Declare

"I am coming soon.  Hold on to what you have, so that no one can take your crown!" Rev. 3:11

O dead churches, wake up! O Christ, descend! Scarred head,take Your crown! Bruised hands, take Your sceptor! Wounded feet, take Your throne! For thine is the kingdom!

     "In July  1829 it pleased God to reveal to my heart the truth regarding the return of the Lord Jesus and to show me that I had made a great mistake by sitting back and watching for the complete conversion of the world.  It produced the following effect on me: Deep within my soul, I was moved to feel compassion for perishing sinners and for a world lulled to sleep by the wicked enemy.  And I began to think, 'Should I not do whatever I can for the Lord Jesus and try to awake His slumbering church before He returns?' ".   - George Mueller

     Today it is 2012, on the brink of 2013....183 years closer to the return of our Lord than when Brother Mueller spoke this quote and with a even greater urgency, I believe, to see that this commission is carried out!  Church, let's open our hearts, our time, our pocketbooks but mostly our mouths and declare boldly the Truth that we have been given! "God is Not dead, He is surely Alive...".

Word of the Day- Totemism

      to-tem-ism [toh-tuh-miz-uh m]
            the human tendency to form our conception of God in our own image.  Human beings, whether aboriginal tribes in the jungle or sophisticated clans (or not so sophisticated Klans) in industrial countries, is take the values and traditions that we most admire about ourselves and project them onto a totem.  Eventually we stand in awe of that totem and end up worshiping an incarnation of the things we love about ourselves.  As George Bernard Shaw said, "God created us in His image and we decided to return the favor."  

Eric Ludy - A Distracted Devotion from Ellerslie Mission Society on Vimeo.

Please Lord Jesus~ Remove from my life any Heels that I have been hanging onto and let my life sign forth your Glory!

We can Worship in the Waiting-written for the Love of Francesca

Dear Mom~ 
   This my my favorite day to write you this letter.  It's my secret day to think of you.  I remember all the fun we do.  I can't sleep because I think of you and Rebecca, too.  I miss you Mom, I want to go to Hoio (Ohio:)again.  I can't wait to see you again.  I remember the fun that we had.  I want to visit Chicago again. When it was my Birthday the children makes me cry when I finish talking with you.  I love mom and also my dad. 
                            From- Frannie
(letter written by a friend for Fran to me)

Francesca the morning that she was to fly home! 

"With the Lord a day is like a thousand years and a thousand years to the Lord is like a day! "...these words of the apostle Peter have echoed in my thoughts for the last several hours.  Knowing that he was speaking of the coming of the Lord, it was a reminder that God's timing is not the same as ours and that He see things in a all together different light then what we mortals do! Waiting on the Lord is not something that comes natural to us...we more often then not, do not want to be patient. To often our human nature wants it now and not later!

And so it is this state of mind that I often have found myself in over the last year and regardless of how much I have prayed and begged and sometimes screamed, "Help me to wait on you,Lord"...I have fallen quite short of completion of this desire.  It was one year ago this week that our sweet Francesca Elizabeth returned to Haiti to live for the remainder of her adoption.  In some ways it seems like yesterday...but mostly each day since she left has seemed like a thousand years.

                                         

Early spring walk on the day before she left! 

                                                                             

Last picture with the siblings minus Abbey and including Dulci!

                                                                             

A bit of history on this decision to adopt...we did not make a decision...in fact we had never even discussed it.  Four biological children later we felt quite certain that our quiver was full and if you had told us differently I'm afraid that we may have snickered a bit like Sara did when God told her that she and Abraham were to have a son! We were done...short of God's intervention...and intervene he most certainly did.  Not in the form of diapers and bottles, but in the aspect of home studies, fingerprinting, back ground check, and psychological evaluations.

At the wedding of a friend, just as the ceremony had began, because there was not a extra chair, I found my lap full of a twelve year old girl dressed in turquoise and just about as big as I was.  It was then, at that moment I believe that she was born...into my heart and it is there that she has remained henceforth.

