two posts in one: plane and 4th day in haiti

Okay I am going to do a few posts in one because tonight I finally am able to use my laptop. Here is the one from the plane:

Day 1

On the flight going to Port au Prince. Thankful for the beautiful fact that I get to return to a place I love and a place the lord loves more. I have no idea why he would choose to draw me into HIS pursuit of this country and its people when I have very little to offer, but as he has done with everyone he is used, he takes the least likely and allows them to join  him in his work so that there is no doubt in people’s minds that the work is completely His. I read in C.S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce a few minutes ago that there are only two kinds of people, those who say to God “Thy will be done” and those to whom God says THY will be done and the choice is ours.

Sweet lord, my prayer is that thy will and not mine be done in these two weeks.

I have been reading exodus which has been an unexpected way the lord has chosen to prepare my heart as I see the stubbornness of the people and see so much of myself in them, in their inability to trust God as he leads them through the wilderness, their sense that they were better off in the bonds of slavery that the groaned to God for him to take them out of.

I know their fear. Their lack of trust. I share those things. And just as my first trip earlier this year, it is hard to quiet the doubts in my mind. It is hard not to wonder how in the world I’m going to serve Go while I’m here. It is hard not to think about the people in my life that I can speak with, that I know, that I can share the gospel with in the way I live and wonder if I am taking an easier route by going to a country of gorgeous people who love the lord with deep passion whom I love but don’t really know and won’t be able to know in the course of two weeks. But who I am to say how the lord would like to work and what he is doing? I know only that his ways are not my ways, his thoughts not my thoughts. They are far better. My mom and I have been leaning on a text in Isaiah 30 that says whether you go to the right or the left you will hear a voice saying this is the way, walk in it. Discernment is hard. But the lord can work with us and frankly he is great enough to work in spite of us, and His strength is made perfect in our weakness.

 My prayer for now is simply, My Father, thy will be done. Whatever it is. Use me if it pleases you, but I know you have no need for me. Draw me close to you. Draw my family close to you because I hate being away from them. I love being with them. I wish they were on this flight with me. I pray for obedience to you this trip, Lord. I pray that you break my heart for what breaks yours and you grow my affection for Christ. I pray that as your ambassador I shine you well, and that being here equips me to shine you well this semester. I love you.             

And now I'll share a little bit about the last few days. I am tired, but it is the good kind of tired. The tiredness that comes with a good day. Weve been to Cappva (the tent city) three times now and it would be hard to overstate how deep my affection has grown for the community, the kids, and the adults. There are these little moments that make it so good-we taught them duck duck goose today and it was so wonderful to see the joy on the faces of the adults as the kids enjoyed it so much-they were laughing and yelling, running all over the place. My favorite moments are when three or four kids (or twelve but that gets a little stressful) get real close and sit on your lap and braid your hair and hold your hands. It teaches me so much about God because they are so good at simply loving and no one taught them that. It is their nature. Its just the way they are. The divine image of their creator shines so gloriously in their smiles and mannerisms and personalities. What a blessing to see. We have had really sweet time with kids in general and that has been a huge gift over the first part of our trip. I am learning the beauty of being present with people. I am learning the joy simply of living and not needing specific reasons or accomplishments to be joyful. I learned the haitian way of washing clothes today with one of the girls who lives on the compound. Her little brother and I have been playing soccer every afternoon (sweet of him to humor me). Being with this family is one of my favorite parts of this trip. Another is when I see someone from summer for the first time. We are both so excited. I've noticed everyone asks how my family is. I wish we did more of that in the communities I am a part of back home. It is such a good question to ask, and remarkable when they know nothing about and have never met my family and yet they care a lot about them because they care about me. I am with 4 really wonderful people, and it is such a huge blessing to be on this trip with them. One I met while we were both here in the summer, his wife, their niece and her friend which are close to my age. Coming alone in the summer, there was a lack of community in Christ that I belonged to and it has been a huge gift from the lord to be with them, pray with them, work through unexpected and new situations and experiences with them and be in Christ filled fellowship. I am convinced that we are called to travel together rather than alone. that we are unaware of the depth God has intended for Christian community. It is a way He loves us well. So all is well here. God is faithful, work for the lord is plentiful but rest is as well. I have been forced into rest I would never have chosen, learning how often I use work as an escape and a distractor rather than as a way to glorify the lord. I am praying for openness and for God to continue to use us in his handiwork which alone will last.                                                              

day 2 in Haiti

Back in Haiti. It is a gift to return to a place that I love and that has done so much for me. It is my second morning here, I hope to write often to share what is happening. We spent yesterday in Cappva which is a tent city, where 500 families live in tents. One of the smaller tent cities. They have been there since the earthquake and have nowhere else to go. They could be evicted any day.
There is an overwhelming sense that coming to Haiti for 12 days will do little for the situation. Undoubtebly, we will accomplish very little in many senses of accomplishment. However, we are very lucky to come here as followers of the Lord and he is doing much in Haiti. In hearts, in leaders, in life changing. And he has much to do in our own hearts while we are here. And still I feel poverty while I am here. Not the poverty of the haitians, I would never claim that I could feel that, but my own. My inability to do much. My inability to speak to them. My inability to make a plan, to make decisions, because I can't just jump in my car and drive where I want to or see who I want to. Nothingis about me here. And I know that it is very good for me. To be in a place where I can relearn the gospel and relearn that the Lord loves me because of his infinte goodness and mercy and the work done on the cross, not because I am a good servant. I must be thankful for what he gives me. Yesterday he shared with beautiful children of his whose homes are in Cappva. He shared with me one little ounce of His love for them and I was nearly overwhelmed. By their smiles and their hands and their eyes. That have joy abounding in them. And I wonder where in the world this joy is coming from. And I do not know. I do not know where they find such gorgeous joy when I, who have been given so much, are so often brought down by fear and stress and worry about things that are so so small. So insignificant. And I have been able to see the work of the Haitains, who are so much more faithful to these people and their struggles then I am. My friend Max said to me yesterday that he was going to keep living in Cite Soleil, the worst slum in Haiti and one of the worst in the world, because he wanted to be with the people. He wanted to be among them. To serve them. To be a part of their community. And that is the way to love. And he said he would do that instead of making more money and living somewhere better because he is not staying here. Not here as in Haiti, but here as in on this earth. He knows that he is going somewhere that will be more beautiful and perfect than anyone could ever imagine and that for now he will live with this utmost discomfort. How humbling to see someone living like that. I know that the time that will be spent in this beautiful place will not be in vain because we did not come to fix problems, I know that there is so little in 12 days that I could do to help anyone. No, I am here to see the people that I love. To meet new people. To come back to kids that I have missed. Whose pictures are on my wall. To be with God. To trust him when its really hard to see what he is doing. To love him even if we feel that we do nothing. To know that he can work through our little acts of love with the kids and the families here. To know that he is preparing our hearts to speak clearly of Haiti in the U.S. and to keep this place in our hearts as it is in His.

happy christmas eve

Love of my life, make my heart one that adores you more. Take me into the word, written for me. Take me into your heart, broken for me. Take me into your life, lived for me. Stay very, very close. As close as Mary was to her son. I want that raw human closeness with you too God. Come again, Jesus. Come soon please. We miss you. Were waiting for you. We love you. Thank you for breezes and dinners and little sisters. Thank you for words and language. Thank you for touch and color and music. I want you so much today lord. I want to be pleasing to you. I know that you see me run and you beg me to come closer. To be like Moses, who spoke with you. I know there is holy ground and that I must stop long enough to take my shoes off and listen when I am in your presence and be watchful for the ways that you come to us today. I’m thankful that I am alive. That I am chosen. Chosen to be a part of your family . Lord I want to be all yours, everything in me to reflect you and to have no minute of my day that I hold on to. You know God, how deep my brokenness is. You know lord, the secret whisperings behind the praise that wonder if you are trustworthy, as I cannot escape the image of my first parents who also doubted your trustworthiness. Who thought that perhaps you were not really for them. You did not really love them. You didn’t know what was best for them. Some days are spent on the lake of Galilee, where you cooked some fish for your guys, where we can let the waves of joy and peace of knowing that you have done all there ever was to do wash over us and sit with you and eat with you. But if we share all with you, we share Gethsemane as well. I want no part in Gethsemane, as you know. I have no interest in sweating blood. In friends sleeping when I need them most. In pleading. In saying, not my will but yours. I love to say that when our wills are the same, but I am starting to see that there will be moments where our wills are different. And there is nothing in me and my ability to reason or think, no emotion, that leads me to think that your will is right. And it is then that I must remember your own words, “Will I do wrong Krystal? I will never do wrong.” And I must realize that I will do wrong. And I must say with my Savior, not my will but yours. No matter what it is.

