Two weeks ago we visited a men’s rehab facility. The moment you walked into the place you felt a presence of something different. The men that live there are so desperate for something more, it shows in their faces. These men have been stripped of everything. They have no family and no friends to turn to. But they carry such hope in their hearts; their eyes transparent with desire. It pierces your heart. The people from within the community that we have been working with visit these men every week and have built relationships with them. Our hope is to spread joy, and to pour out the Father’s love on them. The presence we felt when we walked in was the presence of the Lord. He was there consuming the place in such a rare form. He came to meet the beautiful souls of these men at exactly where they needed to be met.
This past week we traveled into the depths of the Amazon jungle for four days. We hiked for five hours in knee deep, wet, sinking mud at midnight to get there. You couldn’t see anything around you. It was hot and sticky. We were exhausted. At any moment you felt like your legs might give out from under you. We were dirty and wet. We ate rice for every meal, and we drank dirty water. We got ate up with bugs. Physically, mentally, an emotionally we were tested. We spent our time there building. We built a church in a day. We built a bathroom for a family. Attitudes were tested, willingness and hearts were tested. I think most of have claimed at some point or another that we would go anywhere, and do anything for Christ. But what does that really look like until it’s tested.
What I learned this week was far greater than anything I could have imagined. I learned something new about how great the Father’s love. As I sat in the middle of the living room floor on our last night in the jungle, I found myself surrounded by no two people who were the same. My eyes searched the room around me together we sat, the North Americans and the South Americans all so beautiful, all God breathed. Through the language barriers and different personalities for that week we had come together as one unit.
I smiled at the thought of what God must have been looking down on. Because the bigger picture was of what only He could orchestrate. In that moment an in that week we had all come together. We helped to build up a community, and we helped to bring the kingdom of God. Most of us will never see the fruit of that week. We will most likely never see the faces that enter the doors of the church, or the hearts that will be called to Jesus. For we are not always called to see how things work out, nor are we called to always understand. But that’s the thing about Jesus and how he loves His people. It amazes me to think about what must have had to happen, and what He did so that all of us could come together at that one moment, in our journey, that we would all end up together for a week spent in the jungles of Ecuador. We all serve a God so huge, so majestic, and so abundant in His love for His people.
This month has been such a month of challenge for me, in the most beautiful sort of way. I knew coming on this journey would change me. I didn’t know how that looked, and I still don’t know how it will all turn out. But He is challenging me to speak out, to step out, to take action, and live a life worthy of His calling. I challenge you with the same. And so I ask you the same question that someone recently asked me. At what length are you willing to go, in order that someone may know the love of Christ?