Ready to go to the airport! 

                                                                           

Our family spent four wonderful months getting to know her and we were even blessed to have her move in with us for a time and attend school at our local public facility.  Visiting on a medical visa for health issues, when it came to the end of February her visa was expiring and it was time for her to return to her country.  She left our home with her froggy backpack on her back carrying her own dossier to give to the lawyer that would process her adoption....and part of each of our families hearts went with her.

Charity had a picnic for Francesca! 

And so the waiting began! The timetable was to be as such that her adoptive sister Rebecca, who had also been added to our heart family,  would age out at 16 on June 9 and we were praying for a miracle that this could happen with Francesca riding on the kite strings of Rebe's adoption.  The months preceding June was spent with much fervent and desperate prayer that the Lord would allow this to happen.  Never in my 17 years as a believer of the Lord had I prayed with such a agonizing plea.  Everyday and every minute of the day of the next three months I found my mind begging the Father to deliver these children on time.  As the age out time approached we were also planning for our first visit to Haiti to see the girls and where they lived.  It was there in that foreign land, among poverty and despair, that we learned that God had answered our prayers...just not quite like we wanted Him to! The adoption would not be done in time and that would put Fran back into the normal adoption timeline...which in Haiti...has no beginning or ending...or rhyme or reason! Rebe would be sought to come home in the form of a student visa...a very long shot indeed as I was told by a American embassy official!

Daddy and Frannie waiting at the airport! 

  I suppose the gut feeling looking back on it now was that we, in the dark recesses of our mind where we did not want to go, knew that this would quite possibly happen!  But  instead we had chose to believe and until that moment had complete confidence that our girls would be home by June! From that moment on the situation changed...no matter the pain that we felt and it was great...we began to see the hand of God working in a new way. Not that we hadn't seen it work prior to this.  God had made his work very evident allowing us to complete our dossier and have it sent to Haiti beginning the second week of January and going back with Fran at the end of February.  Our home study agency was blown away by things likea child abuse report which typically takes 4 months being done in less than 6 days and many other little miracles which sometimes I still find unreal.

But the working in the situation following the prayer answered by NO was a new look at everything in our lives.  It seemed that the floodgates opened...on our compassion for others, on our understanding of the poor in spirit, on our ability to see what living a life sold out to the Lord really looked like...

Frannie having a snack before she leaves

As of today we are planning our fourth trip to see the girls and have no new or encouraging news that either is even close to coming home.  They are now one year older and we are blown away each time we visit at how they have changed.  No, Francesca can not read above a 1st grade level, but she will turn 14 in June.  Rebe is still waiting for her visa appt because the Haitian govt was out of passport book for about 6 months and have now added additional steps to the process.  They are currently waiting on a appointment and the school year has come and almost went that she had been approved for at the private school that she was accepted into and still we just wait.

Our sweet Christmas reindeer- Celebrating Christmas in Haiti!

As discouraging as this might sound, and we have had many people comment that perhaps  it is not God's will that they come home...(as if God's will would not be to adopt?!)....we are finding that we have learned so many things through this time and that we are seeing a side of waiting on the Lord that we never thought possible!

Just a few things that we have learned about waiting and the meaning of "to wait on the Lord" since this process began...

The first meaning of waiting is IN SILENCE:  We spend much time delivering up our prayers...many words spoken over and over...in deliberation, in desperation, and in distress...but once we have delivered this prayer we must then become still before the Lord in waiting- our souls hushed and bowing in silence ( in faith) before the Lord.  Sometimes our souls are just two noisy and we hurry up and rush out of His presence and try to answer the prayer in some way ourselves. Many times in the beginning of the adoption process this would have been so true of us...trying to accomplish it...saying we were trusting God...but working  as though we were on our own. So you see, we have done the praying but not the waiting!

