For the next few days, we’ll be sharing the team’s stories from Zimbabwe. Here, Laura shares how God radically changed her thinking about financial provision and asking Him for big things – before they even got on the plane!
You Helped Change the World
Sisters – Jana and her family have headed to the beach for some much needed family time after the Zimbabwe trip! Pray for rest and refreshment for all of them.
Jana has asked me to give you all a recap of last night’s Zimbabwe Celebration event, welcoming four of the Women Getting Real team members back and sharing the harvest with the rest of you who supported us stateside. The Zimbabwe trip would not have happened without you.
For myself, it was such a great reunion – so good to see the faces of the women and men who have been praying for us and encouraging us all the way to Zimbabwe and back. As Jana shared last night, “One of the most powerful gifts to us as a team was your prayers. It was tangible. I could send a text calling to rally the saints and we could just feel the breath of God move among us, an ocean away. When someone asks you to pray for a mission trip, never think that your prayers don’t matter.”
We as a Zim team want you to know that you were as much a part of this trip as we were, and we gave each person who came last night a note to remind them – and now you:
Because of God through you. . .
Our team:
- Cried with 14 women at a Bible study
- Challenged more than 600 students in 3 high school assemblies
- Equipped 80+ women at a Women’s Retreat
- Biblically trained 8 camp counselors
- Encouraged the dreams and purity of 50+ middle school students
- Played, prayed with, and blessed 75 children at the local orphanage
- Washed the feet of 25 senior citizens
- Loved on 40 + handicapped children
- Shared testimonies with 20 women at the Women’s Tea
- Prayed for healing at the hospital
- Renewed and encouraged 4 ministry leaders
- Worshiped in song and dance
- Invested in many one on one relationships
Thank you for being part of this journey.
More God stories from Zim coming this week….
Zimbabwe Celebration Event
When: June 29, 2010 (7:00pm – 9:00pm)
Where: Fellowship Church
Please RSVP and feel free to bring friends, spouse,etc!
Women Getting Real ministries will be celebrating the return of WGR members and what God did during their mission trip to Zimbabwe.
Join us, Tuesday, June 29, 2010 from 7:00pm – 9:00pm for heavy appetizers and a presentation from different members in the WGR group. We will get a chance to hear what the trip meant for those who went and celebrate God’s work. What a great time for those who supported the WGR Zimbabwe team to see how our contribution HELPED CHANGE THE WORLD!
The Glory of Peach Butter
The Zim Celebration on Tuesday night has really been an ordeal. Broken computers, room changes, etc. But more than that, it has required culling through moments and memories, photos and videos. It is a lot of life packed into three weeks that I am trying to boil down to a few minutes. All the effort is pointed to one thing: God’s glory.
It reminds me of the other day when I was teaching the girls to make a family favorite, peach butter. You take almost too ripe peaches and cut out the bad places, the bruises or mold spots. That is what I mean by too ripe. In fact, the best peaches for peach butter are the ones the grocer is going to throw out.
These culls are deceiving. They have bad spots, but if you cut into them a little there is still good flesh toward the middle. So you slice off the bad, and then split them open to remove the pit. If they are “cling-free” you pop the pit out. But if they are not, then you have to cut the peach off the pit. Did I mention that you don’t peel the peaches? You don’t take their skins off, you just wash them.
So they have been washed, and trimmed, and pitted and NOW…they go into the blender to be ground up and then into the pot with sugar to be “cooked down” as Granny said. You heat the peach goop into a slow rolling boil and until it is a slow drip off the spoon. There is nothing better than this old farm recipe. It is southern glory at its finest.
Is anybody else seeing the human parallels here? I want to be a beautiful flawless peach. But those kinds of peaches are hard and not so sweet. What I am instead is the kind that a lot of people would throw away. But God.
God cuts out my bruises and moldy spots. But God doesn’t stop there. Then He splits me wide open and takes out the hard pits. Next He puts me in a blender and grinds me up. If that isn’t bad enough He heats up my life and circumstances so that I feel like I am in a rolling boil.
But God. He doesn’t mind the extra effort I require. Doesn’t mind getting His hands dirty while He’s working on me. And He knows just how long to grind, how much sugar to add, how long to let me boil. And then the He gets to be the first one to taste and enjoy His new creation.
