Mongolia

Mongolia…. In my mind it is a wild, untamed place.

In my mind when I think of the people there, I think of descendants of Ghengis Khan. Fierce and independent men and women. Forgotten royalty from a forgotten era.

In my mind I see I rolling steppes and wild horses. Nomadic people who choose to live nowhere and everywhere. I see hunts led by men on horseback with falcons on their arms. I see herds of reindeer in the cold northern places. I see snow and ice, and deserts and heat.

Tomorrow I will arrive in this land that I have dreamed about since I was a little girl.

And my heart is dreaming about what I will find there.

Manta Rays

I have to share a video of my last adventure in Hawaii! Some friends and I went and swam with manta rays on our second to last night here. 

I can't even describe how incredible it was to swim with such massive, primordial, strange and gentle creatures. 

What an experience...

Missing Kona

Cool mornings, hot days, warm evenings.

Truly enjoying the relief that cool breezes bring.

Ocean. Always the ocean.

Palm trees.

The way it feels to sink into the water.

Swimming with the knowledge that you’ll find something beautiful.

Papaya.

Early mornings spent swimming with pods of dolphins.

Warm summer nights spent stargazing.

Weekends spent exploring waterfalls, hiking new trails, laughing with new friends.

These are the things that I will miss about Kona...

Yes

This week I chose to say yes.

Yes to everything—the new, the scary, the unexpected. The purposeful and the pointless. The boring and the fun.

And I tried to make it a wholehearted yes as best I could.

You see, I realized one day how my answer is almost always “no.” Why is that? Why is it so easy to hold back if an idea doesn’t originate in my own heart and mind? What is it that makes me distrust everything that comes from outside of myself?

It doesn’t matter if it’s a family member, a friend, or even God asking me to do something, come somewhere, enjoy something… it’s easier to say no. To hold myself at arms length and remain aloof until I’ve weighed the options decided how involved I want to be.

It occurred to me that this holding back and hesitancy can’t be a part of having a joyful and fulfilled life, so I decided to spend my last week in my DTS responding with a confident, crazy, joyous “YES” to all things.

And I am so glad that I did.

It’s not as if I stumbled upon a magic formula to constant happiness, but I think something changes when you decide to always try to say yes (using discernment, of course) to the things that find you.

When my heart is in a position of always saying “no” it is focusing on the likelihood of disappointment. On a lack of trust for anyone or anything outside of my own heart and mind. That heart posture effectively says that no one else is worth my time, my love, my risk. No one. Not my friends, my family, or even my God.

Who would want to live like that..? It’s a wall that, though breachable, keeps out so much good. It keeps you from getting hurt, but it also keeps you from receiving love, and even more importantly, from giving love to others.

But, when I choose to say yes, my heart is saying that it expects great things. That life is good, and that joy is coming. That beauty is in this world, and there is light everywhere if only you choose to see it. It says that the people I surround myself with are worth taking risks for. They are worth going out of my comfort zone for. They are worth taking off the armor and shields that we pick up throughout our lifetimes to keep ourselves safe. 

They are worth giving the benefit of the doubt.

It says that I am brave enough to let myself make mistakes, and courageous enough to love people even though people are as prickly as cactuses and being close to them without being covered with armor hurts sometimes.

I’m not saying that it’s wrong to say no or to have boundaries. I think that in order to have balance in your life, you must know where to draw the line. But for someone like me who has no problem drawing hard lines in the sand, it’s good to exercise saying “yes” for a change.

It puts my heart in a place where light can get to it easily and make it grow. It’s a choice I can make that brings joy and trust within my grasp.

So here is to many more weeks where I choose to say “yes” as often as I can.

How to Love

Love is patient.

Love is kind.

It does not envy.

It does not boast.

It is not proud.

It is not rude.

It is not self seeking.

It is not easily angered.

It keeps no record of wrongs.

Love does not delight in evil.

Love rejoices with the trush.

Love always protects.

It always trusts.

It always hopes.

It always perseveres.

Love never fails.

Sometimes I like coming up with excuses for why I can dislike someone. Let’s be honest, it’s a little too easy to find reasons not to be friends with difficult people sometimes.

Recently though, I realized that is a complete lie to believe that that is acceptable.

If, as a follower of Jesus, I am commanded to love everyone, then that means that I am literally meant to love everyone.

To choose kindness, patience, selflessness, humility, trust, fierce protectiveness, longsuffering, and perseverance in the way that I act towards them, treat them, and talk about them.