Thy will be done.

I have to trust that your will was to harden the heart of pharaoh. I have to trust that your will was to harden the heart of Judas. I have to trust that your will was to offer your son, and if you would give him, there is no one, no person in my life, that I cannot give to you. You gave first. And we give back because we know that you are good. And that you love us.

That is all we know. There are things that are not promised in the word. There is no promise we can keep our family. There is no promise we will reap the fruit of the harvest. There is no promise that we will overcome our addictions. But there are things that are promised.

And your promises

Never

End.

We get to see these promises spoken by you.

I am the LORD and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians and I will deliverer you from slavery to them and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great acts of judgment. I will take you to be my people and I will be your God and you shall know that I am the LORD your God who has brought you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. I will bring you into the land that I swore to give to Abraham, to Issac, and to Jacob. I will give it to you for a possession. I am the LORD.

And how did the people respond to such a deep and weighty promise? “They did not listen because of their broken spirit and harsh slavery.”

The promises of the Lord come in the moments where we are sure if you, God, exist, you do not love us. They are audacious promises. Because you promise what our hearts are aching for, and we say how dare you speak of something so dear to us and promise us it when we see it slipping out of our grasp. How dare you even address those longings. I didn’t want you to see that longing, God. I didn’t want you to know it. Because I don’t think you can do it.

You go to mothers who are barren and old and promise them children.

You go to men who are ineloquent and uneducated and make them leaders.

You go to cities that are broken beyond repair and redeem them on the same ground where sin has been thriving and reigning for years and years.

You go to countries where your name has never been uttered and to people who have no desire to know you or your son or what he did and you make disciples and people give their lives to you and countries change.

You do what cannot be done so that we know that you are God. And that when the bonds of slavery are broken we know it is you that broke the shackles, not your people. I brought you out from the burdens you were under you told the Israelites while the burdens were still weighing them to the ground. 

God is good.

Today is the day of God is good. No matter what. Today is the day where we remember the words he said, Can the God of the World do wrong? No. lord you cannot do wrong. You will not. We can trust that you will always and only do right. We can trust that you Lord, you can make us obedient unto death, even death on a cross. We trust that we can come so close to You on that cross that you are kissing us. We know that the beams of love must be borne. You suffered not that we might not suffer but that our suffering may be like his.

I have some things to ask you for Jesus. To trust you more. To count every moment of life as one you can use to draw people to yourself. To love you deeply. To obey you, always. To live for you AND with you. Every single minute, not just for a bit of my day. That your spirit come and move and convict in the way that I cannot. That your spirit channels through me and dwells in me and that I embrace it and give it full reign over all that I do.

Thank you for life. For its fragility. For another day with those we love. For loving them more than we do. For loving us more than we do. For saying that no matter what I’m your child. That nothing can separate us. I love you.

Daily Surrender.

We live lives of daily surrender. Every day, I come to you again God and know that its all a lost cause without you. I come and I am aware that I did not love you well, nor did I die to myself for neighbor or my friends and I with hands and heart open I give myself to you. And immediately a voice says in my mind, what do you mean you give yourself to Him? You can’t do that. That’s just some cliché Christian phrase. And I am not afraid of the voice that tells me I can’t give myself to you because I know that what I can never do, you, God of Abraham, Issac and Jacob, can do and will do and have done already.

You are who you are.

And so, some days, most days, all I can do is say the words “Take me, lord. Take my life. Take what I cannot give.” And I know that those words are just words but that you can create something more and that you speak things into being and I know that any meager, feeble surrender I offer was yours first anyways, it is your own heart that I offer back to you, and the words are those that you alone could give me the strength to even utter.

And I know that I have a high priest who pleads on my behalf before your throne and only because of him to I have the audacity to come to you and say, Please, God make me more like you. Please God, I have none of my own genorisity. I am short on strength. My intellect has disappointed me. My love is smaller than I thought. Please lord, make me bow more before your throne, please lord, make me love your sons and daughters more. Please lord, make me a steward you delight in, one that obeys you in the way I steward my money and my time and most of all the precious, glorious gospel that you have entrusted me with and made me an ambassador for.

Come again, Jesus, come into my heart this instance Spirit because I am nothing without you. All my hope is in you. All my life is yours. I know that my heart, will never rest until rests in you. I know that my soul will not rejoice until is praises you. I know my life will not bear fruit unless I abide in the Vine. And I know that I have no wisdom apart from your perfect Word. 

An intentional God

As I read through Genesis, I can't help but appreciate Gods deep intentionality and the awareness and respect his people have for his intentionality and his word. God knows what he is doing. I just read today about Rebekah, and the servant who was sent to find the woman God had appointed for Issac, and how seriously the servant considered Gods intention and Gods selection of the right woman. And my heart is grabbed by Rebekah herself, and that the Lord had made in her a heart to serve. Not a heart to serve certain people or serve in a certain context but a heart that met a stranger and quickly gave him a drink and then ran to the well to draw water for his camels. I've asked God many times his intentions for women. I see them in Rebekah. And I think of the girls that I get to work with and realize that there is hardly a thing more precious and worthwhile in the universe than being a part of their lives and into their becoming women of the Most High God. In their recognition of his love for them and where he is sending them and how he is using them for the kingdom. That the girls I know are eternal and where they spend eternity will be determined in the next 70 years of their lives and that God is allowing me to be a part of that and what a serious and beautiful thing that is.
There is no higher calling than to know Christ and to make disciples.
I finished my exams and am home in Virginia. It scares me to be home because I am afraid there is not enough work for me and therefore that I am purposeless. Which exposes idolatry, because my fear is not that God is not here. I know that he is. My fear is that work is not here. That purpose is not here. That I won't have enough to do.
I do a lot of work. And I know the lord made me to serve and to do work. But I don't look like the men and women in the bible who sought the lord. Who sabbathed every single week. Who waited on him. Who meditated on his word day and night.
I pray that I am more like them. I pray that I value Christ above all else. That anything that I do that his hand is not in will die, no matter what.
And I realize today, just what a gift the word is and how little I know about it. And that the fact that I have nothing scheduled today, that I can spend time knowing it more is a great and precious gift. And I see the way it changes my soul. And I see that the word and time, lots of time, with the lord, will make me set apart. Will make me holy.
Acts shows, the whole bible in fact shows, that the people of God are set apart. That they live in the world but they are set apart. And I realize that much is at stake in how set apart the people of God are. I can't count the conversations I have had where people's perceptions of Christ and of God were set by his people or those who claimed to be.
As I was driving home, I listened to a sermon by Tim Keller on knowing the Father and knowing Christ. The most important question, he said, and the question that must be answered before anything else can be addressed is the question of where you stand and what you believe about JEsus Christ. He himself asked, who do you say that I am?

Is he who he says he is?

Everything hangs in the balance of that question. Because Christianity is about Christ, but not in an intellectual way but in an intensely, uncomfortably personal way. God is a person. And our relationship with him, our knowing him deeply is the most important thing about us. If Christianity was a philosophy primarily, we could look at the merits of it and deal with it in an intellectual way, determining if it is logical. But its not. Relationships are not purely and entirely logical. In what I've seen in my 19 years, I'd say that there is very little that is logic based about them. You don't study relationships, you do them. You live them. Christianity is not primarily a therapy. So we can't start by saying, is this going to heal me? Is it going to make me happy? Will it satisfy my needs? Its not a doctrine, its a human being. Flesh and blood. Someone who ate and cried and laughed. Someone who bled and died.
And you are either with him or not with him- just like a marriage proposal, if you say yes it affects everything about your life. If you say no, that doesn't mean you hate the person or you don't want to be friends with them, but it does mean that you don't want to give the rest of your life to them, to live intimately with them, to love them. If Jesus is who he says he is, everything he said and did has significance and following him will be the most important thing.

the vine

Does my life please you God?