The second meaning of the word carries the thought of EXPECTATION and HOPE!  "For God alone my soul waits in silence. For my hope is from Him"  Pslm 62 1, 5. This is the act of trusting in Him and to expect Him to take care of the situation. Our natural man is so self sufficient.  He turns here and there and expects help to come from his natural ability, friends or the circumstances behind the plea, but as a spiritual being in Christ we are taught to not trust in self and to depend upon the power of the the Holy Spirit.  We tried to trust in our attorney, in the orphanage, in our ability to get things done fast, but only to acknowledge that the power of trust in the Lord was our only answer and knowing that He will take care of our children and He will also bring them home. 

The third meaning of wait  that has become apparent to us is TO WATCH, TO OBSERVE, and TO NOTICE.  In this waiting we must be still but also be so near the Lord that we will catch the slightest communication from Him. Our hearts must be sensitive enough to discern quickly His voice. "Blessed is the man who listens to me, watching daily at my gates, waiting beside my doors." Prov. 8:34  Time spent in earnest Bible reading, powerful prayer with much time invested, and a communion with God through worship and reaching out, to bring us so close to Him so that we can almost feel His very presence in everything that we say, everything that we see, and every circumstance in our lives. 

The last comprehension that we have found in the waiting is the ACTION of waiting.  That is a oxymoron you say.  You can not wait and be in action at the same time.  We have learned that there is indeed a action with waiting!  We must PREPARE our hearts through prayer and studying, we must LEARN all that we can through the struggle that we are waiting on, we must remain WATCHFUL for the hidden activity of God, we must stay active with what we know to be - LOVING our neighbors, TRANSFORMING our hearts, MAKING disciples...etc. We can also be LISTENING for the voice of God and for those that He sends to us, we can have HEALING as we wait on God to work so that we can be ready for the next assignment that He has for us and lastly the action of  PRAYING without ceasing.

It is very easy to put into type this awareness of waiting that God has brought into our lives but we struggle daily to implement it into our daily living.  Sometimes it seems so easy and other times I feel that I have failed in each and every way.

But one thing that is for sure as God has brought us into these realities of waiting, we have been able to establish a peace and perseverance in the wait.  We can do NOTHING to bring our children home....but God can and it is Him that will do so! We must be patient in prayer, in stillness, in worship, in hope, and always in believing...in His presence!

So while our hearts ache to have Francesca & Rebecca home we also know that God is near and He knows...He will always direct us when we need to move and He will still us when we need to be stilled. Let us be so close that we will always hear what we are to hear!

My heart has turned to a new scripture..."Those who Wait on the Lord shall renew their strength: they shall mount up with wings like of eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint!"

Take time to listen! :) 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzEx2awO2Xs

The Shoes

Her feet are a beautiful chocolate brown. Callous' and scars adorn the top and bottoms of them. For fifteen years she has walked on the rich earth  near her village of Doumbaibai  with the bareness and non inhibiting restraint of shoes. The soles of her feet are flattened and toughened from walking, running, playing.

She comes to us speaking nothing but her tribal language. From a culture to a culture so foreign of each other that comparison is not really a option.

This new culture requires shoes! A barbaric suggestion...but required nonetheless.  The used clothing store seems the best option since the size or preference is obsolete. So it begins the decision to encase those feet that have only felt freedom of the ground.  She chooses a pair that does not fit.  I chose a pair that she does not like. She chooses a pair of white stilettos. Probably not, I say.  And so it goes...pair after pair.  Most to narrow...a few to big.  Finally at the very end of the shoe aisle on the bottom shelf is success. Well worn and stretched out. With a smile on her beautiful face...she declares victory. She wears them out of the store.

"She must be so happy to have a pair of shoes!" says a friend.  It doesn't matter to her one bit. Shoes are not a priority. In fact a lot of things that is deemed important in this culture matters not to her. A bed to lay in? What is wrong with the floor. She sleeps under the stars, or the rain or what ever other weather her part of the Sahara might have. Running water...she smiles as she teaches how to "sous" clothes in a bucket of water from the river.

