Glorified in our brokenness

To make wine, a grape needs to be crushed, for olive oil an olive needs to be smashed, for a plant to grow; a seed needs to be broken.

God doesn't want perfect people who have it all together. He doesn't want a good Christian just obeying all the right rules, dressing the right way, using the right language or attending church twice every Sunday. He doesn't desire obedience for the sake of obedience or those who want to prove how good and perfect they can be. There is no glory given to God in this. It is fake, a masquerade of the truth which is not pleasing or holy to God.

He desires brokenness. We need to be crushed, smashed and broken without any dependence in or on ourselves and all dependence on God. We need to be unable ourselves in order to have the right desperate need for Christ. We need to be more concerned with the state of our hearts and intentions over the state of our appearance, self-confidence or popularity.

God is willing and ready to rid you of ever thing keeping you from being completely crushed, smashed and broken before His throne. He will remove anything blocking you from coming into His love, He will tear down, take away, destroy or change anything and any circumstance to bring you into His saving grace only if you will humbly be crushed, smashed and broken before His face in utter dependence for the entirety of your life!

The Potters at work

I flopped on our rickety old bed on the balcony. It was another late night and the breeze on the balcony was greatly welcomed. I was refreshed from my busy day that had gotten me down by the peace and quiet that the city offers late at night. I may be in the city but the moon still shines and assures me of that fact that I have a creator watching over me. The silence but interrupted by my new neighbors who so far are not the nicest people to live beside. He stood on the neighbor balcony slurring his words as he swore and yelled at his apparent “friend”. I was reminded of the many things in this world that are not as they should be, broken families, evil, pain, suffering, selfishness and the many other things that make this world the messed up place that it is. There is peace and good in this world but it is so often overshadowed by all the things that are not good and right.

The words from Jeremiah 18:5-6 came to my mind and reassured me “Than the word of the Lord came to me, O House of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter has done? declares the Lord. Behold, like the clay in the potter’s hand so are you in my hand”

I was reminded that even a midst the chaos and brokenness of this world there is something that reigns above all of these things. He is the Potter and He sees and is so aware of everything going on in this community, city and world. This entire world is in the palm of the Potters hand and He does with it exactly what He wants. I am in His hand and He can do with me whatever he sees fit. There is such joy in knowing this.

As we finish preparing this week and dive into training next weekend for summer camp and can reflect and remember these words that God does what He pleases. With every staff, volunteer and intern running summer camp and with every child and youth who will be attending, He is the Potter of each of these precious clay pots and He is building and molding each of the according to His will, in His timing, through His means and for His glory! He is working; He might flatten and kneed the clay multiple times before He completes His work on each clay jar. But I can rest assured, that even when I am trying to sleep as I am disturbed by the creepy neighbors that there is something far greater happening and the Potter is still working on His master piece in each of us!

Finally Home

You know the feeling of being home, knowing that you are were you belong? 

I sat up till 2 a.m last night catching up with my strange, crazy yet wonderful family members made up of girls from all over the world. 

Two weeks apart made for plenty to catch up on.

A few of us slept on our balcony last night, it isn't meant to be slept on but we have this weird metal bed looking thing, so we dragged a mattress out and slept under the stars and city lights, and the pigeons 

didn't wake us till nearly six.

The traffic lasted all night but I saw a brief glance of a glowing red moon and a gorgeous bit of a sun rise.

I start the coffee to perk and pull out my bible as the other girls slowly start waking up and joining me in our cozy living room decorated with green, brown and burgundy walls. 

Our home is unique, it has a crazy contrast of colors as well as people. 

We added a new chalk board wall to our kitchen yesterday and will be added four new members to our family here at Jane and Finch this afternoon from at least three different countries.

It is strange, it is busy, we have plenty of laughs, creativity and difference but that is what makes 

it such a blessing!

I am so happy to be back, it really does feel like home in this place!

Pray for peace and unity in our home and our team as we start up again this summer so that we may be effective at reach kids, youth and families with the love of Jesus Christ!

Just don't get to attached!

I found out on Sunday that one of my twelve year old girls was hospitalized and had passed out and the doctors did not know why. I was a mess; I was on my way to my parents after an exhausting weekend and felt completely done, finished with and ready to sleep for days till everything passed. In the process of someone trying to cheer me up their advice to me was to just not get so attached.

I work with families and kids in a community in Rexdale. They don’t have much; their lives are filled with fathers who leave gangs, drugs, guns and shootings. Run down government housing homes and lack of respect, care, love, safety and hope. I go in there to earn their trust, build relationships, to show them I care and value them. So show them their value and most of all to show them the hope that we can all have in Jesus Christ if only we accept His love in our lives.