God is in the business of creating something wonderful out nothing. He gets all the glory that way. With this said, don’t miss us bragging on God Tuesday night. Truly He made glory out of nothing.
Give Us Our Daily Bread
In the book of John, chapter 5, Jesus had just completed feeding the masses with two fish and five loaves. And the next evening He walked on the water to catch up with His disciples who were rowing in boats. (You might want to let your brain and your faith actually connect on just those two facts alone.) Got it? Okay, let’s continue.
The next day, the recently fed masses went looking for Jesus. “I tell you the truth, you are looking for me, not because you saw miraculous signs but because you ate the loaves and had your fill. Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. On Him, God the Father has placed His seal of approval.” Jesus said.
Let’s pause here a moment. Why are you looking for Jesus? Do you want the miraculous supernatural life? Or do you want your belly filled? I know in my own life, I get sucked into only asking for mortgage payments when God wants me learn how to co-rule in His Kingdom.
The crowd asks Jesus a pertinent question. “What must we do to do the works God requires?”
To the surprise of us all who have been seduced into a “working for God’s pleasure” mentality, Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one He has sent.”
Huh? That’s it? Believe in Jesus? Not quite. This verse immediately sent my mind back to Psalm 78 which recounts the plight of the children of Israel. After all that God did in their midst, they were doomed to the desert because “they did not believe in God or trust His deliverance.”
To believe in Jesus is not a glib comment, or fish logo, or wristband. This is a “way of life” dependence on a Person. Not on programs, jobs, families, churches, bank accounts. Jesus is the central nervous system to the whole of our life. In Him, we live and move and have our being.
I’m not sure the folks with Jesus connected the dots yet because they turned around and asked Him for a sign. “What miraculous sign then will You give that we may see it and believe You? What will You do? Our forefathers at the manna in the desert; as it is written: He gave them bread from heaven to eat.”
What are you asking Jesus for? Are you asking for more of His heart? Or are you still trying to be convinced that He is the Messiah? Do you want His life or are you satisfied with manna? If ever there was a case of selective memory, this is it.
That manna experiment didn’t end so well for their forefathers and they are asking Jesus for the same thing. And Jesus helped them raise their sights. He said, “I tell you the truth, it is not Moses who has given you bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is He who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”
Can I dare to ask you who is your Moses? Who are you crediting for your provision and success and supply? Is it your work, your husband, your parents? Do you look to them to provide for you when it is our Father who gives you all you need for life and godliness?
Slowly a new hunger is stirring in those around Jesus. The people asked Him, “Sir, from now on give us this bread.” Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life.”
I don’t know about you, but for the first time in my life I understand why Jesus instructed us to pray: “Give us this day our daily bread.” It’s not the physical bread but the spiritual He was speaking of. Jesus has just told the disciples in Chapter 4, “I have food to eat you know nothing about.”
The disciples, like us, were still thinking the physical and asked a hilarious question: “Then His disciples said to each other, ‘Could someone have brought Him food?'”
Does God care about the physical needs? Of course He does. In fact Jesus tells His followers later, “Do not run after these things like the pagans do, your heavenly Father know you need them. But seek first the kingdom of God and all these things will be added to you.”
What is so startling is the remainder of this conversation with Jesus. He has made this declaration and then proceeds to tell them “He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty. But as I told you, you have seen me and still you do not believe me.”
Wow. My head is spinning today about what I am asking and why and who. I want to believe more. I want to feast on The Bread of Life. How about you?
Near to the Heart of God
I have been wrestling since I got home from this trip. Wrestling over the unguided generation coming up in Zimbabwe, with little to no parents, and the cannibalizing government that seems free to feed on its own people.
I wrestle with what to do, how to do and even if I should do…anything. It is so Christian, and even American, to want to rush in to the rescue. But our rescue is not necessarily the needed medicine.
In contrast, I also shudder at the parallels of thoughts and attitudes of our own country to the thoughts and attitudes of far away Zimbabwe. Attitudes such as entitled government at the expense of the working class, perverted images of women and of marriage. Lack of self restraint and a work ethic are bad here, but there you see years down the road. It’s not a pretty reality.
On top of this my heart is beating ever stronger for the plight of women and children swept into the cesspool of the sex trade. Seems we all need to be rescued.