 Some things she does find important that she considers are missing is her daily "boule" which is a spongy bread made from millet, oil and other undefined ingredients. She also would like to have a okra gumbo to dip it in, but as of yet it has not been accomplished in this kitchen.  She thinks it "Loco" to have a variety of clothes...why not wash the one you have worn and wear it again tomorrow.

Getting a glimpse into her culture makes this culture and society suddenly seem so silly...almost diverting.  Making the thought pattern ask... "is it  us who are the ones who are in need.  In need of simplicity, clarity, understanding of importance...!" 

What are a pair of shoes?  Not much when you own 30 different pairs....but even less when you don't own even one!

Obedience

"I know, O Lord, that a man's life is not his own; it is not for a man to direct his steps." Jeremiah 10:23

"Lead me in a straight path"  Psalm 27:11 

     I said: “Let me walk in the field”;

God said: ‘Nay, walk in the town”;

I said: “There are no flowers there”;

He said: “No flowers, but a crown.”

I said: “But the sky is black,

There is nothing but noise and din”;

But He wept as He sent me back,

“There is more,” He said, “there is sin

I said: “But the air is thick,

And fogs are veiling the sun”;

He answered: “Yet souls are sick,

And souls in the dark undone.”

I said: “I shall miss the light,

And friends will miss me, they say”;

He answered me, “Choose tonight,

If I am to miss you, or they.”

I pleaded for time to be given;

He said: “Is it hard to decide?

It will not seem hard in Heaven

To have, followed the steps of your Guide.”

I cast one look at the fields,

Then set my face to the town;

He said: “My child, do you yield?

Will you leave the flowers for the crown?”

Then into His hand went mine,

And into my heart came He;

And I walk in a light Divine,

The path I had feared to see.

–George MacDonald

Raise Your Voice

     Jesus warned that on this earth we'd have trials and sorrows.  Sometimes I can't help but think that is a major understatement.  Even as I read it, I know that the stories of the hundreds of thousands of people living in poverty are beyond my comprehension.  There are 1.2 billion people in the world living in extreme poverty on less than a dollar a day.  There are 38.6 million people diagnosed with HIV worldwide.  There are nearly 30,0000 children under the age of 5 dying each day of hunger and preventable diseases.  Tere are stories of abuse, neglect, and evil that freeze my heart and stories of stupid, senseless poverty that bewilder my min.  There are countless children...little treasures knit together inch by inch, by God...slowly undone by disease, poverty, and abuse.   And no matter how much I and you want to forget that these numbers represent real people, I know that each one of the nearly 30,000 children is a story of a treasure.  A diamond God crafted to catch and reflect his light just so, but now kicked in the dirt, muddied, unrecognized, and abandoned.

     This is such a harsh messed up world...and I don't know how to take it.  I want to throw up my hands and accuse God or someone or something.  Of course, the Bible has never shied away from the state of this world. The first son born to man murdered the second one, and famine and disease are as old as Abraham.  Indeed this world is fundamentally broken and won't be fixed in our lifetime.  I read the stories day after day.  Stories of unthinkable genocide and cruelty, tribes wiping out entire tribes.  Stories of pandemics crippling entire nations and erasing generations.  Stories of children given little opportunity at life before being sold as slaves or stolen as soldiers.  Stories of babies whose lives were forfeited from the start without nutrition, clean water, or care.

      On The Other Hand...
     But on the flip side, I am experiencing a very different story unfolding.  The stories I see on the Internet stay in that little screen...they don't invade my world.  My section of the world is living through unprecedented prosperity, safety, and opportunity.  Advances in technology, industry, trade, education, and law have created a barrier of opportunity.  Sure, we all grew up pinching pennies, but weren't we always well fed.  We grew up with choices like would we go to college, where would we find a good job with health benefits or buy a house.  Far from the despair reigning in certain pockets of the world, our world and us are thriving.  We have more material wealth than any other generation in history.  I drive down the road and see huge houses, new schools and mega corps, mega malls, and mega churches.   The churches we attend are thriving and stock piling donations and not using them...just setting there.

