Here For You

As I have talked to various people about this trip, I have heard comments about how great it is what I am doing for myself by going on this adventure, how great it is that I am going to serve the Swazi people, and I was saddened by these well-meaning Christians who have lost the focus on why we do what we do. This song has been my prayer for this trip and is a great reminder that whether we are serving our loved ones at home, in ministry in the US, or overseas somewhere, the ultimate reality for every Christian is that we are here (wherever that may be) for Him alone...all else (that others & we ourselves are blessed through serving) is icing on the cake!

Let our praise be Your welcome, let our songs be a sign
We are here for You, we are here for You
Let Your breath come from heaven, fill our hearts with Your life
We are here for You, we are here for You
To You our hearts are open, nothing here is hidden, You are our one desire
You alone are holy, only You are worthy, God let Your fire fall down

Let our shout be Your anthem, Your renown fill the skies
We are here for You, we are here for You
Let Your word move in power, let what’s dead come to life
We are here for You, we are here for You
To You our hearts are open, nothing here is hidden, You are our one desire
You alone are holy, only You are worthy, God let Your fire fall down
To You our hearts are open, nothing here is hidden, You are our one desire
You alone are holy, only You are worthy, God let Your fire fall down
We are here for You, Jesus,

We welcome You with praise, we welcome You with praise, almighty God of love, be welcome in this place
We welcome You with praise, we welcome You with praise, almighty God of love, be welcome in this place
Let every heart adore, let every soul awake, Almighty God of love, be welcome in this place
We welcome You with praise, we welcome You with praise, almighty God of love, be welcome in this place

Be welcome...be welcome...come and take Your rightful place.

My Prayer For You As I Go...

The view from the plane as we come over the African Coast at Namibia.

"What I finally came to as I walked and prayed for you is the old, old story of getting the gospel clear in your own hearts and minds, making it clear to others, and doing it with only one motive — the glory of Christ. Getting the glory of Christ before your eyes and keeping it there is the greatest work of the Spirit that I can imagine. And there is no greater peace, especially in the times of treadmill-like activity, than doing it all for the glory of the Lord Jesus."
~Heart of a Servant Leader: Letters from Jack Miller

Wealthy King + Impoverished People = ???

The juxtaposition of wealth and poverty in Swaziland is incomprehensible. A king who builds elaborate palaces for all of his wives just minutes from people who eat grass or go hungry on a regular basis. There have been articles recently about how rich the king really is, and also about how the poverty is impacting the most helpless - the children. In the deepest parts of us, there is an outcry, wanting someone to do more to reconcile this great abyss between the rich and poor. After all, what is the right response to take care of these people?
Yet this lack of action & compassion in this reality on the other side of the world stands in contrast to another king. A King who has much more than any earthly king could ever imagine, a King who has no obligation to share His wealth, riches, or glory with anyone. A King who looks upon an impoverished people who are dying in their own messes, totally helpless to do anything for themselves, and who often don't even know how bad of shape they are in. And this King, who doesn't have to do anything, does the unimaginable. He goes & pays the ultimate price to buy back these people, sacrificing His own wealth and comfort in order to provide for them what they could never earn.
The situation in Swaziland makes the extravagant love of God through Jesus Christ stand out even more. That while we were dead in our sin, totally unable to save ourselves, in a worse situation than we even knew, God lavished His graces upon us, knowing we could never earn it or even begin to pay Him back.

"In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace, which He lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight, making known to us the mystery of
His will, according to His purpose, which He set forth in Christ."
~Ephesians 1:7-9

Reality Check...Another Look At Swaziland Statistics

I recently read that if you are a 15 year old in Swaziland, your chances of living to the age of 32 are 6%! SIX PERCENT!!! Translated...that means your chances of dying before you turn 32 are 94%. You are probably more likely to be struck by lightning or attacked by a hippo than live to be 32 if you live in Swaziland...all because of the AIDS crisis. Of the 900,000 people in the country, the orphan population is closing in on 200,000. And half of all 20 somethings have AIDS already. But the one that hits me hardest is the first statistic....6 %!
To put this into perspective, there are about 300 kids at the school across from where I will be staying. We have just been given permission to go over each week to teach these elementary aged kids about God's love...but reality is still there. According to that first statistic, only about 18 of those kids will live to be 32...meaning that 282 of the kids I will be spending time with this fall will probably die of AIDS (or some disease like TB resulting from a weakened immune system) before they are my age! God, have mercy!
So what has God called us to do in this seemingly hopeless situation? Without wanting to be too morbid or a Debbie-downer, the thing that I keep coming back to is that we must prepare them for eternity. Yes, we can encourage them in school, help them set goals, encourage them to dream about their future, provide them with food, clothes, and school supplies...but we must balance that with the reality that some experts have said that with the current birth/death rates the way they are, Swaziland won't exist by 2050 because AIDS will have ravaged it beyond repair. And James' words come ringing true to my ears....

