Bringing it back to Jesus-

What a blessing it has been to spend the past nine months in the word of God. We are on our 66th book of the Bible, Matthew's gospel. After beginning in the New Testament and working our way all the way through the Pentateuch, History literature, Wisdom literature, and Prophets it is good to be reminded that it is all about Jesus. As our time wraps up in Taiwan we continue to build relationships with both the people in our school and the amazing Taiwanese friends we have met. It is going to be bitter sweet returning to America as so much of our heart is here in Taiwan.
Before we do return, we are traveling to a few countries in the Middle East to teach church leaders and pastors the inductive method, Bible overview and some books of the Bible. Eric and I are on a team of two other people, one student and one staff. We are really looking forward to giving out all that we've been given and see God do some amazing things in the countries we travel to.

SBS Fun Day

So typically our Saturdays consist of 10 hours of work, which is fun, believe you me. This Saturday, however, was even more fun! We had SBS fun day, mandatory fun, which is always nice to have time that you literally have to take away from working. We went up to some mountain and got to play all morning and early afternoon- we played dodge ball, football (McCall and I did anyway!), and ultimate frisbee. It was such a nice time to be out in God's beautiful creation and spend time with our classmates outside of the silent classroom where all you can hear is the clicking of laptop keys. The more time I spend with the people in our class the more I am blessed by each person. Seriously, God could not have put together a more amazing group of people- both students and staff. There is such a balance of fun and seriousness its unbelievable! Each person truly has a desire to know God more and change the world through what they learn about him. Hear that? Change the world. I go to school with a group of world changers and I am SO excited to see where God leads each and every one of them. Its amazing how each person can act so silly and goofy one minute and then get some amazing revelation from God and start preaching up a storm. It is so cool to see how God uses so many different types of people and personalities from all over the world to bless me! Ha ha, I know that's obviously not each person's purpose there, but sometimes it feels like it. I wish you all could meet them. I'll have to do a short bio on each person, so you can just get a glimpse of each person… they're amazing! (did I already say that?!)

After our SBS fun day a group of us went to the beach for the afternoon, about 15 minutes away and RELAXED! God gave me and my beautiful friend Hannah a pretty sweet revelation of how big he is and how big his love is for us through the horizon and the sky. MAN! After that we came back to our house and made a massive Mexican meal for 11 people, and sat out on our roof listening to Spanish Salsa music… only in Taiwan! Then we went over the guys staff house and played games, you know spoons, well here in Taiwan we play "chopsticks", you work with what you've got, right? =) What an amazing time of fellowship with wonderful friends. It really made me with all our friends, all of you were here with us to share this wonderful adventure God has taken us on.

There's still a chance! While we're half way done with school this week (so crazy!) we still have half to go, if anyone is in the mood to come to Taiwan, let us know, we'd LOVE to have you! =)

Holiness

Thinking about holiness and where it derived from- I've come to the conclusion that it was before the beginning as we know it. Genesis 1.1, in the beginning God- he always was. It is in his being that we see the very meaning of holiness. Perfect unity, perfect relationship with the trinity- God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. This triune God is unfathomable to me. And yet, he has ushered me into a relationship that enables me to personally and intimately know them, and him- for they are one.

If holiness is this picture of complete intimacy between the trinity, even before the beginning, how am I to reach holiness? The Israelites are told to "be holy, for I am holy", and the same message is given to me today. How can I reach holiness? It is reading my Bible more? Is it praying more? Is it feeding the hungry more? Is it clothing the naked more? Is it being friends with the one person who doesn't seem to have any? YES! Each time I surrender my life, my day, my hour, my minute to the Lord I get a greater glimpse of his heart, his holiness and am supernaturally being changed from one measure of holiness to another.

While I may not be able to understand completely God's holiness, I have accepted that as a good thing. I don't want to be able to make God's holiness fit in my own limited vocabulary. All the words in all the languages combined could not begin to express the depth of God's holiness. This is the way it is suppose to be. If I could describe to you God's holiness in its fullness, then I would be God. But I am not, and for that I am very grateful, you should be too!

My desire is to understand holiness and how I can become holy as God is holy. I believe this is in a deep pursuit of intimacy with God. Knowing him more, knowing myself more and knowing his ultimate plan for me, so that I can truly be his hands, his feet, his mouth and his heartbeat to the nations.

Blessing out of no where!

Sucky turned blessing... my I-pod died last night as I was running. After just half a mile of running none of my buttons worked anymore. Once the song ended I was unable to go on to the next. I was going to stop, because really, whats the point of running without music. =) I felt God telling me to run with him. I looked up, and for one of the first times saw some BEAUTIFUL stars! I love the stars! Then Beth, one of my classmates came up to the track and we were running and talking about how much God was teaching us about his holiness through Leviticus. Praise God my I-pod broke! I was so encouraged by our talk! Sometimes God's blessings come through sucky situations, you know? I'm so thankful God sees the bigger picture!