     Put simply we are prospering.  But never able to leave well enough alone, I still can't help but wonder, as I sip my Boston Stoker coffee on an easy Sunday afternoon: Is this pleasing to God?  Is this His vision of what His world should look like?

     Looking at God's word, I see it isn't the first time the question has been raised.  The nation of Israel, in the time of Isaiah the prophet, faced a similar question.  The people of Israel were a good people.  In some ways they are like us.  In many ways they were better.  They were pious, keeping up their religious practices. They were prosperous, enjoying the fruits of their righteous nation.  They were well intentioned, regularly seeking God.  And they very rightfully asked God, " Does this not please you?"

Blessings of True Worship

Shout it aloud, do not hold back.

Raise your voice like a trumpet.

Declare to my people their rebellion

And to the house of Jacob their sins.

For day after day they seek me out:

They seem eager to know my ways

As if they were a nation that does what is right

And has not forsaken the commands of its God.

They ask me for just decisions

And seem eager for God to come near them.

“Why have we fasted, they say,

and you have not seen it?

Why have we humbled ourselves

And you have not noticed?”

Yet on the day of your fasting, you do as you please

And exploit all your workers…

Is this the kind of fast I have chosen?

Only a day for a man to humble himself?

Is it only for bowing one’s head like a reed

And for lying on sackcloth and ashes?

Is that what you call a fast,

A day acceptable to the Lord?

Is not his the kind of fasting I have chosen:

To loose the chains of injustice

And untie the cords of the yoke

To set the oppressed free

And break every yoke?

Is it not to share your food with the hungry

And to provide the poor wanderer with shelter-

When you see the naked, to clothe him,

And not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?

Then your light will break forth like the dawn, and your healing will quickly appear;

Then your righteousness will go before you, and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard.

Then you will call, and the Lord will answer;

you will cry for help and he will say: here am I. 

then your light will rise in the darkness and your night will become like the noonday.

The Lord will guide you always;

He will satisfy your needs in a sun scorched land and will strengthen your frame.

You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail.

Isaiah 58:1-3; 5-7; 8-11

      I am sure that you will agree with me that it is hard not to make the comparisons...these Israelites' religious lives sound alot like mine.  They went to Temple everyday.  They devoted themselves to learning about God.  They prayed faithfully.  Ok....most of us do not go to church every day.  But when I read this, I see myself ...eager for God to come near, attending church meetings, reading the Bible faithfully, and doing Bible studies to know more about God.  

     But God was not impressed with the Israelites.  And I'm not sure He is pleased with my religiosity either.  I can't help but ask, "Why not, God?  Don't you see how much I'm doing for you?  Don't you know how busy I am for you? Haven't you seen my acts of worship--fasting and prayer?  He answers,  "Is that what you call a fast, a day acceptable to the Lord?" 

     What a crushing moment.  

     What does God want from me...from His people?  What is true fasting, true religion?  God says it is this: "to share your good with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter- when you see the naked, to clothe him."  And James gives me another clue: " Pure and genuine religion in the sight of God the Father means caring for orphans and widows in their distress."  James 1:27 

     Feeding the poor, caring for the oppressed...that's messy stuff.  But what if what God wants is messy?  What if, like the Israelites, my spiritual service is a bit too tidy? a bit too contained in the white walls of religion?  a bit too focused on me? What if all this time I've been polishing myself up to exhibit spiritual excellence--like it's some precious jewel-- when what God really wanted was something wholly different?  Not to stay home perfecting myself, but to go out into the world.  To transform it through action, in service and in love.  Honestly, leading a Bible study and fasting sounds a whole lot easier.  But when I read those passages again, the conviction doesn't go away.  God is calling His people--me--to do something different. To spend time bringing refreshment and restoration to the broken and beaten down in the world.  

     Perhaps, God has a journey waiting for me and you to help Him restore, a journey He's calling us on to be His light in a dark world. 

~ Taken and paraphrased to our lives from "Hope Lives" Compassion International