How rarely I ask. How little I am concerned with Him, his thoughts, his ways. The desire of the Lord is for our whole bodies to be filled with light. As full of light as a lamp and its rays. To be filled with the light of the lord. The light that is the Lord Himself. What a great gift to be filled with such a light. To possess such a warmth that the closer people get to us, his sons and daughters, the warmer they become.

I think of myself and how the opposite seems to be true. The closer people get, the more nervous and unsure I become, the more I worry that my following is not sufficient and that my love for the lord is feeble, that they may extinguish the flame.

If my body was full of light, or if I understood that my body is full of light, I could rest without worrying that I am not doing all that I am to do for God and using my time well enough, because I would be his light, and I could rest in the joy of the assurance that I am indeed used by God to bring light into the world he is so intentionally and faithfully redeeming.

Christ is willing to fill us with light daily, hourly. To pour his spirit into us, to lead us in the way of obedience, to teach us how to love.

I tend to confuse what determines what we do for the lord and what we do for ourselves, thinking that it is a matter of the things themselves instead of my heart. If my heart belongs to the lord, if he owns it and he rules in my soul and I am nothing more than a branch of the vine of Christ it will not matter what I am doing. Whether I am in class or starbucks or at hunter or in chesapeake or in haiti, it will not matter if I am with the poor or the rich, it will not matter if I am with believers or unbelievers, because it will be for the lord because I will be for the lord. Likewise, if I hold on to my heart, the great things that I do won't be great, they will be just as selfish as anything else.

If I allow myself to be only a branch, he will be able to do the work only he can do. Everywhere I am. He will not be limited by whether I am with college students or kids, friends or strangers. Nothing will stop him when my heart is all his.

In psalm 80 it says

 You brought a vine out of Egypt;
you drove out the nations and planted it.
You cleared the ground for it;
it took deep root and filled the land.
The mountains were covered with its shade,
the mighty cedars with its branches.

A vine. Hardly anything is as tender and fragile as a vine. Vines shouldn't cover mountains and mighty cedars. But this vine is christ, and we are the vine with him. And he will not leave us. He will drive out nations to plant us. He will clear ground for us. We will take root here and do much for him and his mountains and his cedars, for his world and his people. All of this is his. All of us are his.

So what is our role? If he is the vine dresser, if we are just branches, what must what we do. Yield. Yield to him. Trust him. Lean into our lord, and bear fruit. And be pruned so that we can bear more fruit. And know that his pruning, though painful, is sweet because he is the vinedresser and we are branches. And this pruning will only make us more dependent on him, it will never pull us from the vine that is christ. Our comfort is that Christ is the vine. He came down to be with us. To be pruned with us. To come to our status, so that we could come to his as son of the most high God.

more hudson taylor, cant get over this guy.

The enemy does all he can to draw us from entire consecration to Christ in which alone can the fullness of His love and power can be experienced.

We can still love him truly but not WHOLLY, we still revere his word but we don’t immediately yield in obedience to it.

God desires fellowship with us. God did not just save us, he desires us. I meet with girls all the time, I AM one in fact, who grasps the saving more than the desire. How often the first thing spoken of with God is obligation. I know I should be reading my bible more, I know I should be praying, I haven’t been doing quiet times etc. It’s the wrong foundation, even if we did spend hours pouring over the word, if it is out of obligation because God has saved us or we think it will make him happy, it is not what is spoken of by this bridegroom of ours. And the reality is, we follow our desires. Always. Girls who have a guy they like will spend hours with him. And cant bring themselves to spend one hour with the father. Because we misunderstand his desire for us, that it is deeper and more passionate and satisfying than the desire of any earthly love. We cannot imagine that God would enjoy us, that he would seek us, that he would woo us into the forest and beckon us to come with him.

I think about the labor for union with Christ. The alarm in believing the lie that our relationship to him “is pretty much the same” when we are not running after him, answering his call, we are moving further and further away. Knowing where we will find him, knowing his faithfulness, never means that he can be left outside calling us and we will be one with him. We’re being drawn closer or slipping away from him. Are default is to be sliding away from our love, because of all the other worldly loves we’re seduced and bombarded by. Hudson Taylor perfectly pinpoints the sin we tend to be drawn to,

The enemies may be small, but the mischief done great. A little spray of

blossom, so tiny as to be scarcely perceived, is easily spoiled, but thereby the fruitfulness of

a whole branch may be for ever destroyed. And how numerous the little foxes are! Little

compromises with the world; disobedience to the still small voice in little things; little indulgences of the flesh to the neglect of duty; little strokes of policy; doing evil in little things that good may come; and the beauty and the fruitfulness of the vine are sacrificed!

We can overestimate the value of communion with our Lord. Only in communion can we be changed into His image from one degree of glory to another. And as we are with him, and becoming more like him, fairer and more beautiful, we are sent out. Always. “Come with me,” he says. It is only as we go with him and join him in his work, that we change as the Beloved changed in Song of Solomon from His love to His bride.

He notes that Christ desires us to be gardens sealed, and springs locked, “where the fruit we bear brings blessing to many but the garden is for Himself alone.” He is our satisfaction and we are his. We are not machines, loved for the work we do. He delights in our communion with him in pursuing souls, delights in the fruit we bear that bring joy and Christ to other people, but most of all loves us as his Bride, one on one, our entire soul, just as it is, and then all we do is of Him and for Him.

When the bride in Song of Solomon has made a huge mistake in locking him out, she seeks him urgently, bringing others with her in her search. Even when she has tossed him aside, she knows that she is the object of his affection and claims him as her own. But she first says his claim on her, I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine.  We are Christ’s before he is ours. This may seem to be semantics but it’s significant. Because I can rely on his claim for me far more than I can rely on my claim upon him. The work is his. The possession is his, and I gratefully and joyfully receive. My love is thin and easily directed elsewhere, his love is constant and strong, wide and deep. I proclaim his love, not my own. Not only for my relationship with Him but for every other person I encounter, may they not rely on me, may they not see my affection for them, may they not put their hope in me, but only and always Him who loves them more than I do and who is not broken, selfish, dark, and prideful as I am.

Home brings such awareness of my own sin. It’s astonishing. What is this selfishness, rearing in my soul? What is this pride, poisoning all my thoughts and making me more focused on myself than the people I am with? What is this need to prove myself?

But it’s good, very good. Simply because I cannot deny the utter sinfulness of my own heart and I have no choice but to try to surrender to God again and again, realizing that the love I have for people, while certainly from the lord, is much easier because it is not my own family. 

Song of Solomon and Hudson Taylor

There is no time so profitably spent as the morning hour given to Jesus only. Nothing can make up for it, Hudson Taylor says. And lived it. People recall hearing the strike of a match every single night at 4 am when he would get up to spend an hour with the Lord in prayer and the Word. It’s sobering to think of, when I contrast it with my own thin commitment to God. He goes onto to how in his presence we will see our own blackness and says, “Nothing humbles the soul like sacred and intimate communion with the Lord.”

All the service we do and ALL the fruit born of not abiding in Christ is fruit of the flesh and not of the Spirit. Also convicting. If I am not abiding in Christ in an active, every day sense, nothing I do, great or small will have eternal value.

I was able to go to a women’s study with my mom and they are going through the book of Esther. In chapter 5, Esther enters into the Kings court, knowing that doing so could cause her death. Perhaps she is even more concerned with humiliating her husband, whose wounds from the refusal of his last wife in front of all people are still fresh. Esther knows that if she put all her labor to saving her people without petitioning the king and going into his court, none of it would matter.

