Well, I'm back... for now

Dear readers,

I am back in two ways: back to writing on my blog and keeping you updated on my life's doings

AND

back to the States!

After two amazing years in Mexico, I am now planning on being in the good old U.S. of A. for the next two years while studying my Master's degree in Biblical counseling.  After that, I hope to go to  back to Mexico to work in the area of missionary member care as well as helping to run the Spearhead program.

For now, I would love to get a chance to reconnect with you if you are in the Pittsburgh area, although I must say that my seminary schedule is kind of dominating my life right now... so we might have to get creative.  I am also happy to share about my time in Mexico and would love to make you Mexican food (my new favorite hobby) if you can come over some evening.  I am also ALWAYS game for speaking Spanish, so if you're looking to practice, I'm your girl.  Contact me by e-mail, Facebook or phone and we can set something up.  If you don't have any of those, leave me a message here and we can work something out. :-)

Why Giving Is So Hard

I have a a hard time giving.  And I don't just mean donating money or giving birthday presents.  I mean:

I have a hard time listening
I have a hard time thanking people
I have a hard time tithing

We live in a day and age when life is so fast paced and there are so many burdens on us.  We don't have the time, mental capacity, or desire to contribute to anything that doesn't hold promise for us.  No, wait, I'll make that statement personal.  I have a hard time contributing to to anything that doesn't hold promise for me.

Really, even as I write those words, I know that this isn't some new phenomenon particular to this generation.  It's not about social pressures or the pace of life.  It's really just the disease of selfishness.  Why pay someone back now?  That's certainly not the most pressing need for these 50 pesos.  Why write that encouragement note?  I have more important e-mails to cross off my list.  And when I get home at night?  No, I'm too exhausted at that point to think about anything else.  Regardless of the excuses I make, when I really stop to be honest with myself, I see through the mask.  I find that so often the things that get pushed to the back of my schedule aren't there because of a "lack of time" but rather a lack of gumption.  They are there because mentally they are less important to me than "my stuff."

So, why do I bare my soul on the Internet for you all?  First, to hold myself accountable as to what I need to be working on.  Second, as a call to action for any of you who struggle with the same thing.  Together let's focus on putting the important things first.  And if our actions reflect that what is most important to us is not God and others, maybe we should start by rethinking that.

Freedom!

The blur of the past few weeks has landed me on the doorstep of our summer program. Tomorrow our summer Spearhead team arrives and we will begin a 3-day orientation before they head off with their summer families and ministries. For the remainder of June and the first part of July, they will be observing their families and ministries and applying themselves to learning Spanish. In July, they begin their full-time ministry, when many will be involved with Vacation Bible Schools, evangelistic English classes, and other types of outreach with their Mexican churches.


As a summer facilitator, my role is to "make things easier," as the very word "facil" in Spanish means "easy." It's probably related to Latin as well. ;-) Etymological nuances aside, I basically help with the communication between the program participants and their host families and churches. I also will be helping to train the team in skills helpful for ministry here, as well as help them to navigate the cultural adjustments they will face. Finally, I will be a sort of coach/mentor for some of the girls on the team.


This summer, our theme is "Freedom," based on the chapter Isaiah 61 and the verse John 8:36. We begin praying over a summer theme early in the Spring and as a leadership team come to a decision sometime late spring/early summer. This theme of freedom really spoke to all of our hearts and we are anxious to see what God has in store for all of us as we reflect on the truth that "If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed." (John 8:36) I have been so excited as I have seen glimpses of how God is freeing people all over Mexico City, from the literal slavery of human trafficking to the spiritual slavery of unforgiveness and shadows of the past. I can't wait to see what else He has in store...but I know that it's more than I could ever imagine!


Prayer Requests:
--For safety for our summer team as they fly in on Wednesday, June 13th.
--That God would help them as they adjust to the language and culture here.
--That God would be preparing all of our hearts for what He has planned for us in these next two months.
--That God would move mightily and bring freedom to many this summer!

Moses Moments

Looking back on almost two years in Mexico, one of the biggest ministry hurdles I have faced is not believing myself to be a legitimate missionary, or as I like to put it, my “Moses Moments.”  Last spring I was very conflicted over whether or not God could use me in ministry and I just was overwhelmed with my shortcomings.  I even got to the point where I was regularly saying “no” to God, sure that He must have made some mistake.  I wasn’t a missionary.  They were supposed to be super-human, right?  I presented God with all of my pretexts:

 

“I make too many mistakes in my Spanish.”

“I don’t like speaking in front of groups.”

“What if people ask me hard questions?”

“Some days I just feel like a bad missionary.”