But it’s not all easy. It’s hard being away from my family and my friends. It’s hard that the people closest to me don’t understand what I do or how much it means to me or how much it can affect me at times. It is hard being absent from so many events and things I’d love to be at. It’s not easy always missing someone or something. It means there are times when I will be very lonely and like I am doing everything on my own because there is no one around to support me.

 It is also not always easy building relationships in the community that I work it, it takes a lot of hard work and times to establish a relationship with someone who isn’t used to anyone caring about who they are. It takes a lot to earn some ones trust and respect when all they know is people letting them down. It means really investing, caring and valuing someone who may have little regard for you. It means being disappointed when they don’t respond the way I’d like to them and hurts when they lash out in anger because of the injustice of their own lives. And it means tears and pain when I know one of my little girls is in the hospital and I can’t be there with her and I don’t know how she is doing. It also means I will have a burden and a heavy heart knowing that she doesn’t yet know the Lord.  

But it’s a mission field. I am only an hour away from my “home” and not even that far from my “home church”, but in another sense I couldn’t be farther away. The lifestyle in Rexdale could not be more different then my parents’ home in Utopia. It feels like another world so far away from my family and friends. It’s my other life, my sisters in South Africa and that is far away distance wise, I am not that far away physically but I may as well be.  The worlds don’t mesh to well together; I can’t be fully in my old life and fully in my ministry. It’s not a part time thing and it’s not a 9-5 job. I don’t have the weekends “off” to enjoy the freedom of weekends. Relationships and ministry is a full time occupation. If I am not there and if I am not attached then I may as well just not be there. I often hear comments from people at my church or my neighbor like “it’s been so long” or “where have you been”, or “you don’t come to church to often anymore”.  I hear these things and often grow burdened and discouraged, I can’t be everywhere. I wish I could I really do but I can’t. I can’t be fully involved in building relationships and loving a community if I am never there, or if I leave every chance I get. That isn’t how you love or care for someone.

I need to be attached, I need to be involved, and I need to invest. That doesn’t mean that I will forget everything else and will completely disappear off the face of the earth. It just means that I can’t be around as much as I’d like and that is okay. Because I am doing what I love and what I am supposed to be doing.  But I need people behind me in this, I know what I am doing is kind of weird and isn’t the “normal” thing to do, but I desperately want my friends and family to understand what I am doing and why I am doing it because I need their support. I need to be encouraged through words and hugs and affirmation, I need to be built up and prayed for. I need to be support by my family, friends and church community even if I am absent as a missionary in a third world country, what if I was!

Mom's retreat

Urban Promise Toronto has been around for fifteen years and for twelve of those years they have had a mom's program call Uphold which was designed to be a program that both brought the moms from the community together to support one another as well as to help these moms to know God and to discover that they are more then just moms. 

This past weekend I was able to join 18 of these mom's some of which have attended for the entire twelve years up to Muskoka Woods for three days. The theme of the weekend was Identity with three subtopics, How we view ourselves, how we view God and how God views us.

This provided space for the woman to be honest with themselves with each other and with God which also resulted in encouragement and love being given.

The weekend also included many laughs as these mom's all turned in to big kids without all their responsibilities, they even played pranks and painted each others nails until three in the morning!

The weather held out for us all weekend and we were able to experience a huge rope swing that pulled us by rope up about 50 feet and then released one rope letting us swing high in the air. 

We also all learned how to knit scarfs and had a lot of time to chill together and relax and of course game time. Every year they play a game call Do you love your neighbor. This game brings out the worst of everyone as it is competitive and normally ends in a few broken chairs because of how competitive they get!

It was such a blessing to spend time and get to know all these woman. My prayer is that what they heard and experienced this weekend may not leave their minds or hearts and that the truth spoken of Christ might actually take root in their lives in a personal individual way.

May the relationships formed this weekend continue and be a blessing to everyone.

Isaiah

I have been reading through the book of Isaiah the last couple of weeks. 

I have been told my whole life that Jesus loves me, we all know the song "Jesus loves me this I know for the bible tells us so." But do we actually know, have we read in  the bible were He specifically tells us so?

I used to avoid the book of Isaiah, it was to long to really get in to. 

But as I have been reading through it I have be struck with just how much I am like Israel, God's chosen people continually turn their backs on God and reject Him. Yet God continually comes through for them and speaks blessed promises and words of grace and mercy calling them His own.

As I started to read it in this light I have been astonished by the great love with which He loves me. 

I am His chosen and these promises and words of love are also spoken to me.

Let me share some of the key verse that I've read the last few days that God brought to my attention and continues to bring to my mind through out the day as I walk with Him.