My Kings court is a beautiful place, that I rarely take time to enter. And if God was faithful to Esther, how much more will he dress me in the robes of his own righteousness and be pleased by my sight before him? It is audacious to enter into the king’s court, to ask something of the King directly, to speak to him face to face. But we do have unending access to him through Christ. Christ petitions for us. Taylor says that zeal in service to the neglect of personal communion incapacitates us for the highest service. We are not our own, we don’t rely on our power but that of the King.

All of this from Hudson Taylor is coming from Union and Communion, a book he wrote on Song of Solomon. The “she” in song of Solomon is all of us and the HE is Christ. One other thing he said that I loved,

Once she was contented in His absence—other society and other occupations sufficed her; but now it can never be so again. The world can never be to

her what it once was; the betrothed bride has learnt to love her LORD, and no other society than His can satisfy her.

acts 20

Bless the lord, O my soul. I am hopeless without you. I cannot worship, I cannot sit and be with you God unless you create the desire and the will in me to do so. You know the way my heart is bent, and that it is bent toward doing for you instead of being with you. But today, I am here to be with you. I have little to say to you, God, because I want this time to be filled with your word. I want your word on my lips, written on my heart. I have asked you to teach me how ministry is done. You drew me to Acts.

Paul says, in Acts 20,

You yourselves know how I have lived among you the whole time from the first day that I set foot in Asia, serving the Lord with all humility and with tears and with trials that have happened to me through plots of the jews; how I did not shrink from declaring to you anything that was profitable, and teaching you in public and from house to house, testifying both to Jews and Greeks of repentance toward God and of faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. And now, I am going to Jerusalem, constrained by the spirit, not knowing what will happen to me there except that the holy spirit testifies to me that in every city, imprisonments and afflictions await me. But I did not account my life of any value nor as precious to myself, if only I have finished my course and the ministry that I have received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God.

You lay out for us, Lord, how to do ministry. If we can say to a person, to a school, to a community, you know how I have been living AMONG you, I have been in your homes, I have been serving the Lord instead of people, the gospel instead of social justice, we will be testifying to you lord. If we do not account our life of any value, precious to ourselves, if we do not account any service as too low, only, only to testify to the gospel of the grace of God. It changes everything. The gospel, the spirit. We just live among, and serve, and then testify always. To every person, every age, everywhere. Humbly and thankfully say, my life is about the gospel, the grace of God: Jesus. You will do the rest. You need nothing from us. But you have given us, you have given me a course and a ministry that I want to finish-declaring the counsel of God and caring for the church.Loving her. Being her. Protecting her. And lord when you tell us to go, not when we get bored, now when we want to travel or carve a new life or get tired, but when you draw us elsewhere, we commend the people we love over to God, knowing that we have helped raise up and cultivate disciples who we can trust you will care for, you will keep in the word of your grace, which can build them up and can give inheritance to those that are sanctified. Give us hands to minister, when my hands want to take and hoard. Give us strength to labor for the weak. Not to convert them, but out of our love for them that flows from you.

It is more blessed to give than to receive. Jesus

based 1 corinthians 15

mystery and victory

I can do nothing with out you. Your ways are not my ways and your thoughts are not my thoughts. You are beautiful and I know that you will do more than I could ask or imagine if I surrender myself to you. Here I am. I’m sorry I want control so badly. I’m sorry I don’t know how to trust you and I am anxious about where I am. I don’t want to take my anxiety that grades and sports and relationships gave me and transfer that same anxiety to you and to me as your daughter and think that you are unhappy with me or unsatisfied or that I am ruining your ability to advance your kingdom. You love me. You use me. You strengthen me. And through you, I can bring glory to you. You are light and I am wrapped in you so I have the same light. You are love and your pour your love into me so I can pour out just as you can. All that Jesus is, I am too because of the work that he has done. Every day lord, I must come to confession again and say lord, I know I have really been hoarding my life today, keeping it from you, or I know I am falling into legalism, or I know that I have believed lies instead of truth and picked other things and used people to make myself worthwhile and used Christianity for my own gains and been unsatisfied with all the loveliness you have offered me. And I am sorry lord. And I know lord that this typing words into a page or speaking to you or thinking to you should not accomplish soul healing, but it does because you are good and you can take what is sown, my words, my offering to you, that are dead and bring them to life.

What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power. It is sown in a natural body; it is raised in a spiritual body. I have borne the image of the man of dust, I shall, we shall, bear the image of the man of heaven who is Christ.

I know that your word is good and when your word is sown in me, Christ is sown in me. And when Christ is sown in me, the Spirit is sown in me. And the Spirit accomplishes the work so that I may be changed from death to life, from the man of dust to the man of heaven. Bearing the image of Christ.

This is all your work. None of it is mine. There is nothing for me to add to this work, you have completed it and continue to do it daily. Victory is through Christ, given to us. What a gift. We can rest. We can joyfully work, joining you. The perishable cannot inherit the imperishable. No matter how great that perishable is. No matter how many inner city kids are known, how many grades are improved, how many cities are changed, how many times I tell someone the gospel-it will not move me from perishable to imperishable. BUT as Paul says we shall all be changed. The dead will be raised imperishable. We put it on. The perishable put on the imperishable. But God has given us the victory through Christ.

Psalm 119 25-32

God, my soul clings to the dust. The cross must be clung to, not the dust. But I can’t let it go without you God. My soul clings to the dust. That is my confession to you this morning God. I’m clinging to dust and I cant let go. What does this mean, to have a soul clinging to dust? Unable to be satisfied with you alone. Wanting more. More mission. But I am a daughter, not a slave. You say that you are Husband, not Baal.

Give me life according to your word. Life according to your word-it comes in, this word of yours, and resides in my heart. Christ is your word. I become all yours, and then there is peace, because I am no longer my own.

When I told you of my ways you answered me. My ways are not your ways. I crave distraction God. I want to be distracted from my ways and my dust-clinging and my lack of life according to your word. But I know that it is good to just be with you because all the work I can do in life that matters is your work through me. Nothing that I do apart from you could last. My ways will end so soon. My life will end in 70 years. Your ways are forever. Your word will not fade, will never pass away. And I can surrender fully to you. Daily. Hourly.

Make me understand the way of your precepts and I will meditate on your wondrous works. Now if the psalmist says this it must be worth doing a lot of time. Spending a good portion of my day understanding the way of your precepts and meditating on your works. And I know that this makes sense. The closer I get to you, the more I know you and your word, I’m going to be able to move with the spirit and be attuned to you and be able to beautifully portray who you are. But I am so set on doing, and somehow meditating isn’t doing to me. Its not as good. That makes no sense. Of course its good. Because if I toil really hard but its not honoring you, its not with your word and your spirit and offering you, it’s a waste. You’ll work in me no matter what but I’m going to limit what you can do with me if I insist on toiling. And I see this so clearly as I think about the week. Where I kept meeting with people but I was tired, I forgot how to listen, I wasn’t able to let the spirit move, my selfishness and self-centeredness just drew me into my self. And today I wake up and I think…you’re going to give me plans right? Purpose? Significance for this day?

Yes, you say. With me. Understand my precepts today. Meditate on my wondrous works. That is what today is for. No one else. And everyone else. Because you must know me well to share me.

My soul melts away for sorrow; strengthen me according to your word. Write your word upon my heart God, that it reverberates through me all day. So this self-destructive internal monologue can be replaced by your word offering unending life, making me more like you.

Put false ways far from me and graciously teach me your law! Please do these things in me God. Dig the false ways that are deeply rooted in my heart. Reach into the soil of my soul and free me from the false ways that I am not even aware of right now. So many lies lord that play through our minds all day-about ourselves and other people.

I have chosen the way of faithfulness, I have set your rules before me. Were told, in college, to make a lot plans. To set goals before us. But the psalmist says to set your rules before us. And to set Christ before us, because Christ is the mark of the new covenant. And to set the cross before us.

I cling to your testimonies O Lord, let me not be put to shame. O, great Lord, how you can change a heart. We go from clinging to dust to clinging to your testimonies. We place our whole heart in the things of this world and then our whole heart in you and what you have done for us. And we proclaim and say, Look! See what he has done. See how he loves you.