Then one day as I was reading the Bible, God challenged those excuses with the story of His call on Moses’ life.  It’s easy to look at Moses’ excuses and blame him for his lack of faith. However, those very excuses sounded strangely similar to my own: he was slow of speech and nervous, wondering if he was cut out for the job and wondering if the Egyptians and the Israelites would listen to him.  However, God’s response is what really struck me.  He said that He would be glorified and He would give Moses the words to say-- as if Moses were merely God’s mouthpiece! And that same I AM still communicates through us when He calls us to speak.  He reminded me that day that no slowness of speech on my part will cause Him to miss the glory He is due.   I realized that maybe the issue stopping me was that I might not get the glory that I wanted. 

Before coming to Mexico I didn’t have to choose; I could live a godly life and still save some glory for myself. I wasn't really overwhelmed by anything. I was doing good Christian things within my comfort zone.  Nothing crazy. I was in charge. I figured I was ready for a challenge of a short-term trip to Mexico and although I knew it would be stretching I felt up to the task.

Ironically, though, I have learned since being here that I wasn’t really prepared for what I was going to experience. I'm in way over my head as far as even ordinary responsibilities are concerned; but even beyond that, God has shown me that He hasn't called me to fulfill mere "ordinary responsibilities," but to live a life of radical discipleship.  And it’s exciting!  The beautiful thing in all of this is that when He calls us to do the impossible—or uncomfortable—He also equips us for it.  As God said to Moses, He is the one who “gave man his mouth.”  He knows exactly how He designed each of us and He will give us exactly what we need in the moment to make His name great. 

A Lesson from a Cloudy Day

Ok, so you might think that I'm reading to much into things, but I like analogies and here's one that came to mind as I was thinking about clouds:

While looking up at the bright white formations, they seemed like a towering mountain range, even though I knew that they were only gas and immaterial.  I can see why ancients surmised so many things about clouds and what could be hidden up there.  They truly do seem substantial when one is just looking at them.

So I "naturally" drew the parallel of those clouds and life's problems.  Sometimes our worries seem like huge mountains that obstruct any dreams we have in life.  From God's perspective, though, they are just masses of gas that can be moved around or disappear entirely as He so chooses.

That thought made me happy.  :-)

3 Reasons You Might be "Failing" in Ministry

I think that one of the biggest indicators of how successful your ministry will be is reflected in how comfortable you are with the possibility of failure.

Failure in ministry is a painful experience because we feel like it is a measure of our worth as Christian leaders.  Failure seems to scream to the world: "I don't know what I'm doing!"  It tells those who follow us, "You can't trust me.  I have let you down."

But really, although sometimes the failure might be a result of our own lack of responsibility, preparation or training, or a gap in our skill set, many times failure in ministry is due to reasons beyond our control.  To illustrate my point, I want to share 3 areas of ministry over which we have no control... and are therefore susceptible to failure.

1. Other people's reactions:  Although this is a self-explanatory observation, I feel that it needs to be stated, for the simple fact that we so often take responsibility for autonomous adults!  As Christian leaders, we must understand that our responsibility is to love people and minister to them in the ways that God has uniquely gifted us.  Beyond that, their response to what they have heard and experienced is entirely their own decision and they are responsible before God.  We mustn't feel like we have failed when we have done our part someone else has not.  God gives us free will to chose how we will act, and the least we can do is extend that same freedom to others.

2. Circumstances:  Let's face it, sometimes we have everything planned weeks in advance and then on the day of a ministry event everything goes wrong.  Not only does Plan A fall through, but Plan B, C, and D do as well!  The electricity goes out, it rains on the picnic, there is a blizzard, a virus or a war breaks out, all computer hard drives get wiped by a hacker and you lost your USB.  There are a million things that could go wrong.  And for those moments, God gives grace; we just need to learn to give ourselves--and those around us-- that same grace.

3. God's purposes: The Bible says that "Many are the plans of a man's heart, but the counsel of the Lord will stand." (Prov. 19:21)  There are times when we give it everything we've got and things just inexplicably don't work out.  It may be in those cases that God has another purpose behind everything that we just can't see.  Sometimes He might let us fall to understand that we need to depend on Him.  His strength is made perfect in our weakness.  Other times we will never understand what His reasons are, but we must trust that He knows what He's doing... and when we have been faithful and obedient in what He called us to, we shouldn't feel that we have failed just because things didn't turn out the way that we were expecting.  If things went according to God's plan, then our ministry was a success!

I hope that if any of you reading this have been struggling with feelings of failure, that these reflections have been an encouragement.  Please rest in the peace that what we are called upon to merely be faithful to what God has called us to do... and then be gracious when it might seem to others that we have "failed."

