It has been five days since my squad and I arrived in Battambang, Cambodia. Our ministry hosts are incomprehensibly hospitable and kind. The square we live in is beautiful. According to “world race standards” we are living like kings and queens for the next two months. There is a quiet peace about this city, but the spiritual war is also tangibly present. We begin our ministries this week and we can all sense that the Lord is going to move powerfully in and through us. I still cannot believe that I am here and get to be a part of it all.
My ministry assignment is (primarily) preparing meals for the squad with the host family’s daughter, Darcy, Ashley Levesque and Leah Daily. We get up before sunrise to cook breakfast (which has been a pleasant and refreshing way to start each day) and go to the market to buy food to cook for the rest of the day’s meals. There are no preservatives in the food here, so we have to get to the market early in order to get the freshest fruits and vegetables possible. We cook lunches for those on our squad partnering with Ezra ministries during our time in Battambang and we cook dinner for all of our squad and our host family.
Ashley, Leah and I went on a bike ride to a coffee shop this morning to pray and talk. We were all feeling a little bit discouraged about our ministry assignment in one way or another. We were feeling burnt out from making dinner last night and we felt like we needed to adjust our hearts and pray about what God was trying to do in and through us by assigning us to this ministry rather than to one with more direct involvement with the Cambodian community and the rest of our squad.
As I was journaling and asking God to reveal why He had us where He had us, I heard a voice in my spirit tell me to look up. I looked through a glass window we were sitting next to and saw a pink rose. God uses pink roses as a sign of His love for me. Red resembles the inherent sin in the flesh and white resembles the sanctification, peace and love of the spirit. Jesus’ redeeming love brings the two together to produce a beautiful pink rose. In the book of Romans chapter 8, the apostle Paul writes about the conflict between the flesh and the spirit and what comes from walking in the spirit rather than in the desires of the flesh.
Romans 8: 5-6 Those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on what the flesh desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace.
We left the coffee shop convicted and uplifted. We had been cooking for our squad feeling tired, negative and a little bit obligated, but God gave us this position for His glory and our growth because He loves us. We have decided to be prayerful about and grateful for the ministry God has given us these next two months. We want to give it our all because we know that God will teach us more about Himself and ourselves when we completely surrender to Him.
Pray that we hold nothing back from the Lord. Pray that we be fully present. Pray that we allow Him to refine us in any way He wants to. Pray that we be thankful servants and that as we walk in and have minds governed by the spirit, life and peace increase in us.
Philippians 2:5-7 In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: Who, being in very natureGod, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very natureof a servant, being made in human likeness.
CJ