I will run in the way of your commandments when you enlarge my heart. Running. Running in the way of your commandments. It is good God. I’m thankful you know my runner heart. And give me the right way to run. In the way of your commandments. But even this is only possible when you enlarge my heart. 

What God speaks to us in Colossians 1-2

What does Colossians have to say to me?

 Christ is everything.  He is the image of the invisible God. The firstborn over all creation. In him all things hold together. He is before all things. He is head of his body, the church. He is over every ruler, throne, and principality. He wants to know you. He is pursuing you. In him the fullness of God was pleased to dwell. In him the fullness of God was pleased to dwell. He is the firstborn over all creation, and then the firstborn of the dead. He became just as dead as you are; you can be just as alive as he now is. He is not there with you (the father reminds me), he is with me. The spirit is with you. Remember? He left so it could come. And it is still there. In you. He reconciled all things to himself. When I say all things, I mean you. You’re a part of that, a part of earth. Not separate from it, a part of it.

As I write, I remember I want you to be known, God. I become aware of how small my prayer has been. How few and far between. How good it is to be here with you. How valuable the time you have given is. Time with you (alone), time with believers, and time with nonbelievers. All my time falls into those categories. They are all crucial, and all beautiful. None are a waste. They are great, great times. And you bring peace, peace by your blood. Of your cross. The peace you bring, you give to us. And then I come in-once alienated, hostile, but now reconciled by your body, in your death. It’s all yours. None of it is mine. The death and the body were not mine at first. They were all yours. But now I am reconciled to you. You are going to present me holy and blameless and above reproach. And I think, wait a second God, there has been a mistake. I’m not holy. I’m not blameless. And I am not above reproach. And if there is any place that I am absolutely, starkly, entirely not those things, it is before your throne. Here on earth, in comparison, in the midst of the grime of our existence and brokenness evident in everything here, I can hide my brokenness. Not to myself ever, I know my selfishness very well. But to the world. I do great deeds, you know. I hang out with urban kids. I’m studying social work. That’s noble, right God? That’s what they tell me. I went to Haiti. I love my parents. I have friends. The most lawbreaking I do is speeding and jaywalking and biking without a helmet. But God, before you, I know the weight of all those good things is darkened by my heart. Which is black. It is stained by sin. If you can see all of me, you’ll see a lot of the domesticated, tinsel-covered sin for what it really is. I know that God. I know that if I were to stand in your presence, if there had ever been a damned, I would be among the damned. Because I’ve crushed a lot of people in my little life. I hate to share. I’m not generous. I don’t like when things steal my time. I’ve made people like me then rejected them when they got too close or clingy. I judge people constantly. I let my friends keep on sinning. I want to be great more than I want you to be great. In my serving, I want to be great. I’ve always wanted to be great. I used to hurt my little brother and pretend it was an accident. I don’t spend time with difficult people. I worship urban ministry. I hate confession. I like to take the upper hand in our relationship. I’m enslaved to and obsessed with time and it being used well by some strange hierarchy I’ve created that’s not even gospel truth. I do love you. A lot. I do believe that you are worth all my life. I do want my life to be about you. I want to be healed and made perfect, and most of all I want to lose myself in you. And so when you say, I’m reconciling you to myself I think that there is nothing better you could ever say. Because that’s what I need.

But then I start to worry, because Paul says, “I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking Christ’s affliction for the sake of his body that is the church of which I became a minster according to the stewardship from God that was given to me for you to make the work of God fully known."

Wait a minute. This is way too much to take in.

First off, I am not rejoicing in sufferings for the sake of my girls. I don’t even know who my girls are right now, I’m scattered. I don’t know how to pursue well. Lord, help me because I’m lost. Real lost.

Paul says he is a minister of the hope of the gospel.

Which means making the word of God fully known.

The mystery has been revealed. Jesus is the word of God. Jesus is God speaking salvation into being. Jesus is the uttered word.

God CHOSE to make known to me-

How great are the riches of the glory of this mystery.

The mystery is Christ in you, the hope of glory.

Christ in you. He is already there. He has done all the work. Christ in you.

Christ in you is the greatest thing the world has ever and will ever see.

Him we proclaim. To the Christian, Christ is All. Him alone we proclaim. As Savior. As Life. As the hope of glory. To us, He is it. There is no alternative. Christ alone. We want all to be presented mature in Christ. Maturity in Christ is what we strive for. Not converts, disciples. Those for whom Christ is lord of their life. At the time of Paul, becoming Christian was a death sentence. It was dangerous. It cost you everything. There were no Christians who weren’t followers. That would never be worth the risk and the cost.

With all girls lord, help me to strive for maturity in Christ. And that is a lifelong journey. And you say to me, Krystal, love, you must be reaching out to those who do not know me. You know what it looks like to know me. I don’t care whether you are pouring into church goers or pagans, addicts or kids or classmates. There are many who do not know me, and I am entrusting you with the hope of glory. Myself. The fact that I have done all to present each blameless before the throne, that I have done all that must be done for salvation, that I am worth the entirety of lives.

Krystal, you are obsessed with toil. You love to toil. That love is from me. I have put it in you. Now direct all towards me. If people are not coming to know me, its not worth toiling. Hunter has to be about disciple making. It has to be about presenting people mature in Christ. Hope for Hunter is going to be a community of people committed to wooing the families of Southeast Raleigh for the love of Christ. For lavishing the love of Christ on Hunter Elementary. All that you do must go to that purpose. Bring them into church. Into community groups. Build leaders who can build leaders.

Urban ministry. That is the love of your life. And it is from me. I know you, love. I know you full well. And I know your heart for urban ministry and I want to cultivate that and I want every ounce of your life and energy and strength for the maturity of people in Christ.

I want all my energy for that God. More than that. I want all your energy for that.  You work powerfully within me. I don’t rely on my own strength. 

This is what I want to see: hearts knit together in love. Which means your heart being knit in love with urban families. It shouldn’t be possible. It should be two separate worlds. But I do not see what you see in those communities. I see great strengths. I see disciples. I see Christ formed in them. I’m going to knit your heart to theirs. That’s what I want to do with you little love.  Knit your heart to theirs. When hearts are knit together in love they reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of my mystery, which is Christ.

You will work that in whatever I do. You do more than I ask or dream with every element of my life, every friendship, every trip, every class I take. You turn it all into not-so-small miracles. 

Dear God,

I’ve been away for a long time. Much too long. Running hard. But an awful lot like the church of Ephesus. I know your works you say to me. I know your toil. I know you are bearing up for my names sake, not growing weary.

But I have this against you.

You have forgotten your first love.

Do the works you did at first.

And I look up to you and know that its truth. I know I cant slow down. I can always think of something to do other than be with you. Other than prayer. Other than your word.

Make me a lover of your presence. It is worth waiting on.  It’s the only thing. What you have done in my life this week, what I have witnessed, begins to flash across your mind. And I want to exhort you. I want to say, Jesus- how could you bring such beauty into my life? How could you be so bold yet graceful? But I know that I need to wait. Wait on the words. On the thoughts. Wait on you. Let you have your way with me in this space. Not consume it. Not dominate it. Not rush you. Wait on you. Return to the love I had at first.

And I think, Jesus, I have to put something good in the blog because I haven’t written at all. And I realize how I still have an agenda, a product, even for our time.

I belong to you. But as I write that, I hear myself ask “do you?” not because you are not doing all you can to restore me to what you made me for. Because how can I belong to one when I am first in my life so often? Am I really giving myself away? To you? Or am I giving myself to everyone but you? Making time for every one other than you?

Daddy I am trying to spend time with you.

I know little one.

Dad, I’m scared.

Why little one?

I’m scared of slowing down.

Why little one?

Because I don’t know what will happen. I don’t know how to belong to you. I want to cling to the multitude of relationships I’m in. I don’t want to let go of anything.

Babe.

What.

I cant hear you...are you speaking to me?

I love you.

How do I know that’s not just me? Who typed that I love you?

Well, I know. It’s the only thing I’m sure of.

I love you.

You’re crazy to do such a thing.

Stay awhile, little one.

I have lots for you.

You’re not asking me for something?

Only to stay with your first love.