To choose to not be self seeking in a friendship is such a counter cultural thing. I think that in American culture we choose our friends based on what we can get out of that friendship.

How does they treat me? How do they affirm me? How do they make me feel? How often do they say yes to me?

But what if I chose to offer the hand of friendship to anyone, and not based on my human standards, but based on the standards that Jesus set? What if I decided to love people well just because people need to be loved well, and the more difficult the person, the more their need is.

Not to say that boundaries are wrong, or that we shouldn't have friends who do love us well. We need that. But I do feel challenged to learn to better love the people that I would naturally rather avoid.

Sometimes I like to think about eternity. It’s an idea that our brains cannot comprehend.

No end.

Compared to that, my life here is such a tiny little blip. It is so small. So short. Too short to not choose to radically love. Too short to put my own desires above my call to serve and love others.

So God, help me learn how to love. I’m not perfect. I will mess up. But change my heart to look more like Yours. Help me to see what you see when I look into the eyes of the angry, the unkind, the obnoxious, the socially awkward, the smelly, the ugly, the broken. Give me Your compassion and help me to be a friend to the forgotten.

You say that You are near to the low and to the broken—that when we love them, we love You. So help me to love You well…

Evangelism

This Friday during one of our classes my DTS discussed evangelism, and practiced by breaking into smaller groups to talk to each other about Jesus, since that is something most of us had never done.

This did not go over well (at least not in my head).

I never realized how strong my opinions were about evangelism until someone told me to evangelize.

I don’t like it.

I don’t like feeling like I’m going to be the rich white girl standing in the street of someone else’s nation and telling a group of strangers what to do with their heart and soul.

I don’t like the lack of follow up and relationship that I imagine exists when the medium for proclaiming your faith is standing on top of a soap box.

I’ve seen “those people” on my own college campus and they’re always doing the same thing. Screaming at strangers and telling them how they are going to go to hell, and accomplishing nothing more than turning off every passerby to Jesus Christ.

I don’t like it because (to me) it’s not love and it’s not grace and while aspects of trust exist in it, it’s certainly not the whole truth.

It's a bunch of loud and angry people who yell at you and try to scare you into faith that's based on the love of God. That feels counter-intuitive to me. 

Needless to say, I had a pretty bad attitude.

Sidenote: I feel like I should probably clarify here—no one in YWAM is telling me to stand on a street corner and tell strangers they're going to hell. No one is saying I should preach to groups of people without also trying to build relationship. What they are saying is that they want to be obedient to God in all circumstances, and if that includes going up to a stranger and talking about Jesus then so be it. 

Anyways, I don’t know why, but the topic of evangelism really stuck with me—I was more irritated and offended by it than I thought normal, so much so that even after talking with one of my team’s leaders about it, it was still on my mind, just hanging out in the back of my head bothering me.

My family is in town, so I ended up venting my feelings about our evangelism exercise to my mom— the poor woman had to listen to me list off every thing I saw weird and wrong in it.

She listened, I ranted, conversation waned, we went to dinner, and I thought that was that.

The next morning as we sat on the back porch of their condo sipping coffee and watching waves crash on the rocks (pretty magical, by the way) she brought up the topic again.

My mom has been studying the prophets in the Bible and that morning had read some things that made her think of me. She said that we each have a natural response when God asks us to do something, and that you can see it particularly clearly in the prophets.

When Moses was called he said, “I won’t do it.” When Isaiah was called he said, “Woe is me.” And when Jeremiah was called he said, “I can’t do it.”

In my mother’s opinion, I’m pulling an Isaiah. Because the truth of the matter is that I felt compelled to deviate from my life plan and spend six months of my life in YWAM. Three months going deeper into my faith in Jesus, followed by three months spent implementing that love and faith in Jesus by serving and loving others.

That is a call, and though I’ve been obedient, I’ve also been vaguely horrified that I’m voluntarily going outside of my comfort zone. My obedience has not been a joyful one. It’s been a hesitant and weirded out one with a foundation of cynicism rather than trust that God leads me well.

Here is the verse that my mom pointed out to me. I think that God’s message to this prophet is so applicable to anyone who shares my attitude regarding how far they are willing to go in obedience to Him:

Jeremiah 1:4-8

“The word of the Lord came to me saying, “before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.”

“Alas, Sovereign Lord,” I said, “I do not know how to speak; I am too young.”