“God, where are you in all this?” is a common cry of my heart. “For their sakes, for our own, what do You have to say about this?”
This morning, I think He began answering that question. First, I dreamed I was doing a worship dance to the song Beauty for Ashes. “I delight myself in riches of fare, trading all that have for all that is better,” is the line that sticks out. Then in the early moments of waking, I heard this line from an old, old hymn. “There is a place of quiet rest, near to the heart of God.” The next lines got fuzzy and I could only remember part of the chorus, “Oh Jesus, blessed Redeemer…heart of God…”
The song didn’t go away and my mind woke up searching for the rest of the words. And then I remembered one of my dreams, where someone said clearly, “You need to read Psalm 46.”
Needless to say, first priority I found a book that had the whole hymn and I looked up Psalm 46. Seems the Lord has a good answer to these kinds of questions. Don’t just read the words of each of these. Sit on them, absorb them. Relate them to your world, our world.
God comfort and encourage our hearts, Amen.
There is a place of quiet rest
Near to the heart of God
A place where sin cannot molest
Near to the heart of God
There is a place of comfort sweet
Near to the heart of God
A place where we our Savior meet
Near to the heart of God.
There is a place of full release
Near to the heart of God.
A place were all is joy and peace
Near to the heart of God.
O Jesus, blessed Redeemer
Sent from the heart of God
Hold us, who wait before thee
Near to the heart of God.
CB McAfee
God is our refuge and strength, an ever present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging.
There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy place where the Most High dwells. God is within her, she will not fall; God will help her at break of day.
Nations are in an uproar, and kingdoms fall; he lifts his voice the earth melts. The Lord Almighty is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress.
Come see the works of the Lord, the desolations he has brought on the earth. He makes wars cease to the ends of the earth; he breaks the bow and shatters the spear, he burns the shields with fire.
“Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.”
The Lord Almighty is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress.
Psalm 46
Looking For God In Zimbabwe
Audacious title isn’t it? But there is a reason for it. For some of us on the team, the notion of hearing from God was about as foreign as the soil we were on. It was a great joy to share and coach these folks on the closeness of God that is available to us all. But for others of us, especially those of us on the WGR team, we had to tune our ears to hear God in such radically different surroundings. On home turf, we three, Beth, Laura and myself had grown accustomed to particular ways that God conversed with us. With all that stripped away, we each had to strip away notions and familiarities, even comfort levels to regain our intimacy with Him.
The nature was different. Instead of seeing God in gentle deer in mountainous display, we were beholding elephants in dry, desolate lands. Instead of the usual prayers for God to surprise and supply our needs we faced the complete and utter devastation of poverty and governmental corruption. Were these people praying for God’s provision? Was this His answer? Would He answer us in the middle of such great need? This whole trip, in lots of ways I will explain in coming blogs, caused me to question my compass.
If I prayed it once, I prayed it a thousand times. “Lord I feel like I’m flying blind.” That is how it felt much of the time I was teaching, counseling, interceding. They had so much heartbreaking need, I had so little understanding of what to offer. But God kept whispering, “I’ve got you. Just keep going.”
Then the kisses began to fall. He began to speak to us in our language, 6000 miles away from home. For me it was hearts and butterflies. Lots of butteflies, even white ones. For Laura it was rainbows. And Beth, well she has a whole new story to tell about rain and spiritual downpours. All these little love notes were out of season and unusual occurrences for the region. But not at all unusual for Our God who knew how very much we each needed to hear from Him, to be reassured of His presence. You know it sounds funny, but God lives in Africa too.
What you may not know is, He’s also quite the show-off for out of town guests. Seriously, it is one thing to hear from God when life is going pretty well. It is a whole other matter when you are way out of your comfort zone in every way. I am so glad we have the “God who speaks and He lives.” I am so glad He came looking for us.
Returned and Released!
Well friends, I am back and I am fired up!!
It is no accident that the movie “Invictus” was playing on the plane as we traveled to and from Zimbabwe. It is the compelling story of Nelson Mandela’s courageous quest for national healing. Mandela’s uncanny vision was to inspire their underdog rugby team to win the World Cup that was being held in their home country of South Africa. It was a gamble for unifying blacks and whites that paid off.
Of course, the soccer World Cup in South Africa is happening at the same this movie has been released and we are traveling through. No accident at all.