Fear not, for I am with you. be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you I will uphold you with my righteous right hand. Isaiah 41:10

And I will lead the blind in a way that they do not know, in paths that they have not known I will guide them. I will turn the darkness before them into light, the rough places into level ground. These are the things I do, and I do not forsake them." Isaiah 42:16

Fear not, for I have redeemed you;I have called you by name, you are mind." Isaiah 43:1b

"Because you are precious in my eyes and honored, and I love you." Isaiah 43:4

"I will say to the north, give up, and to the south, do not withhold; bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the end of the earth. Everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made." Isaiah 43:6-7

"Behold I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert." Isaiah 43:19

"Thus says the Lord who made you, who formed you from he womb and will help you." Isaiah 44:2a

"I have blotted out your transgressions like  cloud and your sins like mist; return to me, for I have redeemed you." Isaiah 44:22

"I called you by name, I name you, though you do not know me. I am the Lord, and there is no other besides me there is not God; I equip you though you do not know me, that people may know from the rising of the sun and from the west that there is none besides me; I am the Lord, and there is no other I form light and  create darkness, I make well-being and create calamity, I am the Lord who does all these things." Isaiah 45:4a-7

"Because of the Lord, who is faithful, the Holy One of Israel, who has chosen you." Isaiah 49:7b

Community of Christ

1 Thessalonians 5:12-25 does a very good job of laying it out for us when it says, "We ask you, brothers, to respect those who labor among you and are over you in the Lord and admonish you, and to esteem them very highly in love because of their work, be at peace among yourselves and we urge you brothers admonish the idle, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient  with them all. See that no one repays anyone evil but always seek to do good to one another and to everyone. rejoice always. Pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. Do not quench the spirit. Do not despise prophecies, but test everything, hold fast to what is good. abstain from every form of evil. Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls is faithful, he will surely do it. Brothers, pray for us."

There is so much in this passage, so many direct clearly stated does and don'ts. Do this, do not do this, there isn't much room left for us to get confused but some how we still manage to misunderstand so much of what is written for us.

This passage begins with a request asking us to respect each other, to respect those who work with you for the same purpose and for those who are over your in leadership. Whether they are over your or not their is a call for respect, but we are not only called to respect one anther but it goes further and calls us to esteem each other very highly in love. The word respect is used to commonly today, every one in this world wants respect and many demand it through aggression and force because they want it so badly. We are taught that it is a good thing to have respect but that it doesn't matter how you get it just as long as you have it. If that means lowering your standards or smashing someone else we'll do it. But being of Christ doesn't ask for this type of respect, it is asking for a respect given not based on who the person is or what they can do but based on what Christ as done for them, and yet it doesn't stop there either. As Christians we are called to an even higher level, we are told to esteem others very highly in love. It can be easy to give mutual respect to others, but that is not what Christs asks of us. He asks us to give respect even if its not returned and to esteem others. It goes much further and deeper then what we would do or even want to do. Think quickly of your own Christian Community, I'm am sure it will not take you long to think of just one person that you don't want to respect and definitely don't want to esteem very highly but yet this is the very first thing Paul says for us to do in his final instructions to the Thessalonians. I think its the first thing he tells us for us reasons, because without this kind of respect for each other the following instructions are impossible.

The texts moves from respect to explain the kind of relationship we should have with one another. From verse 14 through 16 we are told to do some very great things on before and for one another all of which are not possible if first you do not have a relationship with the other person so that you know them and their situations in life. It says first to admonish, to call one another out in love but this is not something you do unless you know person well enough to know their faults and what and where they need to be called out on. This is followed with the urge to encourage the fainthearted. Admonishing cannot be done without encouragement and here Paul calls us to be in such a relationship with one another that these things are what resemble our lives as a community of Christ. We are to help each other, to be patient with and for each other. We are to repay no one evil but should always be seeking to do good to everyone. This is no light thing, how often do we grow jealous of others wishing what happened to them didn't or that we had gotten the promotion instead. Envy, jealousy have no choice but to be destroyed by this command. We are to desire the very best for another, to rejoice always in every circumstance and to help each other find reasons to rejoice. Our relationships should be governed by such respect, esteem and care for each other that everything, admonishing, encouraging, helping, being patient and good to one another is an out flowing of our love for our King.

Pray without ceasing. We are to pray for one another, we are to be without ceasing, to continually be holding each other in pray. We are to be interceding on behalf of one another, praying against the power of the devil in our lives and praying that God would continue to over take our lives. We are to know each other well enough to know how to pray for each other, to be in close contact and communication able to ask each other to pray for us when times do get difficult. This passed weekend I was so blessed to be able to pray for particularly three of my brothers and sisters in Christ who's lives hit a rough patch. They were able because of our relationship to come and ask for prayer and later when I was not with them I was burdened for them and continued to hold them in prayer only to be blessed further by them being burdened and praying for me in times when they didn't even know what was going on in my mind and life. I was able to experience this type of community were it didn't matter where we were or who was around it only matter that we took everything going on to our heavenly Father. We are to be fighting for each other through prayer in the times of  trouble and temptation and we are to be giving thanks for and with each other in the times that are good.

