As of today, Gap L has been in Chile for a full 2 weeks! After the first 2 months of my Race being more difficult, Month 3 is proving to be a time of some exciting growth and a chance to simply serve the Lord faithfully and throw myself into the things he puts before me.
Recently, Lord is showing me is the power he has to transform our desires into his own. At the start of this month, God told me he wanted me to re-learn how to study Scripture. I love the Bible, don’t get me wrong. But sometimes, I can get frustrated because I feel like my study of the Bible doesn’t actually carry through to the rest of my day. Maybe it’s just because in the past reading my Bible every morning has turned into a way I work to earn God’s favor, but the last year or so it’s been hard to see how Scripture relates to the rest of my life.
So when the Spirit told me he wants me to study the Bible again, my initial plan was something along the lines of “Okay, every morning I’m going to spend 30 minutes studying and reading 3 chapters of Paul’s epistles and taking notes, and then writing myself application questions.” I immediately began planning how I’d accomplish the Lord’s will, and without realizing it, I took the Spirit out of the picture in him actually bringing change.
Here’s the issue: my problem wasn’t that I don’t read the Bible enough. It’s that I don’t have the Lord’s desires. I don’t love the things he’s said to humanity as much as I should, and I don’t let the Spirit lead me when I do read those words. Not reading the Bible enough is a symptom, but the heart of the issue lies in a lack of true intimacy with the Father.
A conversation with my squad leader Mason made me realize this flaw in my thinking. He challenged me instead to ask the Father to convert my heart and give me a desire to connect with him in Scripture. And boy, was I surprised at what the Spirit did when I tried this! The Lord initially brought me to the end of Job, where he appears in glory and challenges Job: “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?…Have you commanded the morning since your days began, and caused the dawn to know it’s place…Have you entered into the springs of the sea, or walked in the recesses of the deep? Have the gates of death been revealed to you?” (Job 38). I was so in awe of the power and might of the Lord, and right at this point, I heard him tell me “And that’s the God you call Father every day.”
Whoa. What on earth can that mean, that my Father appears as fire, thunder and a terrible rumbling voice? Immediately after this, the Spirit reminded me of 1 Kings 19, when he did not appear in the earthquake, mighty wind, or fire, but in the still, small, whisper. My Father showed me in the Psalms how he laid the foundations of the earth, and immediately after he showed me he is both tender and powerful like a mother bringing us to new life (Isaiah 42:14). It was such a beautiful time of worshiping God and seeing him in ways I never had, and I would never have connected these Scriptures unless I’d asked the Spirit to take control.
He showed me another way he wants to give me his desires while out in ministry. Here in Santiago I’m teaching English at a public school 3 days out of the week. This Wednesday, I realized I was not wanting to teach. I was tired, somewhat crabby, and just had my mind elsewhere. After an hour or so of class, I asked the Lord to do something with my desires. I knew that I was where he wanted me, regardless of how I felt that morning, so I asked him to give me his desires. Rather than trying to treat the symptoms and force myself to look like I was happy to be there, I asked the Spirit to actually change my desire and make me want to serve.
I kept praying this throughout the rest of the morning, and suddenly, something exciting happened: the students started asking about God. Several students asked about my tattoo (which you can read about HERE), and a couple girls even asked me questions out of the blue like “Why do you believe in God?” or “Do you actually read your Bible?”
In response, I was able to tell them about where I am with studying Scripture, and we had some really cool conversations. A group of 5 asked the meaning of my tattoo, and I’m confident that the Holy Spirit did some translating work in their minds when I somehow was able to tell them about brokenness and dependence on the Lord in broken Spanglish even though they usually get confused when I say a simple sentence like “Colorado has pretty mountains.” It got even sweeter when one 15 or 16-year old girl ran up to me after class, excitedly pointed to her heart and said, “I believe in God, too!” She then showed me her wrist, where she had written the words “empty my hands.”
All this to say, the Father wants so much more than to simply change our behavior. Behavior is merely a symptom. He doesn’t want us to act differently but be just as rotten and dirty inside, he wants to beautify our desires so that our behavior is a glorious reflection of his grace. More than anything else, our prayer ought to model this true transformation. We shouldn’t just pray to be kinder to others because the Father is wanting us to pray for our eyes to be opened to the beauty of his image in others, so that there in nothing in our hearts but kindness when we look at them. We shouldn’t just pray for patience, we should pray for him to give us desires greater than efficiency or timeliness or placing our own needs first. We limit the Lord when we only let him treat the symptoms instead of allowing him to break our hearts with his love and goodness.
We are seeing hearts come to a place of honesty and brokenness here in Chile, both within our teams and without, in the students we interact with every day. This Thanksgiving I’m beyond grateful for the life the Lord has given me and the joy the Lord has given me in being able to walk with him and see so many come to a place of deep dependence on him. Thank you for everything you’ve done to bring me here—keep praying for us!
~Joel
