On being back in the Philippines
In the summer of 2005, I was able to spend three weeks here in the Philippines. I was here with BTEA* That trip was amazing because we rode around in crazy blue army jeeps, went from school to school, and preached the Gospel. All day we would tell the students that we had good news for them.
The entire year preceding that summer, I had been fighting feelings of depression. I needed to be loved, and my heart needed healing.
I remember riding in the front seat of a jeep one day asking the Chief why He didn’t love me. “Why don’t you love me, like you love the Filipinos?” It made sense to me that God loved the Filipinos, but not that He loved me. I thought that since I had been a Christian most of my life, I should know how to live life better. I thought it was my own fault I was in pain. God didn’t have as much grace for me. I just needed to get my act together. Then God said,
“I do love you.” But then I said,
“But not enough”
“Elizabeth, I loved you so much I died for you. Is there any demonstration of love greater than death?”
For the first time in my life, I knew that I needed the Lord, and I knew He loved me.
The Lord used that encounter, to remind me that we never outgrow our salvation.
So here it is two and a half years later, and I’m back in the Philippines, A couple nights ago, our debriefers did a little skit about God’s gift to us. (The point of the skit was that God’s gift to us is Jesus, and that He would have died for just “you.”)
Now this skit wasn’t preformed to a mass of people who had never heard the gospel before, it was performed for a bunch of crazy people who backpack the world for the sake of Christ. When I saw the skit, I cried. When we took communion afterwards, a few extra tears snuck out. In my mind, I was riding in the back of the jeep, and the Chief was telling me that He loved me.
No matter how much we have grown in our faith, no matter how much we think we understand about God, we never get to grow past our need for Jesus.
Our Salvation is our helmet, we can’t go into battle without it.
*For more information on supporting evangelism in the Philippines click here -Bob Tebow Evangelial Assosiation. http://www.btea.org/