From prayer the text moves to do not quench the Spirit. Paul reminds us to pray for each other and then reminds us that we are not to quench the Spirit because these two co-reside together. If we quench the Spirit we will not pray, we will not be moved to pray. We are to listen to the Spirit we are also not to despise prophecies but instead we are to test everything. It is easy to kick the Spirit out of our lives, to ignore His promptings or to reason away His moving in our lives by things in this world. But if we do that we will be unable to do what we are called to and will miss out on so much blessing. I've quenched the Spirit, I've reasoned away His voice and I have experienced being unable to do the things I am called to as a Christian because of this. We are called to listen, but are also called to test everything. It is also easy on the other side of things to almost blame everything on the Spirit or to forget that we have an army of the devil trying to break us down and so we are called to test, to hold everything before God and to abstain from evil. Quenching the Spirit puts a huge halt on our lives as Christians and so does partaking in evil. Nothing hinders us more, tears us down more, deceives us more then the devil grabbing hold of a tiny insignificant part of your life and making it his. Except we are called to have our whole lives surrendered to God, every single part of our lives and so then there is no insignificant part that we have secretly have under the control of the devil and still expect our lives to be filled in every part with God. We deceive ourselves with this lie and with every piece the devil grabs a hold of we are taken further and further from where we are suppose to be. Don't quench the Spirit let it convict, let it move in your life, don't be help captive by sin, abstain from every form of evil.

It is laid out plainly for us what we are called to do and what we are to keep away from. The good news is though that we are not left just with a long list of does and don'ts, Paul finished this amazing passage with "Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it! Brothers pray for us. Greet all the brothers with a holy kiss. I put you under oath before the Lord to have this letter read to all the brothers. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you" We are not left alone to do this we have the hope of our Savior who give us His peace who sanctifies us that we may be blameless in our whole being at the coming of our Lord! And then it says, He who calls you is faithful and will surely do it. Our God is faithful and He will complete this work in us. It is only through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ that we are able to try to live our lives in a way that is in community with Christ with our brothers and sisters. But I urge you as Paul urged the Thessalonians to do these things, to respect and esteem others to grow in relationship as you walk this short life together and to pray without ceasing for and with each other until the return of our Lord "And I am sure of this that He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ!" Phil 1:6

Knowing You more!

"Knowing you more is wanting to know you more".

Stop and consider for a moment what these lyrics mean. Knowing God more is simply

 wanting to know Him even more.

This is so simple, exciting, convicting and reassuring. It's simple in the way that we can so often over complicate phases like "knowing God more" with our own resolves and agendas on how to achieve this. We think if we read our bible more, go to church more, serve more that we will know Him better and although these things have their place and defiantly can play a role in doing so it is also as simple as just having a deeper desire to "know" God. 

It's exciting because the more we grow in knowing God the more we should want to. There is always more we can know about Him and more intimate ways for us to know Him. We never have to stop, not in this life on earth and defiantly not when we get to heaven. We know God is far greater then us and above all things we can imagine but do we understand what it means that we should never stop desiring to know Him more?

Psalms 113:5-7 says "Who is like the Lord our God, who is seated on high, 

who looks far down on the heavens and the earth? He raises the poor from 

the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heaps."

It's convicting in the way that so often our lives of wanting to know God more doesn't bring about this reaction or desire. We far to easily think we have reach or already obtained what we are yet so so very far away from. It's convicting when we think that perhaps we don't actually want to know God because we aren't really feeling like we want to know Him more then we already do. Or perhaps its when we realize that we have stopped wanting to know God all together or the thought of wanting to know God personally is completely foreign to us. 

David sings out in desire for God when he says "How lovely is your dwelling place O Lord of hosts. My soul longs, yes even faints for the courts of the Lord. For a day in your courts is better then a thousand elsewhere. I would rather be a door keeper in the house of my God than dwell in tents of wickedness." Psalm 84:1,10

And finally it is reassuring! Our God is so great and so mighty, so complex that we cannot ever know Him complete and this God is the one who is in complete control of every aspect of our lives, this reality should be of great comfort and assurance to us. The more we know God and the more intimate we become with our God and Savior should prob us desire to know and be even more intimate with Him. And the more we know God and continue to seek to know God more we will be far more effective, loving and God glorifying in our lives as a representative of Gods grace. May we also be able to say;

"Whom have I in heaven but You? And there is nothing on earth that I desire 

besides You. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever." Psalm 73:25-26