I don’t struggle with what you ask me to do, do I?

I struggle with what you don’t call me to.

I have trouble believing there are things you don’t want me to do for you.

But you just want to be with me.

I don’t even know if I am tired or not. I think I will go to bed soon though. There is so much. We haven’t even begun to scratch the surface, have we? My life is one of surface scratching.

I see glory fall into this place, lord.

Today I learned what a conduit of grace is. It’s when I stand under a shower when I am tired and sticky and grimy and the water comes gushing down and it goes and goes. It doesn’t end. Maybe showers are the closest we get to what it feels like to have grace being poured upon us.

julian and jeremy

O, Lord, I will never get enough of you. I have much to learn and reflect on from what you spoke to Julian of Norwich many, many years ago…

I can never have perfect rest and true happiness until I am so attached to Him that there can be no created thing between God and me.

Lord, I beg you for that kind of attachment to you. You have made us only for yourself. We have being through the love of God. The smallest thing lasts because you love it. She said that your only desire is that our souls cling to you with all of our strength, clinging to your goodness.

And I think Lord, of all that a week with you has brought…a new friendship with a man named Charlie in Moore Square, singing old songs with young students on a Tuesday night while the rain poured down, being fed and cared for by a marvelous family friend, sitting on the rocks of a river and reading about the wonder seeping through Mary’s magnificat, lots of laughter, lots of deep conversation, lots of bike rides, lots of learning. That is one week with you. You fill me up. Julian said no created being can ever know how much and how sweetly and tenderly God loves them. That it is our nature to long for you and your nature to long for us.

Who are we that you are mindful of us, let alone long for us? How do I become more yours lord? Let me dwell on your goodness this week. Let me understand that I am unworthy and you are all goodness and let every interaction and word and breath I take flow from that knowledge. Grow my attachment to you, my desire for you, even when it means taking away the created things between us. There are many. But you are faithful. And I wonder at the mystery that today is Sunday and I get to go sing your praise and gather with body of believers. Prepare my heart for it lord, for what you have to teach me and say to me this morning.

Jeremy Taylor said, “What is most important to God is that we submit ourselves and all that we have to Him. This requires that we be willing to endure whatever his will brings us, to be content in whatever state we are in, and to be ready for every change.”

community

God, you are redemptive. You know my heart. You know that I resist community so often. And you know that I have been begging you for a sense of belonging, for a people that will build me up and encourage me and challenge me and PRAY for me and you have done it and you are doing it. And I look and I see that you are a healer. You are healing my fear and distrust and separation from the body of christ. All through this community group that meets on wednesday nights for a few hours. And I think back to an afternoon not too long and so long ago sitting on the grass with a dear friend and a very broken heart about needing, craving, community. Friends in the lord. Needing what the church of acts had with each other. Needing to be loved by other college students. To have a place where I am real with people. All the way. Truthful and vulnerable and the whole thing. And I think of tonight. And the way my group loved me well. So remarkably well. They pray for me and they appreciate me and we worship together and share together and again it is redemptive because you are lovingly breaking the walls that have been in place for such a long, long time that said not to let anyone and not to be real and to hide and to stay safe and in those tall, terrible walls I was all alone. And its crazy to see how evident my sin is during group just as it is evident to see filth in the light. The desire to isolate, the judgements on others, the resistance to community, the inability to pay attention during prayer, the fear of attack-those things are not from you. They are lies, all lies, and you are a God of Truth. Everything about you is fully true. There is no falseness in you, but these thoughts and fears and dangers aren't real. What is real is that I can be open and true with my group, I can be absolutely who I am and they will love me because they are yours and you love me. In all my messiness and brokenness you love me. And I trust that, but I am just now learning to trust the body. Because I say to you, God-this body-its people. and people are not like you and so I can not trust them and I cannot know them like I know you. And you say, Love, these people I have transformed into the body of Christ and you are a part of that body and I am making you, making the body, more like me. You must trust them. You must love them. Just as I love you. I have given my whole self to you when you have proven and shown that you will reject it and by doing that I am sanctifying you, I am making you what you cannot otherwise become. Christ is being formed in you. And you get to do the same with people. Trust them and love them and do life with them because I am making you like me and that is how I treat human beings. 

child of God

Every tuesday night we have this thing called Raleigh Worship. Its quite a beautiful idea really. A bunch of college students come into a sanctuary at 9 pm on tuesday nights and sing hymns and other songs to jesus. A few kids play guitar at the front and pick the songs each week and the rest of come to worship the love of our lives. And we sing. We're not harmonious or in tune but we pour out our hearts and sing loud and sing soft and somewhere in the middle we stop and pray and it reminds us that when it comes down to it, its just us and him. All the rest fades-school, career, ministry, and He loves us and loves me so well through my worshiping him. Today was a little extra good. I lost my voice this week (which I am secretly kind of happy about because it is my battle scar from spending a really beautiful weekend staying up way to late and having way to great of a time with high school girls) and singing was quite a struggle. But through the little fact of not being able to sing my usual way, God had so much to show me. I was struck by the sense that he loves my raspy, terribly off tune, mostly whispering praise as much as my best praise. I could feel it. I could feel how delighted he was with my praise tonight. And it hit me that my entire life is like that, not just my worship. It was so obvious that he adored it because it is my expression of love to him, but so is my life. So are my classes and spending time with girls and with him and all that I do, and yet to so many things I hate my imperfection and inadequacies and inability to serve well but none of it is any different than my singing. He loves it all the way a parent loves the work of their child. He loves it simply because he loves me and delights in me. and so I stood there, joyfully mouthing the words that weren't coming and realizing how his love has nothing to do with my performance in anything.
But that wasn't all. I could hear. I could hear the voices around me and they were stunning. And I needed them to worship tonight, because my voice failed to go forth, but theirs did. And we sung together. And what I could not do, the believers surrounding me could. And I can hear so much more clearly when I am not singing. I was extra attuned to the voices around me, the chorus praising him. And it was such a strong sense of the beauty and power and mystery of the church being the body of christ here on earth. There is nothing like that. Nothing in this world I love so much as the body of christ.
It was just a rich day with my voice gone. The effort it took to speak that made me realize that I am not entitled to a voice and that it is a gift and the heightened desire to listen and to choose words carefully because I didn't have so many.
I got to see this girl that I love as well. Her name is Cheyenne and she is in the 4th grade. Today we did homework together. Kids learning is one of my favorite things. Really learning. Even little stuff like multiplication. That is miraculous to me. Watching a mind start to get that for the first time. All the finger counting and picture making before it becomes second nature. And it points back to Christ too. And the way we are born again and we have so much to learn. And we need spiritual milk before solid food. Children of God. Today I got to deeply aware of my status as a child of God. And that God adores his children better than the greatest parent in the world. And that it is for all of us. The arms of Jesus are for ever single one of us. They are for Cheyenne. They are for my YL girls with deeply broken families. They are for my professors. They are for me. That is a beautiful thing really.

rockbridge weekend

Got to go to young life camp this weekend and lead a cabin of 6 high school girls. What a gift. Don't even know how to put it into words. I wrote a little letter to my cabin and then to jesus so I'll post them here. Mostly just struck by the fact that God would love me so much to let me go and get to know them and Him and pursue them a bit when I didn't even know how to. And that they would share a bit of their lives with me. Overwhelmed by the goodness of our Lord.

