a son of God (read Romans 8). This understanding drove me from the end of April until the end of July, essentially the entire time we were in southern Africa. But I don’t feel like the real testing began until the few nights before we left Africa for India. We were held at gunpoint and robbed in Johannesburg. It was a ridiculous experience that, if I was to tell the honest truth, didn’t shape me that much, but it did reveal one truth to me that I’m standing by with absolute confidence, which I’ll get to…
I walked out of our room and encountered an angry man with a gun. As he viciously caulked his weapon of choice, the first thought that peacefully glitted through my brain was, I am a son of God. Caroline actually wrote an incredible blog introduction about this idea. But this is where it really began. The angry guy could take my life but he couldn’t take my LIFE; he could never strip me of who I really am.
A son of God.
And so stepping into India we stepped into all kinds of heat, spiritually and physically. I, personally, stepped into a lot. Thankfully I was at an awareness of where I was in my walk with God. I knew that He had led me into this desert of testing. I probably walked into it with a lot of kicking and screaming because we all know that in the desert, inevitably, our buttons are going to get pushed. I don’t like that. But in the desert, we’re refined. How do you make gold and silver even more pure? You essentially burn out the impurities. The hotter the fire, the more crap that is exposed and taken out.
And India was an oven!
I had all of these issues come up that I thought I had really already dealt with in my life. They ranged from everything such as relationship nonsense all of the way to what felt like uncontrollable anger. And everytime one of those things came up, it always came up in a way that questioned my identity; it would inevitably question who I really was, whether I was a son of God or not. And so I had one of two ways at looking at everything: how God would, or how Satan would.
The hardest part is that sometimes Satan makes a lot of sense.
Yet God graciously reminded me that I’m not of this world anymore, I’m of His. I have been birthed into something new. He even reminded me of this,
“Forget the former things;
do not dwell on the past.
See, I am doing a new thing!
Now it springs up; do you not percieve it?
I am making a way in the desert
and streams in the wasteland” (Is. 43.18-19)
My God is doing a new thing and He’s doing it with me! He has taken this worldly flesh of mine and birthed something spiritual and new out of it. India was a rough month on me emotionally and spiritually for this very purpose, but I do know also that after walking out of that place, I feel completely different.
I wake up every morning knowing without a doubt that I am a son of God. I know without a doubt about who I am and Whom I belong to. It’s a place in life that I wish everyone would get to, but unfortunately, I know some won’t. It’s one thing to know that you’re a son of God; it’s another thing to actually understand it. We usually walk in knowledge of it, but never an understanding because we’re afraid to push into the testing, to actually let the Spirit of God lead us into the desert and do what needs to be done.
You can’t understand something unless you’ve experienced it.
So though India was hot and I’m sure you’ve heard a lot of negative things about it, know that at least one good thing came out of it: a tried and true son of God!
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Pray for me the next few weeks as I head out with the July ’08 squad to Vietnam. I get to serve them and serve with them and help their incredible squad leader fan into flame what God’s doing with them.