God is faithfull!

We're studying Genesis now and its amazing to see God's faithfulness to people despite their unbelief. I've had a pretty sweet opportunity to see God's faithfulness this week with the Awaken tickets we need for the Gathering in September. We have prayed about it and felt God said we're suppose to go and really get involved which is exciting! As a group we've also prayed and felt God say that money shouldn't be an issue, if he says you're going then he'll make a way. It's really easy to say you trust in God's faithfulness when things are easy, but when you look online and tickets are up past 1,800USD, money becomes an issue. I was really struggling with the idea of spending so much money when we're living off of support right now. The Awaken group meets two times a week to pray and people kept getting reminded what God said about not letting money be an issue. Well we've talked to one of our translators to look up prices on some Chinese websites and she found some for under 900USD! PRAISE THE LORD! Seriously, half the price, God is so good. He really challenged me in my lack of faith and was asking me how can I trust him with my whole future if I can't trust him for a few thousand dollars and one event? What a good question!
God, forgive me for my unbelief. You are so big! In the midst of writing timeless truths about God's faithfulness he was challening me if I believed they were true- I fell short. But another timeless truth came in play- God's faithfulness isn't dependent on us, he is faithful because... he is, its part of his character.
God, thank you for your faithfulness and for building my faith in the small things so that my faith can stand the big things.

Love Has Action

The Lord has really been hitting me hard with this recently - not just saying that I love God, that I love people - but letting my actions prove it - letting my love be seen.
John 13:34 A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.
I claim that I love God, that I have given him my life, that he is my Lord - but if my daily walk is not overflowing with my love being evident and portrayed to others than do I really even love God? The description of love in 1 Cor 13 are words that have action associated with them:
patience, kindness, rejoicing with the truth, bears endures all things...etc. Action words

Lord, let my actions not cause the words of love I profess for you and for others to be a lie.

Revelation from Revelation

We are working through Revelation now- what an amazing book! We received an additional assignment for this book, to write a letter to ourselves, from God. The structure is to mimic that of the letters to the seven churches in chapters 2-3. This was a pretty hard assignment because we had to ask God how he would introduce himself to us, how he would encourage us, how he would rebuke/reprove us, and what promise he would give us.
The hardest part is that this is going to be seen by other people. The interesting thing about the letters in Revelation is that they each were going to be read by the other six churches- all their dirty laundry was going to be exposed. So, I felt challenged to share the letter God put on my heart for me...

My daughter,

The words of him who knows all things and holds all things in his hands:

I know your heart and your desire to walk in my will. Keep pursuing me and you will find the way to go. Step out in faith and you will grow. Even if you fall, I will catch you and you will fly. I delight in our journey. Press in deeper.

D not fear man, but only fear me. I know your doubts- remember I hold all things in my hand, all things. You say that you trust me, but you still worry- this is not trust. Have I ever let you down? How can you call others to trust me and follow me when you still doubt? Trust me.

Remember- those who trust in the Lord are like Mount Zion, which cannot be moved, but abides forever. (Psalm 125.1) You are like Mount Zion, in me you cannot be moved by fear or doubt, you are mine.

Love,

Your Father

The Gospel of John

John was the hardest book so far for me, and by far my most favorite. There was so much I needed to wrestle through- who is Jesus really, if I were alive in Jesus' time would I have believed who he said he was, or would I have thought he was crazy like so many others. This answer, if I honestly thought about it, scared me and led me to question why I believe what I believe. It is because it's what I grew up with? Is my faith really my own? Prayerfully, I considered these questions and feel I got some answers. In Debi's lecture (our teacher for John), for chapter 13 she said, if you don't understand something, go back to what you know: God loves us; God is good; God is for us, not against us. What a relief this is! Seriously, praise God that no matter what I don't understand about him, he is good! So many times his response to people's questions or comments just don't make sense to me. I kept thinking- Jesus why the heck did you say that, it was such a good question?! From this point on I felt Jesus asking me, what I knew to be true about him... and to really allow that to influence the way I interpreted my charts. I also felt him telling me to dig in to the things I didn't understand. He didn't want me to interpret things that would be easy for me to work through, but things that I would have to chew on, and really seek him in understanding. I think this is why this is my favorite book, despite the fact that for the amount of hours I put into it I should have had three times as much work for it, God is so good! He showed me that I don't and can't fully understand him, but this pursuit, this journey I am on with him- that is what he delights in. And the same way that I may not understand everything in the Bible, I don't understand everything he is telling me now. But that doesn't change his character and it doesn't change the fact that I need to step out in faith in both of these areas.