To my cabin,

I loved getting to share life with you this weekend. I loved learning about Jesus from you, not from your words but from your lives. Because you suffer just like he did. You know more about suffering then maybe I ever will. And you still love. I don’t want you to lose your ability to love. And my greatest hope is that your love and affection is channeled into the one who loves you more than anyone ever will. I trust him as I see your joy, your pain, and your love for each other, what makes you come alive. I trust that though I don’t know how to love you well, I don’t know how to be your leader, I don’t even know how to know you that he knows all these and more. He loves you so much sweet girls. He loves to see you laugh, to see you dance, sing, rap, whatever it is that you do…he made you to do those things and you delight him by being who you are. How do you go through all that you go through? How are you so strong? I see the pain beneath the laugh and I thank you for the sliver of reality I got to glimpse this weekend. I know that healing is hard. It is painful. But it is good. You are daughters of the light. Nothing needs to be kept in darkness. Nothing hidden behind laughter. Nothing scares Him. He’s seen it all, felt it all, lived through it all. Nothing about your life is too much for him. Thank you for your tears, I know you hate them. Thank you for letting me in a little, for being real with me, for loving me well and showing me Christ. I love you. I love you more than I can explain. With a love that is not my own, that of Jesus Christ who pressed on my heart all weekend that I can not comprehend the depth and height of his love for you. I think of you as you are in your homes now. I know that this is where it gets hard. I don’t know what you’re doing right now, but I hope His love does not feel less real. I hope that he is loving you just as hard as he has been all along and that you know it. I hope that in these weeks to come I am able to pursue the way he does, love you a little like he does, share life with you. I am so unworthy to do such a thing, I wasn’t even supposed to come this weekend, but he let me come along. Work alongside Him. Experience his joy in pursuing you and his sorrow in the ways the world has tainted and hurt his brides.

Thank you jesus...

 for letting me in to the work you are doing in the lives and hearts of six lovely girls this weekend. How can I thank you? How could you have entrusted me with something so precious, something of such deep importance? You are crazy to love me like you do. Stay with them lord. Keep showing them who you are and how you love them. Be close beside them tonight. So close they can feel you. The work is not in vain. It is for your glory. Lord, these girls are looking for lovers. They don’t want to be alone lord. But you are the Love of their life. I don’t want them to settle for anything less then you. There is so much brokenness in this world, but especially in the lives of these six girls. Only you can redeem it. I cannot. No one else can. You alone. When I was in high school I thought that what I found in You at camp could not be found at home in day to day life. That is a lie. You want every day of my life to be as exciting and as saturated with you as the best camp, the best trip, the best community. This weekend, living life together, encountering you together, is what we made for. It’s the closest to reality we’ve gotten in urban ministry. I love them. It is hard because I don’t know how to love them, but I rely on you. I trust you to teach me what I do not know. I trust you when you tell me to just be faithful to you. I trust that if every day I commit to whatever you ask, you will show me how to pursue them and you will change their lives and their hearts forever. There is nothing you cannot do. I love you lord. Bring healing; bring life, life to the full. For me and for them. Thank you for showing me what you look like through the girls this weekend. For loving me so much that you’d let me be a part of this. For loving them as much as you do, more than I’ll ever know. Pour out your spirit God. All the time, on all of us. We need you so badly. I love you my King.
 

midday love letter

Dear Jesus,

I have half an hour in between class to write you a love letter. What a gift. You have entrusted me with much. You tear me that you may heal me. You break me down that you may build me. You say, what will I do with you, Krystal? With love like the morning dew, that is gone by the time the sun has fully risen. I know, Jesus. I know that I have a love that  fades fast. And you have a love that is steadfast. And I know jesus that you look at me, look deeply and say that your desire, the Fathers desire is for steadfast love, for mercy, not for sacrifice. And I say, what does that mean love? To give mercy not sacrifice. And you weave things together perfectly and you have brought me the writings of a man who knew you well, a man named Dietrich, who reminds me that spiritual love is not the same as human love. That spiritual love is not desire, not the desire I have to be fulfilled as a human being but service. Service purely to Christ. And that I interact with people through you, never directly. And that I love them without looking to what they have to offer me. A love that is pure. A love that is selfless. A love that allows them to be saved by Christ not by me. I will save no one. I will save no wayward, broken soul. No community in shambles. No poverty. I am not redeemer. You are redeemer. You are Savior. You are the fulfillment of my desire. And you allow me to be lost in you and my mission to be lost in yours. Which is perfect. You make all things new. You are the king of glory. You say, open up your gates and let me in. I’m not so sure about that. Honestly. Today is a day I’m not interested in letting anyone in, especially you. Because today I don’t feel like existing deeply, I feel like being busy and irritable and doing lots of work so I don’t have to think about much. But then you say, not today my love. Today is a day I have MADE, rejoice and be glad in it. Be still, still, and know that I am God. And know that I am good. And know that this day is holy, unutterably holy, because I have called you by name and I have also renamed you. And TODAY you receive your true image, which Jesus Christ has given you, the image HE HIMSELF embodied and has now stamped on all men. And today is also the day that you can meet people with the word of Christ and leave them with it. And meet them and offer them the image Christ gives to both of you. 

king of glory

Who is the Lord? The King of Glory. [psalm 24]. Let him in the psalmist cries. Let this king of glory in. What happens when he comes into us? Were changed. I have been around many people lately who have been trying to tell me that we created god. That he is a social construct, that the there are hundreds of religions and that we all have our own version with similar qualities and that truth is relative not absolute.

What do I have to say to that? I don’t have a precise statement that will affirm the reality of Christ or the truth of Gods Word. I will not pretend to know a logical argument that proves Christianity or ignore the track record Christians have had since the time Christ lived. I will not deny the racism, hatred, and darkness that have been present in this Church, this bride of Christ, but I will say that God does not deny it either. He acknowledges our failure to represent him to the world and does not desert us.

I can only say that I do love him. I do think that he is very much real, very much alive, very much light and love. I do believe that there is a king of glory and that the earth does belong to him and that I was made to belong to him. I know that I have nothing unique to say about the validity of Christianity, people far more intelligent than I am have affirmed and denounced it. I believe in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord and Love as absolutely, eternally, undeniably true with everything in me and I believe that he can save me and that I cannot save myself. My own intellect and reasoning is not where my hope lies. My rationality and philosophy, my self, is not what I trust in. Nor is society or culture.

I look at these psalms before me and I love them and I trust them. I do love this Word. One thing I have asked of the Lord, psalm 27 says, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord forever, gaze upon the beauty of the lord.

I seek your face God…take me in. Make me bend low. Make me serve more. Make my love more like your love so that the world may know that I am yours. It is only by our love that they will know whom we belong to. Whose face we seek. Whose face they see when they look at us. Take me in O Lord, as I lift my face and my hands to you, teach me your ways. Hem me in from behind and before. Come in, O king of glory.

Christ Jesus has become to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption so that it is written let the one who boasts boast in the Lord. (1 Corinthians 1:30)

why I give thanks

I’ve come to the other end of my day. Its Sunday night. I’m home alone, and its time to come to my God and meet with him. Though it is Sunday, though it has been full of the Lord, since this morning I have little time just us. And I look over this day and this week and what I have learned and what I have to be THANKFUL for. I am thankful for a girl named Katie who adopted 13 girls and lives in Uganda. She’s 22, and she’s my hero. Not even because of the adoption but because of her adoration for Christ. I found her blog: kissesfromkatie.blogspot.com and its changing me. I am thankful for Jesus Christ and his love for Raleigh North Carolina and that there is a church named Vintage 21 where He is changing me and there is a church named Tapestry and He is changing me and there is a girl named Takya and she is changing me because she was happy to see me today. I am thankful for the orphans and the sons and daughters in Port au Prince Haiti whose pictures I taped on my prayer wall over my bed who I could never get out of my heart, who I want to see again, ones I knew well and ones I barely know at all and all ones that God knows fully and perfectly. And I am thankful for a God that calls me beautiful when I do not feel beautiful and when I do not even want to be called that because I like the safety of my aloneness. And I am very very thankful for a weekend spent with 44 sophomores in college who are each very intelligent and each very high achieving and each very very loved by a Savior and desperate for more life and life to the full even though I don’t want to be called to college kids because I am one I am called to them because I am one. And I love the fact that jesus wants me. He wants me right now and he wants me always. Always, always. And he doesn’t need by intellectual capacity, my work, my praise and he doesn’t want me for anything I have to give he just wants me. Because I was made to be wanted by Him. I was made to be loved by him because being loved by God is how we glorify God and we were made to glorify him.