But the Lord said to me, “Do not say, ‘I am too young.’ You must go to everyone I send you to and say whatever I command you. Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you and will rescue you,” declares the Lord.

Verses 17-19

“Get yourself ready! Stand up and say to them whatever I command you. Do not be terrified by them, or I will terrify you before them. Today I have made you a fortified city, an iron pillar and a bronze wall to stand against the whole land—against the kings of Judah, its officials, its priests and the people of the land. They will fight against you but will not overcome you, for I am with you and will rescue you,” declares the Lord.”

To say I felt convicted by her insight and these verses is an understatement.

This isn’t about rehearsing the best speech I can put together in order to yield the best results.

It’s about acknowledging that each of us has been called.

It’s about choosing joyful acceptance in that call instead of hesitance or fear.

It’s about finding ways to prepare myself so that if/when God asks me to speak I can more easily honor him with instant obedience and immediately give a joyful “yes!”

This is not saying that my responsibility is to pick soapboxes to stand on and then speak from them when I feel like it. In fact, I think if that is my method, I'm doing something wrong.

Followers of Jesus have a constant call to serve and to love—to wash feet, to love and rejoice over the unlovable and miserable, to give freely of what we have received.

But in the event (and in my opinion, only in the event) that in addition to loving and serving, my God does ask me to climb up in front of a group of people and proclaim my faith in Him, it’s not a bad thing to have been somewhat prepared.

He is Almighty God and He has commanded me to stand up and say whatever He tells me to. That includes speaking with a friend over dinner, it includes my silence, and it includes me standing and proclaiming whatever He wants on a street corner.

I think the bottom line is “Will I be obedient?”

I claim to believe that my God has a plan for me and guides me well in the big things and in the small. So then, if I hear Him ask me to do something that offends my sense of what is socially acceptable, will I still say “yes” with joy, full of trust that this is part of the path He has chosen for me?

The answer must be yes. Because my sense of awkwardness cannot take precedence over the will and command of God.

Man. What a challenge this DTS has been to me. It’s hard forcing myself to really consider why I believe the things I believe. Is it just because I want to believe it, or is there some foundation beneath it all—besides the foundation of my own opinion?

It’s so good, but it’s so hard. I don’t think a day has gone by when some thought or understanding I have has not been challenged. I wish that everyone could experience this. This ripping into your own soul to figure out exactly why you think what you think is so rewarding. It gets your eyes and heart down to the very core of you, and you finally stop being blinded to what God really wants to do in you.

I hope I always have the courage to ask for more and to say "yes" to what is given.

Understanding vs. Enjoying

This is a little late in coming, but I wanted to share my thoughts from last week on enjoying God versus understanding God.

Classes last week were… difficult. Frustrating. Paradigm shifting. Offensive even.

I think that’s because I have been intent on understanding the mind of God for the sake of an experience. Please don’t misunderstand me, I don’t for one second believe that my desire to understand is a bad thing—I think that my desire to know the “why’s” and “how’s” are nothing less than a gift from Him. I like to imagine He enjoys my curiosity and wonder because behind it all is a hunger to know Him.

But I think it might stop being a good and useful thing when all you can do is ask questions instead of enjoying the things that you do see and understand.

It stops being a tool to knowing and loving God more, and instead becomes a blockade.

This week, we were lucky enough to hear firsthand from a man named Dan Bauman stories of the adventures he has had while pursuing his greatest passions—loving God and loving people. I haven’t had the privilege of listening to many people speak who are as passionate about simply loving and being loved by God as Dan is.

It was good.

It was also annoying.

This is a man who has audibly heard the voice of God. A man who has experienced dreams and visions. A man who has been imprisoned and tortured for his faith.

One of his more mind-bending stories occurred during a two month period where (due to political unrest) he was forced to leave his job and country of residence. He ended up in Thailand at a prayer meeting with some friends, and as he prayed and asked God what they (meaning he and God) should do until he could go back to his country, he received the name of a specific people group and the command to  go to them and pray for them for three weeks.

He had no idea who this people group was, so he started asking every person he came into contact with whether they had heard of it. He finally spoke to a man who not only recognized this people group (who lives in Northern China), but who actually had an Australian friend who lived near this ethnicities territory. Unfortunately there was a problem. This man had no idea what his friend’s address, phone number, or email was. He only knew the name of his city of residence (a city of 7-8 million people) and some vague impression that his Australian friend was studying a language there. He eventually confessed that it was possible that his friend wasn’t even in China at the time.

