I was talking with a friend at church on Sunday who is from Indonesia. She was talking about her experience being a Christian in a county that has such limited religious freedom. We talked about people she knew who had been beaten for their faith, churches that had been burned down, and pastors that had been killed. She told me a story about this major Muslim political party that is represented by holding up your finger, making a number one sign. If you do not hold up the sign back to them when they show it to you, you may get beaten. She talked about the tension of having to decide if that was worth getting beaten for, or is it wiser to just do it and if you get beaten, get beaten for worshiping Christ.

...it makes my struggles about when to talk about my faith and with who seem ridiculous. I just wonder how different our life would be if we could go to eternity and look backwards at our life. The fear we had to share the love of Christ with a student or co-worker because they might be offended or think less of us, seems pretty insignificant in light of eternity. How many people work and live along side us on a daily basis and have no idea what we believe and how our belief in Christ shapes our entire being and everything that we do?

Christianity that just blends into everything else is pretty empty and meaningless. If our understanding that the creator of the universe wants to be in relationship with us is not enough to embolden us to preach the gospel every minute of our lives, why even be a Christian? If our fear is keeping us from telling others about God, then that means we really do not believe God to be who he says he is.

Acts 1

It had been an exhausting and invigorating month and a half for Jesus’ disciples. Their time was filled with days of rejoicing and peace along with days of darkness and fear. I imagine there was much confusion those last days that Jesus walked the earth, but there was also much revelation as Jesus opened the disciple’s eyes and taught them from the scripture and showed them how everything in the law and the prophets pointed directly toward a Messiah.

If we were watching this drama unfold from the disciple’s eyes, Acts chapter one would be such a beautiful twist in the plot. The disciples had just spent forty days with the resurrected Jesus listening to him speak of the kingdom of God, not to mention years previously following Christ and listening to his teachings. They had already mourned his death once, and now he prepared to ascend into heaven and again they would be left. But Jesus leaves them with a promise: “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”

I wonder if the disciples left Mount Olivet rejoicing and praising the Lord or in solemn silence? Were they filled with fear and suffering from loosing the tangible Jesus or were they hopeful in anticipation of this great gift that was about to come? We do not have much detail as to the mood of the disciples, but we do know that the disciples returned to Jerusalem to await the promised Spirit in an attitude of prayer.

These men and women gather together in an up stairs room from where they were staying and devoted themselves to prayer. Howard Marshal writes, “If the Holy Spirit is the divine gift which empowers and guides the church, the corresponding human attitude toward God is prayer. It is as the church prays that it receives the Spirit.”

As I have been studying and meditating on these passages in Acts, I am struck and convicted again and again by how closely prayer is connected to the Spirit moving and how much the children of God should long for the Holy Spirit to move in their life.

John 16:7-11, Jesus says, “Nevertheless, I tell you the truth; it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you. And when he comes, he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment: concerning sin, because they do not believe in me; concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father and you will see me no longer; concerning judgment because the ruler of this world is judged.”

What a powerful thought! Believers today are at greater advantage to understand and live the gospel then the disciples that were in the physical presence of Jesus because we have the Holy Spirit. Yet so often, we live our Christian life not empowered by the Spirit because we do not take the time to seek God and pray.

Tim Keller poses a question in a study he wrote on Acts, “If the Holy Spirit left your life today, would it look any different?”

Are you convicted of sin? Are the fruits of the spirit evident in your life (Galatians 5)? Do your conversations with friends, family, acquaintances, and strangers exhibit a life filled with the Holy Spirit? Do you long to spend time in the word of God? Does God’s word pierce your heart like a sword? Do you make decisions about how you will spend your time, money, and life based on obedience to the Lord? Are you moved with compassion for all the lost around you? Is your boldness to proclaim the gospel growing?

The answers to these questions point to whether your life is a Spirit-led life or not. And we cannot force ourselves to have the "right" answers...this is not a check list of do's and don'ts, when we examine a spirit led life we should be humbled and broken to know that we cannot do this just by willing it ourselves, it is only through the power of God and the holy spirit...so let us continue to pray for that in our lives. May we as Christian brothers and sisters be devoted to prayer. May our church and our lives be directed and guided by the Holy Spirit and nothing less.

Six months of bliss…

I know it has been a while since I have posted! Married life is slowing me down. :) Actually, that couldn’t be further from the truth. Life is going at lightning speed. I really cannot believe Vermon and I have been married for six months.

(Disclaimer: What I am about to say is simply how marriage has illustrated some things to me, I am not saying that you can know God deeper if you are married. In fact, I encourage every single person not to waste a moment of the precious gift of singleness to questioning God's plans for your life...but to embrace this special time to be one with your God.)

