In the last couple of weeks the Lord has shown me more of His hearts desire, and that is for the followers of Christ to be known as:
“communities marked by Love.”
I don’t know why it has taken me this long for the concept to really sink in when it is saturated all throughout scripture. “They will know you are Christians by your love..” ” Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself..” ” Faith, hope, and Love, and of the three the greatest is Love..”
If we want to be a body of believers that cast out the darkness in this world, that really allows the Lord to work through us in a powerful way then we have to realize the solution is Love. Don’t you remember that “perfect love casts out all fear..”?
The Lord has brought me out into the beautiful countryside of Thailand to a community that is marked by his Agape love. Spending the month working with Remember Nhu, has been one of the most transforming months of my life. Our team came in this month struggling to be a community, and the Lord blessed us with one of the most beautiful examples of a community after his own heart through the girls here at Remember Nhu. They fight for each other, they are disciplined ( they get home and start on choirs without anyone being asked, always in the word, homework until it’s finished and then helping others and playing), consistent, servant hearted, seek to be last, generous, joyful, patient ( with each other, and to teach us thai), and most of all they Love deeply.
After painful, sad, and horrific back grounds, that no child should go through these girls still have such love in their hearts, and it all starts with a deep rooted love for the Lord. They aren’t forced to get up at 5 am, but they roll out of bed to spend time with the Lord, and pray together before school. No one makes them pray before they go to sleep, but as I make my way through the rows of bunk beds late at night I see them on their knees and on their face talking to the Father. They truly exemplify “meditating on the word day and night.”
Let me break it down a little further, these are girls who are between the age of 4 and 17. These are girls that were abused when they were younger, were abandoned, mistreated, starving, lost parents to aids, or lost parents to drugs and other addictions, and jail. Yet despite all their circumstances, they are flames in a world that is drowning.
I knew the Lord was calling me to a deeper level of intimacy with him this month to get up every morning to spend time with him before anything else. I agreed. I said God ” I’ll be up every morning to spend time with you, in the wee hours of the morning we have a date, just you and me.” Wouldn’t ya know he would bring me to a home where that is a normal part of life for the girls, talk about accountability from the Lord. One of the girls I have gotten closest to this month and I were talking about Philippians, where Paul says “rejoice, again I say rejoice!” and she told me “I am so thankful to God, and so happy I can get up every morning and spend time with him, and when he talks to me I am so thankful, I just say thank you thank you God for letting me spend time with you, thank you God for the bible, and for everything..” I was blown away reading the bible and getting up early in the morning to spend time with the Lord are generally things that we say draggingly, “aw i had to get up in the morning, or i don’t want to, or i should read my bible..” but she sees it for what it really is, a privilege.
The Lord had me in Ephesians the first week we were here and he kept telling me it’s a privilege. Everything you can do to draw closer to me is a privilege. Like a pile of treasure you have all access to. It’s your choice what you take. You have a huge inheritance in my kingdom as my sons and daughters, so don’t let it go to waste. Live a life worthy of the calling you have received. The community you are a part of is a privilege, and I have you there for a reason.
(Ephesians 2:14) “The Spirit is God’s guarantee that He will give us the inheritance He has promised and that He has purchased us to be his own people.He did this SO we would WORSHIP and GLORIFY Him.”
We were made and saved so we could sit in the presence of our Father in heaven and worship him. Why do I take that for granted?
As I got further into Ephesians God spoke to me that oneness in the body of Christ sanctifies us; it leads us into holiness.
(Ephesians 3:12)“Because of Christ and our faith in Him we can now come boldly and confidently into God’s presence.”
My absolute favorite in Ephesians. (Ch 3:14-21)– “When I think of all this, I fall to my knees and pray to the Father, the Creator of everything in heaven and on earth. I pray from his glorious, unlimited resources he will empower you with inner strength through His Spirit. Then Christ will make his home in your hearts as you trust in him. Your roots will grow down into God’s love and keep you strong. And may you have the power to understand, as all of God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high and how deep is his Love. May you experience the Love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God. Now all glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think. Glory to him in the church and in Christ Jesus through all generations forever and ever Amen!”
SO my prayer is that we will understand how indescribable, never ending and relentless our God’s love is. May he transform the communities we are in to be ones that carry out his same love and are therefore “marked by Love”. Thank you God for bringing me to this place, at this time, to do this work in me…I have 5 more months on the race and want to be known for his love everywhere we end up. Next month is Kichibora, Kitale, Kenya. We will be working with a community that had a lot of violence in the last couple of years and is in need of forgiveness and reconciliation. The church we are partnering with is Deliverance church..I can already feel that we will be taught how to forgive and delivered as much as the people we are ministering to.