A Great Cloud of Witnesses

 Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.  Hebrews 12:1

A couple of weeks ago I went on a retreat with all of the Latin America Missionaries from Mexico.  We stayed at a lovely hotel in Cuernavaca, enjoyed the  pools and ate way too much good food.  But what really impacted me about that weekend was the feeling that I truly was surrounded by a "great cloud of witnesses."  Over the course of those few days, I was able to hear testimonies of men and women who had devoted their whole lives to God's work.  

One woman, technically my current host "grandmother," moved from the States to work in Latin America, married a Mexican man and raised her children here.  Now her daughter has welcomed me into her home to live with them.  Her granddaughter is my friend and we have supported one another in life as well as our respective ministries.  I'm sure that this seasoned saint would never have envisioned what her life would look like when she began this journey over 60 years ago.  She simply followed Christ step by step, decision by decision; "a long obedience in the same direction."

I ate breakfast with an elderly couple who had poured their whole lives into the ministry and was awed by their humility as they looked over what they had accomplished and just saw the hand of God guiding them through each step.  Far beyond retirement age, they are simply continuing to pour their lives out in ministry, just as they had since their youth.

I shared a room with a woman whose ministry always seems to take her to dangerous places, usually involving drug conflicts.  She just related matter-of-factly the peril that surrounded her every day.  Towards the end of our time she shared the story of how she spent 3 days enclosed in her house, crying-- "whining" as she put it--praying and in deep fear for her life.  At the end of that time, God gave her a peace and sense of His love and she left her house willing to die for Christ, or to live for Him if He gave her life.  Her story reminds me of the disciples between Christ's death and Pentecost!  They saw very vividly the price of discipleship, but they were also filled with power from God to strengthen them in their call!    

I have determined that I want my life to follow in the footsteps of these missionaries, maybe not in the sense of serving in a foreign country all my life (maybe so!) but rather in the sense of trusting God each day in the direction He calls me, so that I may look back at the end of my life able to say "I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith!" (2 Tim. 4:7)

Missionary or Just Missional?

What's the difference?

I believe that it is possible that one of the only real differences is that the former has a title and lives in a different country... whereas the latter does basically the same "ministry" in their homeland.  Ideally, anyway, I think that should be the case.

As I am considering what life after this year will look like, it is very hard for me to say for sure what direction I will go.  I will likely live at home for a while and might look at ministry opportunities to work with Latinos.  Or I might go back to school for a while and work a part-time job on the side.  I might get married and settle down with a family.  The Lord might lead me to return to Latin America for a longer time period in the future.

The truth is, regardless of what possibilities fill my mind as I drift off to sleep at night, I know one thing:  I want to serve the Lord in whatever capacity I find myself.  Maybe I will live a missional life as a Spanish tutor in Pennsylvania.  Maybe I will support missionaries with the income from my career in the future.  Maybe I will live simply so that I can work part-time and be involved in a ministry in my free time.  Maybe my primary ministry will be in my home and my community.

So no, I don't know what my future will look like, but I do know one thing.  When my official title is no longer "missionary" that doesn't mean that I will stop being one, any more than having the title made me one in the first place!  

Tell Him So

Poet Unknown

If you hear a kind word spoken

Of some worthy soul you know,

It may fill his heart with sunshine

If you only tell him so.

If a deed, however humble,

Helps you on your way to go,

Seek the one whose hand has helped you,

Seek him out and tell him so!

If your heart is touched and tender

Toward a sinner lost and low,

It might help him to do better

If you'd only tell him so.

Oh, my sisters, oh, my brothers,

As o'er life's rough path you go,

If God's love has saved and kept you,

Do not fail to tell men so!

I was just thinking about this poem and how much room I have for improvement in this area. There is so much good that we can do by simply speaking the right word at the right moment. 

Lord, help me to advance your kingdom as I use my words to glorify You and edify others!

Working for Grace

 "I just need enough grace till I can get my act together..."

No sooner had those words left my mouth than I realized that I had a really faulty concept of grace.  Let me rephrase that:  I knew the definition of grace, but it hadn't penetrated my reality.  So I decided to reflect a little bit on that statement and its implications.

God's Grace

The Bible clearly portrays grace as a free gift, no strings attached... unless you want to count the step of accepting His grace, which sometimes is the hardest part.  A quick study of this concept of grace yielded these results (I understand that this is just a brief glimpse as truly the entire Bible is filled with the story of God's grace!):

Right after the famous "for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" verse in Romans 3:23, the writer goes on to say "and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus."

"And if [God's people are chosen] by grace, then it cannot be based on works; if it were, grace would no longer be grace."  Rom. 11:6

" I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!"  Gal. 2:21

And of course the famous Eph. 2:8-9:  "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith-- and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God-- not by works, so that no one can boast."