I have never experienced such a sweet unity and oneness with anyone before as I have in marriage with Vermon. It has been such a wonderful and fun journey to see God knit our hearts together and make us more and more like-minded. As we are growing together in our marriage I have had many opportunities to examine what communion with the Lord should look like in my life. I look at my marriage and see how many of my decisions and actions are motivated by a desire to stay one, to love Vermon, and to serve and minister with him in this life. When I examine my marriage, it gives me many examples that I can look at to judge if my decisions and actions are in alignment with my even greater desire to be one with the Lord.

Something that has really struck me over the last six months is just how precious and sweet life can be when you are truly living in communion with the Lord. I look at the sacrifices I am willing to make to spend time with my husband and I see such great fruit in our marriage and feel so satisfied. How much more satisfied would we be if we made time to spend with our God. I think the greatest gift that God has given me in marriage is helping me to see a glimpse of the depth and union I can have with my heavenly father. More and more I am seeing that my motivation in life cannot be anything other then glorifying and worshiping my God. When that is the focus of my life, I find myself in the midst of this beautiful and meaningful life, no matter our circumstances.

The purpose of marriage is to point people toward Jesus. When a marriage is Christ-centered, it gives the community they are in a small glimmer of what life within the church should be like. Instead of our children within the church growing up cynical and hesitant about marriage, they grow up seeing this beautiful sacrificial love as a physical example of what a relationship with Jesus is like. Instead of single people feeling forgotten, they are surrounded by marriages that constantly remind them of the most intimate and whole union they can have only with Christ. When our friends that do not know Christ struggle, they can look to a self-sacrificial and unconditional love exhibited between two people and long to know this God that can produce such beauty.

I just want to continue to thank all of you who pray for us, our marriage, and the ministry that God is doing all around us. It means so much to us and we see God working. :)

A Dead Life…part one

“And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—among whom we all once lived, in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.” (Ephesians 1)

Death is a powerful word.

When death is encountered, all of your senses are engaged. There is an overwhelming stench to death. There is an unmistakable look to death. There is a unique taste to death. There are distinct sounds to death . There is a chilling touch to death.

To some, death is an end; to others, death is the beginning. I know those who live in fear of death and I know those who celebrate death, but I know no one who anticipates the death of their beloved friend or mate. I know no one that longs for death to consume the life of the child they tuck into bed at night.

Whenever I read that first phrase in Ephesians 2, I pause, and think about my life before Christ. I was dead. I used to walk down a path seeped with death.

We were dead. Think of the seeming contradiction in that first sentence of Ephesians 2. “And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked.” Here Paul is stating that each of us were dead, yet we were able to walk in sin and trespasses. I think of a meth user. Her entire family can look at the sunken eyes, the body wasting away, the clammy skin, the red-shot eyes and mourn the deathly path she walks. The road she travels is killing her. In many ways—she is already dead. Dead to feeling, dead to emotion, dead to reason, dead to the needs of those who rely on her.

As you watch that documentary of the meth user you realize, this is simply a physical example of who you were spiritually. You walked down that road, dead. The sin that you were entrenched in suffocated you. No, you were not the most evil being you could be, but you were not holy, not pure, not able to breathe the goodness of God and drink the living water you so desperately needed to LIVE.

The world is set on a certain course…a course directly opposite of where God is heading. James 4: 4 boldly says, “You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.”

But when you are following the course of the world, you do not think of yourself as an enemy of God. Part of following the world is deceiving others without hesitation and gladly being deceived yourselves. We allow ourselves to feel justified in our pride, selfishness, desire to control and manipulate, lack of integrity, desire to act on our passions and desires. It is easy to justify when we are following a mass of people who are heading in the same direction as we are. How can we be wrong when everyone else says it is right? Yes, we are adulterous people. Friendship with the world is enmity with God.

I can hear the passion in Paul’s voice as he says, “among whom we all once lived!” We cannot just watch that drug addict wasting away into nothing feeling detached because it is something we would never fall to. No, it is precisely the depravity of this world that eats away at our soul quicker the methamphetamine does to the body of a meth addict. Before we look at these “poor helpless souls” that need our pity, we need to be broken and humbled that this is who we were! We ALL once lived as though we were dead. We were dead because our sins choked our lives, the passions of our flesh consumed us, we carried out the desires of the body and the mind without regard to the consequences to those we loved, and we were by nature children of wrath (our nature was a nature that was in opposition and rebellion to a loving, gracious, and holy God).

We need to be present with the evilness in which we all were consumed. There is a difference between a recovering alcoholic reaching out to another broken alcoholic to show them the path to healing and light and the PhD clinician trying to medicate the alcoholic. Let us not be the second in our approach to mankind. Let us look at the depravity that was rotting away the depths of our hearts and souls and rejoice that we can now live a life of abundance. Let us not be detached from those who are dead, but let us smell, taste, see, hear, and feel the pain that consumes the lives of those who are walking dead in their sins. Let us examine our own relationships, thoughts, motives, beliefs, actions and be sensitive to any sign of death eating away at our souls.