"What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes"
(James 4:14).

And for children in Swaziland, this verse describes the frailty of life all around them, that they will be looking at death and eternity all too soon.
So as I go this weekend...prepared to love on the kids and the gogos ("grandmas" that cook, teach, and care for the kids at the carepoints), as well as those I will meet through house visits and other projects...in the back of my mind I will be thinking about the best gift that I can give them...the gift of the Gospel that we have been entrusted with. As much as I anticipate seeing their joyful faces when they receive any material possessions or food, the look on their faces when they realize they can have eternal peace and be with the Lord beyond this world is beyond description. To look in the face of a 28 year old woman who has "the peace that passes understanding" as she prepares for her death, to sit with a grieving gogo as she realizes her new responsibility of parenting her orphaned grandchildren...the only thing that can get anyone through those times is trusting in the sovereignty of God and the eternal hope that we have in Christ.
As I go, I hope to be used by God to pour into them, pray for them, teach them, and encourage them as if they were a terminally ill child in the hospital...because they are...statistics have given them only 25 more years to live at most. Yet I go hopeful, because as we trust in what Christ did for us on the cross, we can cling to the promise that

"the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be His people, and God Himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away...for He is making all things new."
(Revelation 21:3-5)

This world is temporary because we were created for another world with unhindered intimacy with the God of the universe...and we can begin to live in that now!

Visiting Orphans

What effect does it have on your longings when you think that God says “true religion” is to “visit orphans”?

The effect that it has on me it to make me want to love like Jesus loved and not always be thinking of earthly payoff. Face it, a few kids are cute, but most street kids will be thankless, rude, dirty, diseased, scar-faced, shifty-eyed, lice infested, suspicious, with bad smells and rotten teeth. If we minister mainly for the earthly payoff, we will burn out in a year.

Jesus did not say, “True religion is converting orphans.” He did not say, “True religion is making orphans mature and successful adults.” He said, “True religion is visiting orphans.” Results are God’s business. Obedience is ours. Perhaps when we grasp this, we will be freed from our earth-bound way of thinking and released to minister to the ones who are least likely to thank us.
~ J. Piper (www.desiringgod.org)

Go From....Go To

A lot of people have asked how God has called me to this place in life of going back to Swaziland, so here's the abbreviated version of it.
In October of 2008, I was running one evening after work and God revealed to me at that time that I was going to be stepping down from my full time ministry position. It wasn’t an “if” anymore, but a “when”. During that same run, He led me to think of Genesis 12:1 “Now the Lord said to Abram, ‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house and go to the land that I will show you.’” Little did I know at the time how God would bring that verse to reality in my life! Over then next 3 years, God led me out of that full time position, brought Swaziland to the forefront of my mind (when before I never knew it was a country), led me to spend time serving Him in there, and even had me spend 3 months of my life helping pack up our family farm to move off the land. And now here I am almost exactly 3 years later, preparing to go over to Africa for several weeks in order to continue praying about what it might look like to serve full time on the mission field.
As I go from my father's land to a land that God has shown me, my trust is in the unchanging One who is sovereign over all times & places.

Long Time, No Blog....But That's Changing

It has been a long time since I have blogged, not because I haven’t had anything to write about, but because it has been so much stuff that has been so close to my heart! Someone once said, “I write while I learn, I learn while I write” and that has been true in my journals and my relationship with God, but for the past 6 months, those things that He has been teaching me have been intense and at times left me too tender to process with anyone except for Him. One of my biggest struggles with blogging is that I don’t want to put out there for all to see some of the things that God has done in my heart that are to stay just between Him & I. Luke 1:66, 2:19, and 2:51 all talk about people laying things up in their hearts, pondering them in their hearts, storing them in their hearts as the miraculous event of God becoming flesh in the baby Jesus was occurring. As God has led me through processing a few specific things in the last 6 months, my heart has been tender because of it and not ready to share. But as I move forward into this next season of life, I want to begin to share through this blog for a few reasons.
~ To give you a glimpse of the ways that God is revealing His faithfulness & character through my life, so that you might praise Him also.
~ To let people know what’s going on in my life and how you can be praying.
~ To tell the story of how God is working out His redemptive love in tangible ways for His glory.