I am so tempted and eager to believe I am called anywhere but here, to any life but this one and any people but these. None of it is true. I am here for a purpose and that is to love my Savior and to make his name known and to let light burst forth and to invite and encourage and beg others to join me in pursuit of Him. And he is making me a part of the redemption of this city and this college and this community that he loves so much. And if there is somewhere else he’d like me to be, he is going to make it known to me. He will show the way if I say, “here I am, send me.” But no matter where I am sent it will be the same-this business of loving jesus and loving people-letting him love people through me- and that is going to be hard and feel not right and feel like it would be better somewhere else EVERYWHERE I go. Because it is always hard and always beautiful to follow Christ. Hard because were human and beautiful because He Loves.

And I get excited when I write because I remember how very good he is. that he is more than enough for me, just as himself. I don’t need to be entrusted with ANYTHING and he is enough. And YET he has entrusted me with MUCH. So, so much. So many little lives he lets me be a part of. So many adults, kids, students. So many classes. So many moments I can surrender to him. So many people I can love. 

Jesus,

I want all the focus on you. I want to be where you are and where you want me. If you want me in Africa, if you want me in Raleigh, if you want me in DC, as long as my home is one that people can come into where jesus Christ is glorified and proclaimed as king, where the poor are no longer the poor and where I am very poor where there are lots and lots of girls, then that is what I want lord. If you say go to academia, then I will go. If you say go back to Haiti, I’ll go there. It matters not. You know. You are sure. I am not. Sure of anything. I am just the grace consumer. That’s my role in all this. Consumer of grace. Pray-er. Make me more of a pray-er. That prayer is like breath. That this writing thing happens all the time ten times a day I write my heart to you. That I speak to you. That I praise you. That I fall for you over and over again. It is always lovely to remember that I have found what I was made for and that is you.

I just want to know you and love you and hope that by our love your name will spread across the earth. And know that my significance is not by any means the most important thing. In fact, it is the least important. What is important is running to you and getting caught up in you and loving you. Loving and loving and loving you. As hard as I possibly can. And just going where you are. Where you are is where I want to be. I love you so much lord. I come away from you and I come back and I think true life is here in your arms. You have the best arms I’ve ever known.

bonhoeffer

There is much to say but little time as I am about to go on a school trip for fall break so I'll keep it short. Its been far too little posting, not due to lack of things to say but lack of time to weave them together into text and post them between going home all last weekend and leaving again now. My very wise friend kimberly reminded me today that prayer is not a means to an ends-it is an ends in itself. Regardless of what it does for me or who I am  praying for, Jesus is so worth praying to and with. It is not preparing for some higher better thing, it is the higher thing. The highest thing. Union with Christ. Bonhoeffer also has something quite beautiful and convicting to teach me:

If we do not give thanks daily for the Christian fellowship in which we have been placed even when there is no great experience, no discoverable riches, but mush weakness, small faith, and difficulty; if on the contrary we keep complaining to God that everything is so paltry and petty, so far from what we expected, then we hinder God from letting our fellowship grow according to the measure and riches which are there for us all in Jesus Christ.

Christian brotherhood is not an ideal which we must realize, it is rather a reality created by God in Christ in which we may participate.

This entire chapter (the first one in his book Life Together) literally slammed me. Both with conviction and deep, deep relief and joy because it pinpointed to source of my frustrations and discouragements and disillusionments so that I keep thinking that we, as Christians are not what we are supposed to be that we are not loving our poor that we are not loving each other and we are not loving are God. Which there is truth in our brokenness in the fact that we are being sanctified, being made perfect, but isolation from and irritation with the church and people and the work I get to be a part of is rooted in this seed of deception that keeps me thinking that Christian brotherhood is an ideal we are missing when it is already reality and has been reality since Christ came here and brokenness is part of that reality and that I am called to be THANKFUL for the gifts and the people and Spirit and the life he has already given me and never ever to become and accuser or complainer of ANYONE in my life especially before men but also before God.

Keep shattering my wish dreams Lord, and giving me your truth instead. Keep that heavy hand of grace upon me. Crush me that I may be made whole. I love you.

from rags to righteousness

I cant help but smile as I think of my heart. What pulls me from you lord? Other desires of my heart that I think you can’t fulfill. I get angry because I think I am withheld of something good by being with you. Never true. What have I to say to this owner, this maker, builder, stitcher, artist of my heart? Nothing. You look at me and love me. You have promised your love. I immediately want to move focus when I am with you. Say, lets talk about how I’m supposed to be loving freshman girls and I’m not. Or how urban ministry isn’t going how I expected. And I have my list of all the people I am supposed to be praying for. And Im angry about the music in this coffee shop. And I don’t want to listen to you but I’m mad because I can’t hear you. And slowly, ever so slowly, I see the defrost begin to take place. Why lord do I think people have something to offer me that you cannot? Lord, why so resistant to you? To the word.

I need to feel you today. And if I do not, you are still sovereign. You are still God. I am broken. You are sovereign. I have come to hide in the shadow of your wings. 

 “You’re not doing life with and loving your neighbors because you’re bent on the success of this world.” Pastor Tyler said this week. I come to you and I’m like, look at me. I am a disaster. I am messy and against you and for you and not sure and a faker and you love me. You love. I run from your word and you stitch it into my soul. I don’t always trust you. I cant think of anything worth saying to you. 

Peter says in Acts 2 “This Jesus, God raised up. He has poured out this that you all are seeing and hearing. God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.”

 That face alone I live for. That is the truest thing I know. How do I know? I don’t and I do. I cannot prove it to you, dear reader. I have no reason to know that what he is saying is right. Nothing to base it on. But I cannot let go. There is something in me that is deeper than my rationality and my logic and it is this secret thing hidden in the depths that says that he is true and that he is for us. I don’t know what it is. I’m sorry. I cannot give you more than what I have but I promise that he, this jesus, God raised up. God has made him lord. And he has poured his spirit on me. When I didn’t even want it. I was looking for something else. But in his infinite sweetness he gave me Christ. What I didn’t know how to ask for. Who I didn’t know I was looking for.

This is what peter said in his sermon at Pentecost. And what I say now.

I wonder, as a side note, if I could write about anything other than jesus. Proclaim anything else. I don’t think I can. I guess just because I’ve sat to write hundreds of times and the same words always seem to appear. That say Jesus is Lord. He is my love. That is all my soul wants to proclaim. I come angry, I come unsure, I come without any desire to spend time with him and then I sit and I begin to type or scribble and the same thing comes out. I find that one thing alone is written on the page. Which is this gospel. And I wonder if my life could ever be about anything else. Sometimes I think it could but that always seems to be an illusion when I am given this white screen to fill with letters. Just the fact that I could start to throw words onto this page the way Pollack threw paint onto a canvas and end out with this projection of my soul and the projection always says Jesus. I come wrestling and tired and so angry and distrustful. Again and again. To this page. The same page every time. And I start. And the torrent of words comes. It’s a lack of control when it comes to the page. I let go and let my hands do what my mind and my mouth cannot. There is this beautiful song by Aaron Keyes that says:

“these guilty hands are raised, filthy rags are all I bring but I have come to hide beneath your wings. These holy hands are raised, washed in the fountain of your grace and now I wear your righteousness.

We are broken but we are yours.“

Perhaps that’s why I write: to be redeemed over and over again. To come with guilty hands to you and you turn them into holy hands that proclaim the gospel. They do it regardless of all that I came with. And I think that is why there is so much fear in writing because I am so scared that one day I will be left with some other message. Something other than the gospel. But there is no need to be afraid. Nothing I write determines or shakes God’s goodness. And the fact that it can sing to that untouchable, unchangeable, never ending goodness is His miracle.

And Peter spoke these words. "God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified." They heard, they were cut to the heart and said to peter, what shall we do? And peter tells them,

 “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord calls to Himself. “

That’s all peter does. And then they receive his word. It is what God has to say. And people have to receive. And everyone gets to choose whether or not they receive it. Everyone is given a choice. To take or to leave it. Kind of like when a man proposes. He says, I’m offering you all of me forever. What do you think? Could you trust me? Could you give me all of you? You can no longer doubt my desire for you. What I would give for you. How long I want you for. Forever. All of you. I want all of you and I’m offering you all of me. 

I think that is what Jesus is. God’s proposal to humanity.