Final Application- 1 Corinthians

My final application from 1 Cor. came from the love chapter – 13:4-7. My desire is not to feel all lovey dovey with the flutterbys going everywhere with the rainbow in the sky and the birds chirping, but to really understand the eternal impact that you can have in people’s lives by living out in love. The more I understand love the more I understand God, the more I see God’s character the more clear my view of love is, the more I make love my aim the more God fills me with his love, the more that love overflows onto everyone around me. It all starts with love – it all starts with God. Without this love, his undying perfect, unrelenting gracious and merciful love there would be no cross, there would be no life, there would be no me. I need to more purposefully dedicate myself to living out love in its fullness – in every way its described from 1 Cor. 13:4-7. Each day I’m going to pray and beg the Lord to work through me in his grace to reveal his love in me so I can reveal it to others. For the next 2 weeks I’m going to meditate on this list and ask the Lord to show me which one he wants me to work on for that day. I want to be able to put my name next to all of them.

_____is patient and kind

_____does not envy or boast

_____is not arrogant or rude

_____does not insist on his own way

_____is not irritable or resentful

Eric does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth

_____bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things

Who am I doing this for?

When I first thought about SBS, even after a few weeks of being here, selfish thoughts overwhelmed the reasons why I wanted to do it, why I wanted to be here. The more and more time I spend in his word, the more he reveals more fuller aspects of his character to me, the more my life is being transformed, the more he is showing me it has nothing to do with me. I’m not here for myself. I’m not here so I can understand the bible more, gain more knowledge of his life giving word, or anything like that. So why am I here – or even a better question who am I doing this for? I’m here for the lost. I’m here for the broken, abused, homeless and dying. I’m here for the future ministries I’ll be involved in, for the DTS that I’ll staff, the books I’ll teach, the bible studies I’ll lead, and the sermons I’ll preach. I’m here for those I’ll be discipling, my unsaved family and friends, my previous and future co-workers, anyone and everyone in my sphere of influence. I’m here for Jesus.

Lord, the next time I’m complaining, struggling, tired of doing work, I beg you – remind me who I am doing this for…

What are you doing? More importantly who are you doing it for?

Snow Mountain

The end of our first quarter is three weeks away and we just made plans for our week long break! We are going with some of the other students and staff on a three day hike up Snow Mountain, the second tallest mountain in Taiwan. It is going to be a time of fun and fellowship while being able to see some of the most beautiful parts of Taiwan. Simply getting out of the city and enjoying God’s creation!!

Final Application- Romans

For each book we have to write an application paper on the most important thing that God taught us while studying the book. My application came from 14:17- “to live out the kingdom of God we need to live in righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.” God really challenged me to seek Him every morning to see what He wanted me to do, what He wanted me to say and how He wanted me to pray to bring His kingdom to earth. Last November Eric and I took a vow, forming a covenant relationship with two other friends to live out every aspect of our lives in light of the prayer, “thy kingdom come”.

Our Vow:

To Love God- to live a life of unadulterated, unceasing, unashamed worship. (John 4:23-24)

To Love People- to look at people with the eyes and heart of the Father, serving them in humility and proclaiming the freedom of Christ. (Philippians 2:1-5)

To Be the Gospel to the Nations- to fearlessly prepare the earth for the invasion of God. To be spent bearing the burden of ushering “the least of these” into the kingdom of God. (Matthew 11:12)

God showed me that Romans 14:17 was a very practical way to help live this out. The key? It is nothing I can do, but it is all through the Holy Spirit. Praise God, that He is not a God who give us commands and leaves us to fend on our own but scoops us up in His gentle hands and carries us along the way.

I am still learning what living in righteousness, peace and joy look like, but am so grateful that I am not on my own in finding this out.

Grandy's Joy

Its amazing seeing Grandy’s joy and peace in the face of death. We were sitting on her bed today and she said, you know- God’s given me peace. I was scared of dying and then I heard the music to the hymn “Be Still and Know That I am God.” And I realized, its so true. He is God and all I have to do is be still and know that. He is in control. And I wasn’t scared anymore.

What a beautiful picture of God’s goodness in the face of suffering. I went right to my computer and wrote down what she said because its something I want to remember forever. The peace that God has given her to enjoy the days she has life is truly a testament to His provision for his child.

She was very reflexive, talking about her little blue birds (her daughters) and all the things in life she was going to miss. But then she said, but I’m going home. She is holding on to God’s promise that this world is not our home and that one day we are going home to be with our Father, her time is simply coming sooner than ours.