We have made it to Uganda with our new teams. I now am leading a team of 5 girls and we are staying at the pastors house in “the bush” outside of Kampala. Pastor seems like he has kids everywhere of all ages. He has “only” six of his own and has adopted many, He is an amazing man of God!
His church here is fasting for the whole month of January, so they are meeting every night for church to pray and worship and hear the word of God. Last night at the church service, I had a hard time understanding the interpreter so I opened up my bible and started reading, the Lord was leading me to Acts 27, where Paul was on a ship with some of his men. I started to read in verse 13, “When a gentle south wind began to blow, they thought they obtained what they wanted; so they weighed anchor, and sailed along the shore of Crete”. In reading this I felt like the Lord was asking me…Katherine my daughter, do you think that you have obtained all you wanted? Are you putting down your anchor and just going to sail along the shore, is this going to be as far as you go my beloved?… I’m not going to lie, I am hitting a point in the race where the exhaustion of always being on the move is setting in, it is the time when you make a decision whether you are going to coast through the next half or press on to go deeper into what the Lord has for you. “The flesh is weak but the Spirit is willing”, I feel the fight, but I kept reading…
The verse that caught me again was Paul saying “But now I urge you to keep up your courage, because not one of you will be lost; only the ship will be destroyed. Last night an angel of the God whose I am and whom I serve stood beside me and said “Do not be afraid, Paul. You must stand trial before Caesar; and God has graciously given you the lives of all who sail with you”. So keep up your courage, men, for I have faith in God that it will happen just as he told me.”…again the Lord with His gentle nudging, who loves me too much to let me stay the same said “my daughter, take courage, remember the promises I have given to you, remember who you belong to, you must lead people into the deep, by my grace, through faith lead them to follow me, lead them into the low places, into the deepest parts of my waters, and there are treasures waiting for you, but treasures are not found without pain and trials, press on my child, I am with you always”
As I continued to read Paul told the crew, the soldiers, “unless these men stay with the ship, you cannot be saved, so the soldiers cut the ropes that held the lifeboat and let it fall away”, then later in the chapter, trusting the Lord, they dropped all the left over food that was weighing them down into the depths of the ocean. So by complete faith on what the Lord had spoken to them, what the Lord had promised them they cut off all of their ties, they cut off the anchor that was keeping them along the shores and now sailed at the mercy of the waves, and they threw out the food that they thought they needed but also made their load heavy and trusted that the Lord would provide.
There are higher heights there are deeper seas that my King wants to lead me to and in. I will not be hopeless I will not stop and throw down my anchor because this is all I think there is, there is more, there is always more.
So I will keep loving, I will keep opening my heart to my best friend, my God and let his voice shake the wilderness that I stand in, I will keep trusting Him for my daily bread, for His grace that is sufficient for right now as I am typing this. I will continue to look at the person God has placed in front of me and LOVE them the way He has loved me. I will continue to trust His promises for me and lead His people into them, I must continue to be a shepherd as He is my shepherd, I will be his voice, I will be his hands and feet to the lost sheep, I will carry them to His feet, to His table, this is my mission, this is my life, this is my calling, this is my reason for being on this earth. Although I fail everyday, I will not stop because I have a God that is bigger than anything that I face in this world, bigger than all of my sins and bigger than death itself, so I will not be bound by sin and I will listen to the answer to everything that I face in this day “Come to me my daughter, just come” and I will continue to come, to show up, to be available to say I know I messed up but I am going to keep saying yes to you. There is FRUIT in repentance! FRUIT. God is pruning me, so many days I feel like I am looking at impossible situations, but that is right where God wants me, that is where His glory shines brightest, when He does the impossible through His ordinary people.
In Malachi God’s ordinary people in Israel were asking Him how they can return to Him. God tells them that they are robbing Him, but they can return to Him through bringing the whole tithe into the storehouse, into His house, and the Lord says in Malachi 3, “and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it”. I don’t want to rob God of what belongs in His house. So through trials and everything we face in the world God wants us to continue to bring ourselves, to bring what we have to His feet, and wait, and watch as the Lord fills our cup until it overflows.
Your cup might be full, your cup might be empty, you might not even think about yourself in that way and don’t even know what your cup is and what this analogy is saying and think that I am crazy BUT wherever you’re at KNOW that the God who has created you KNOWS exactly what you need so as you continue to pick up your cross as you choose to die daily, GOD will RAISE those dead parts that you have strapped to his cross and bring new life to YOU. Does this process hurt, yes, is this against everything the world and ourselves are saying, YES, but in business school I remember learning about this thing called opportunity costs, and the opportunity cost of dying to yourself is becoming more like Jesus, receiving blessings from heaven and entering in the heavenly realms here on Earth until we meet face to face with our Savior!!! So no question about it, I am going to cut the ties to these lifeboats, to this anchor, I want to be riding on the mercy waves of my King, my Maker, my God, the Lover of my Soul.
When life gets hard, when you are exhausted and feel like you are in a desert place looking out and just seeing more desert on the horizon, keep walking, keep standing, keep waiting, keep watching, keep listening, because the VOICE of the LORD shakes the wilderness, and our GOD is faithful to the very end!!
Sorry this blog doesn’t give you much insight about what my daily life here looks like, but this is what my daily heart issues look like. I will give you more of an update soon on what God is doing on the outside of my little tent, because He is doing mighty things over here on the other side of the world.
I have been warned that Uganda is the land of no internet, we don’t have internet readily accessible this month, so know that I LOVE you and think of you often even though you are not hearing from me. So as they say here in Africa: May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you NOW and forever more!!