Dan was slightly discouraged by this, and though he continued praying, he received no other direction from God. But as the message he had received was clear, he felt he had two options. One—he could go to China with no more information than one name in a city of millions out of obedience to God. Two—he could stay in Thailand with his friends at a prayer conference.

He chose option one.

A short time later he found himself on a Chinese train that would deliver him (92 hours later) in the city he hoped that his contact was in. He walked up and down the train and eventually found an English speaking Chinese man who offered to give him a ride once they arrived. Dan very happily accepted.

“Where does your friend live?”

“Well, I don’t know.”

“Oh, well what’s his address?”

“I don’t actually have it.”

“Alright, well do you have his phone number?”

“Umm… no.”

Blank stares. Incredulous laughter.

At this point, Dan felt his first bit of direction since he had chosen obedience towards God. Ask about the main university.

“ Sir, do you think you could take me to the main university?”

“Of course!”

So, a few hours later, Dan found himself standing on the campus of a massive university in China in the middle of the night with no contact, no place to sleep, and no idea if this Australian man was even a student here.

Walk into the lobby. He walked. Stand here for twenty minutes. He stood. Walk down this hallway. He went. Knock on the last door in the hallway. He knocked and as the door opened, found himself facing a German professor. Dan immediately struck up a conversation. He told him the situation-- that he had no idea what the man’s address or contact information was, and the bemused German man informed him that he would never find his friend with so little information to go off of. Before the conversation ended the German professor asked Dan the name of his Australian contact in the city. As Dan said the name, the German professor’s face paled and eyes widened.

“I know the man you are looking for. Can I take you to him?”

“YES!”

Within the hour, Dan stood at the front door of his contact’s apartment in the middle of the night in a strange city, and knocked, praying that someone would be home.

The door opened and Dan looked the Australian man in the eyes, knowing that this man had no idea who Dan was, or why Dan was there. “Sir, I have been looking for you.”

Dan introduced himself, was invited inside, and told the man his stories.

The Australian man’s eyes filled with tears as he told Dan that a week previously he had been lying flat on the floor pleading with God to send people to pray for this specific group of people in China. For the next three weeks the two men prayed and Dan was even able to visit this people group. Great things are in store for the people that God told Dan to pray for. Many other stories were connected to this trip, but what struck me the most was the reasons God put such specific instructions into Dan’s heart and mind.

The Lord’s direction was good and true, and He did it simply out of love. Out of love for Dan, who was willing to be obedient. Out of love for the Australian man, who wanted an outpouring of God’s grace on others. And out of love for this people—a people that He sent His son to die for, and who were living in separation from Him.

Now, back to me describing listening to these stories as “annoying.”

If I am entirely honest, I was slightly offended by this (and other) stories that I heard from Dan this week. After all, I love God. I want to experience God’s love and direction and grace. I’m willing to be obedient. So, what’s the deal? Why do I receive so little when I see Dan receive so much?

Why does he get to experience God chasing after him as a pursuer, when (if I’m honest) I sometimes feel like God could take me or leave me and not care much either way?

I think there is a lot that needs to be unpacked in all of this, but hey, it’s only week one of my DTS.

As I struggled through Dan’s stories and waded through my own frustration and impatience,  I started to think of enjoyment. I was hearing wonderful things about how God is moving in big ways all over the world. Shouldn’t that make me happy? Shouldn’t there be joy on some level? It was then that I began to wonder whether my mindset had began to warp to make this all about me.

How much do I experience.

How much do I understand.

How much do I know.

It’s an easy thing to do, because after all, this is my life.

But I realized there’s a better way that yields better fruit. The questions I should be asking aren’t centered around myself.

How is God revealed in this?

How are people being served?

How can this help me enjoy God?

And with that, I felt I had a tool to handle my frustration. It’s so easy to throw a fit when God is revealing things that we don’t quite understand, and we have the freedom to do that if we want. But to what purpose? All it grows is frustration and annoyance.

I decided it was better to ask God (as His friend) to help me hear the things that would allow me to enjoy Him more as  I listen to my brother in Christ shared stories about his adventures with our heavenly Father.

I won’t say that there hasn’t been frustration since then, because the hunger to experience what I see in the lives of others is still (and I hope will always remain) inside of me.

But focusing on who God is and what He can do? That, my friends, changes everything.