Everyone is looking for hope. From the American business man on Wall Street who seems to have his life all together and has everything he would ever want or need to the Cambodian woman who grew up on the street that has been sexually and physically abused by men that said they loved her and now has to put on a hard front with everyone around her including her children to protect her wounded heart. Every person across the world, your next door neighbor, your friends and family, are all looking for it…
I have found over and over again in my couple of years working with people from all different backgrounds that our ministry as ambassadors of heaven is all summed up in “a spirit led attempt to rekindle HOPE” (the cross and the switchblade).
When we look at certain circumstances with our human hearts we say this is hopeless, there is no way out, there is no way they can get through that or there is no way that they can clean their life up and get out of this hole they seem like they are in. We say “I can’t do this anymore, this is impossible”. In this place, this is exactly when the Lord, my Savior, sweeps people off their feet.
Every night here at the Women’s Center we have prayer and worship at 7 pm. The one song that I can recognize in their language is “Give Thanks”, these women who the world would say have no reason to have hope sing unto the Lord. They sing “Let the weak say I am strong, let the poor say I am rich, because of what the Lord has DONE for me, Give Thanks”.
Being here has made me realize even more how RICH God is when you are living poor. I have learned so much from the poor, this is how God wants us to live, this is where we truly see the riches, the fresh manna, the irreplaceable treasures that God gives to those who are in holy desperation, who are truly walking everyday by faith in the hope they were called to. This is where I experience the sweetness of my Savior, where I have nothing else to get my hope or pleasure or comfort from, and I find it all IN HIM. I am so RICH and I give thanks with my new Cambodian friends that I fall in love with more each day.
The other night in worship the Spirit just gave me a sweet revelation, my lenses changed and I could see so clearly: This land is God’s, these women are His daughters, He is in control, God you are here, you are here right now, you are moving, and nothing is impossible with you. It is easy to hear the women’s stories and to become hopeless when you hear that they are trying to run away from the women’s home, and they want to go back to their old life, or to hear how much money Koy (director of Teen Challenge Cambodia) needs to get the next part of his vision for the women and children up and running. Our human minds say it is impossible, but in this moment of worship the Lord reminded me. HOPE. “I am here my daughter, I am alive, you are singing to a Living God, that lives and breathes and answers prayers and delights in your worship, and does the impossible, I do extraordinary things through ordinary people, just have Faith, just believe, and keep turning back to me.”
When my thoughts become hopeless, when I feel I have nothing left, I remember to turn back to my Living GOD, to turn back to Jesus Christ, and to remember HIS ministry of rekindling HOPE in me and in every life that I come across.
(here is a video that the prior world race team made)
THE GOD OF ALL COMFORT
"Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ. If we are distressed, it is for your comfort and salvation; if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings we suffer. And our hope for you is firm, because we know that just as you share in our sufferings, so also you share in our comfort.
We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about the troubles we experienced in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt we had received the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead. He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us again. On him we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us, as you help us by your prayers. Then many will give thanks on our behalf for the gracious favor granted us in answer to the prayers of many."
– 2 Corinthians 1: 3-11