The Rub

So if I know what the Bible says about grace, where did I get an idea that I had to earn grace?  The problem is, we humans are so used to conditional grace.  Forgiving someone who sins against us 7 times.  The people in our lives have a certain number of chances to get their act together and if they fail, they're done.  Lives used up.  You lose.  People must show that they are making a good effort.  Each year must be better than the next.  Constant improvement and productivity is the standard.  And unfortunately, the standard that we require of others is one that we are incapable of sustaining ourselves.

Implications

The Bible speaks about this dichotomy of needing grace but refusing it to others.  And it's not pretty. Matt 6:14-15:  "For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins."  In other words, don't hold people to a standard that you wouldn't want God to apply to you.

A Sanctified Perspective on To-Do Lists

My to-do list sometimes looks like sheer torture... other times they're about as exciting as watching paint dry.   Whatever the case, I generally cringe when I think about it.  And I would imagine that it's the same for you.  When was the last time you looked at your to-do list and thought, "Boy, this is gonna be fun!"  or "What an awesome day I have in store for me!" or "I wish that these 20 tasks weren't the only things I get to do today... maybe I can think up more!"?  The truth is, sometimes it takes all of our strength to just plow through our to-do lists.

However, lately God has been teaching me an important lesson about the tasks He has given me for each day:  I am to do them joyfully, as working to the Lord, not for men (Col. 3:23) and to do anything I do for the glory of God (1 Cor. 10:31).  As I keep these verses in mind, it has challenged me to be praying throughout the day that God would give me a correct perspective and a cheerful attitude as I do tasks that at best might seem mundane and at worst downright difficult.  And the crazy thing is, that doesn't change my tasks at all, but it changes my attitude!  And God gives me the strength to complete what I have before me each day... for His glory!

Here's a great song for getting pumped up in the morning to hit that to-do list.  Do Everything:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEqdDdvFXZ0

If you're liked this post, here are some other blog posts/resources that would also be an encouragement:
The poem "If"  http://carodeemer.blogspot.com/2011/04/if.html
Book review of Do Hard Things:  http://carodeemer.blogspot.com/2010/08/do-hard-things.html

Saint Patrick's Prayer... and Mine!!

Christ be with me

Christ before me

Christ behind me

Christ in me

Christ beneath me

Christ above me

Christ on my right

Christ on my left

Christ where I lie

Christ where I sit

Christ where I arise

Christ in the heart of every man

who thinks of me

Christ in the mouth of every man

who speaks of me

Christ in every eye that sees me

Christ in every ear that hears me

Salvation is of the Lord.

What is your Paralysis?

A couple of days ago I read Matthew 9:1-8 which talks about how Jesus healed a paralytic man.  We all know the story and focus many times on the faith of the man's friends in bringing him before Jesus.  What God really spoke to me about, though, was the two things that Jesus granted the man: spiritual healing and physical healing.  The teachers of the law were furious at first when Jesus forgave the man's sins.  It wasn't until Jesus said, "Get up, take your mat, and go home" that everyone was "filled with awe and praised God."

It is easy to look at that story and criticize the onlookers lack of faith, their shallowness; but I wonder what that man was happier about: forgiven sins or being able to walk?  Now, the text really says nothing on the matter, so we can't know.  But the question isn't so much, "What mattered most to him?" as "What would matter most to us in the same situation?"  If we could only have one thing, would we wish to have our deepest dreams fulfilled, a new lease on life?  Or would we run home rejoicing that our sins were forgiven and our relationship with God restored?  Now, for those who are reading this and have already had Christ cleanse them from their sin, I think that the same reasoning still applies.  Do we seek Christ for what He can do for us or for who He is to us?  Food for thought.

Resolved

Thinking about New Year's resolutions can either be a scary undertaking or a reason to hope.  Or, if you're like me, it can be a little of both.  Taking on some of my biggest challenges, giving myself freedom to dream, and holding myself to a higher standard are exciting; things I look forward to with anticipation of gaining more ground and growth.  However, they are also scary as I consider the past, littered with broken resolutions, and wonder why I could hope that this year will be any different.  But I'm sure going to try.

Here are a few resources that are encouraging me:

-Reading through Jonathan Edwards resolutions (talk about a high standard!!)  -- http://www.apuritansmind.com/the-christian-walk/jonathan-edwards-resolutions/
-Continuing the process of creating a "Rule of Life", or set of ideals by which I wish to live (made attainable by being divided into practical, measurable goals)
- Reading Jon Acuff's blog posts about what he has termed the "Finish Year"  http://www.jonacuff.com/blog/
- The blessing of being surrounded by many like-minded people who also want to see me succeed and grow.  Based in Mexico as well as the States, these dear friends and family pray for me and keep me accountable.
- And most importantly, I know that God gives second chances.  His mercies are new every morning and every new year.  Since He wants me to mature, God will also give me the strength and encouragement I need along the way... and He is patient and forgiving when I am not perfect.  :-)