I don't want to be a cool christian...

I don’t want to be a cool Christian; just to prove to the world that I am not a psycho fundamentalist.

I don’t want to wear the Abercrombie jeans, holding my Starbucks cup, with the trendy jewelry and hair; just to prove that I am relevant, current, and hip.

I don’t want to hand a few bucks to the homeless guy, just to relieve my guilt.

I don’t want to hang out with the Hindu, the Buddhist, the Muslim, or the Mormon; just to enlighten each other with the similarities in our faith.

I don’t want to change my look, language, or values; just to prove I am not a sexist, racist, heterosexualist, or religionist.

I don’t want to be a democrat so I can fit in with my generation and I don’t want to be a republican just to beat the drum of sanctity of life.

I don’t want to read one more angry Christian book that tears the church up and down; just to prove that I think the church is a waste and out-dated like other 20-somethings.

I want to be a Christian. A Christ-follower. A disciple that follows in his steps.

I want to be relevant and current, communicating the Gospel in a way that makes sense to those around me.

I want to walk by that homeless man, woman, family and have my heart tugged with a heaviness because of the pain in this world. And instead of tossing change in the hand of the man I did not make eye contact with, I want to be a part of finding the fundamental problem and the fundamental solution. I want to be proactive and look to develop ways to empower change, not just relieve symptoms.

I want to spend time with my Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, and Mormon friends because they are human beings. I want to appreciate the beauty of their culture and the differences between our faiths. I want to stop diluting Christianity and every other religion by saying we are all the same, because the fact is, it is in the differences that the beauty of God is magnified as we find that His word is transcendent of all cultures, beliefs, and ages. It is through Christ that we can have a diverse community.

I want to be someone who can love and seek to know deeper the heart of all people. In doing this, I will not be a racist, a sexist, a religionist, or have any form of hate inside of me towards humans. I will naturally be someone who desires to not be judgmental but always wants to understand a little better. I can share my values and beliefs, without fear of others “finding me out” and lumping me in the “stereotypical Christian”category. I don’t need to fight against a stereotype of “Christians”=judgmental and non-accepting if I am filled with love for all. I can spend that energy fighting for a culture that sees every human worthy of the message of Christ. I don’t have to avoid the subject of religion or spirituality, because it is who I am…it seeps out of my pores…I do not want to put my personal, spiritual, and professional life in separate categories….

I want to be knowledgeable about politics, enough to know where passion and energy is needed to effect social change. Why are social justice issues a “democrat” or “republican” issue? They should be a Christ-follower issue. Some things should not be clouded by party lines. Life is one of those issues: the right for each human to have life.

I want to be an agent of change who is passionate about doing more than voting. I want to sacrifice time and energy to contribute tirelessly to the great social injustice of abortion, domestic violence, lack of housing, food, and medical services for the poor, human sex trafficking, etc. I want to advocate for all life and be a voice for those whose lives are being taken.

I want to see the Church the way God sees it, the way Christ and the disciples spoke of it. I don’t want to be a prophetess protesting the soon-coming doomsday of the church. I want to be a loyal and active part of a community that has the potential and power to transform an entire community and society. We treat her like she is beaten and bruised, no hope of ever being the radiant bride God said she was. I want to be apart of a community that believes in being something larger then “self.” I want to be the one that looks back on the past 2000 years and boldly proclaim that true Christians have always been a part of every social injustice ending and are called to continue to be a part of seeing injustice and evil pushed down.

I am growing weary of a sea of Christians trying to make a point. What if we just decide to love people? And love people by loving God and knowing God and obeying His word. That is who I want to be.

My Goal

My goal is God Himself, not joy nor peace;
Nor even blessing, but Himself, my God.
'Tis His to lead me there, not mine but His...
At any cost, dear Lord, by any road.
So faith bounds forward to its goal in God,
and love can trust her Lord to lead her there.
Upheld by Him, my soul is foll'wing hard,
Till God hath full fulfilled my deepest prayer.

No matter if the way be sometimes dark,
No matter though the cost be oft-times great,
He knoweth how I best shall reach the mark,
The way that leads to Him must needs be straight.

One thing I know, I cannot say Him nay;
One thing I do, I press on towards my Lord.
My God, my Glory here from day to day,
And in the glory there, my Great Reward.

-by Fredrick Brook

Back to the real world... :)

We are back from our honeymoon! We had an AMAZING time in Honduras. We spent the first week on a beautiful island off the coast of Honduras and the second week up in the rain forest on the main land. We met so many special people, visited beautiful villages, ate great food, and enjoyed every second together. Our time was so special. Thank you all for your prayers. It is hard to just pick a few pictures to share...







Thank you all for your support in our marriage. We were overwhelmed by how much God has blessed us with friends and family that love us so much and give so much of themselves to us.