In the film, Mandela asks these questions:
How do we get people to be better than they think they can be?
How do we inspire greatness when nothing less will do?
How do inspire everyone around us?
He concludes, “In order to build our nation we must all exceed our own expectations.”
I have much to say about what I saw and did. Thank you for your amazing prayer support. We could tangibly feel your loving arms. But I want to re-enter the conversation by saying to build this Kingdom, “we must all exceed our own expectations.”
The word Invictus means Unconquered. I love that. I need that. So do you. When we face our own personal stories, our national struggles, and the international issues that plague our world, we need to know that “in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.” Romans 8:37
Roll up your sleeves. Get on your knees. There is holy building to be done. We dare not waste another moment in a foggy stupor of fear and indecision. We dare not continue to live little lives distracted by the needs God has already promised to meet.
Now more than ever, I am myself convinced that the world needs you. It needs me. It needs “Christ in us, the hope of glory.”
INVICTUS
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find me, unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate;
I am the captain of my soul.
~ by William Ernest Henley; 1849-1903 ~
A Glorious Name
All throughout the Bible, God names people, and God changes people’s names. Abram to Abraham, Jacob to Israel, Sari to Sarah, John the Baptist, Gomer’s children, even the names given to Jesus. Good or bad. Rachel on her deathbed named her newborn, Ben-Oni, son of my trouble. Thankfully, dad stepped in and named him Benjamin, son of my right hand. What a difference a name makes.
So the Lord loves names. Why? Because God uses names to describe and explain himself. Names are forms of identification. What’s in a name? Everything when you are talking about God.
So, when my friend John Dee prayed over us a blessing that the power of God be revealed and that there be a release of gifts, and new names, I was intrigued and a little clueless.
After the prayer I asked John, “what is that? A new name?”
And in true John Dee fashion, he told me to go to Jesus and the Word and see what I found. I started digging in Scripture and it is very frequent. In fact, commonplace. It is everywhere. I will name you, I will call you. And there is specific Scripture about God giving us new names. Lots of Scripture. Here is one:
“You will be called by a new name that the mouth of the Lord will bestow.” Isaiah 62:2
So I asked Him to tell me my name. I knew how important it was to me for my children. I am His child, so it stands to reason my name is important to Him. So I asked. Simple as that. Then I waited.
And the day it came, I just sat there. This is a little too close to my heart for public consumption. But I want to tell you how amazing it is when the Living God gives you a name. In true fashion for me, I didn’t believe I had heard Him right.
I asked Him to tell me again so I could be sure it was Him. The Lord was really good about it. He did. Over and over.
Guess what? The Lord does not stutter.
Now a couple of years have passed and I have watched the Lord reveal himself in amazing ways through a given name. People are always dumbfounded. Here are some names the Lord has given in lots of different ways to people I know personally.
Sought After, Butterfly, Faithful, Doxa, Repairer of Broken Walls, Sunshine, Pearl.
These are all real people with real encounters with a Real God.
Every one of these people scratched their head and said, Huh? Me? But the Lord used the name to drive deep truth down in their soul. If I told you these names were given to people who struggled with being victims of child abuse, infidelity, promiscuity, rejection, worthlessness, would you be able to connect the dots? All they could see was pain and struggle and hurt. And then God says, “Wait just a minute. This is who I see. This is who you really are.”
It brings the promises of God to a whole new level. “The one who calls you is faithful. He will do it.”
Now what does this have to do with my glory, your glory?
We are settling for crumbs when we can have a feast. God is offering us a lot more than we are taking. We are settling for churchianity instead of intimacy. We are settling for stereotypes in and out of the church instead of being defined by the Creator. We are bickering over roles when God is calling us to be warriors for the Kingdom of God.
I am my Beloved’s and His desire is toward me.
I am my Beloved’s and He is mine.
I know who I am and whose I am and He is fully taken with me. He is the Beholder. He is the Author, the Finisher. He is the only one who matters. He is my all in all. He is the Lover that I have always longed for. He is the Source. He is the Redeemer.
In my language He is the Curse Breaker.
He is my satisfaction so that out of this overflow, my relationship to everyone else is changed. My marriage is different because Jesus has my heart. My parenting is different because Jesus has my heart. Everything flows from His source, instead of me trying to scramble around to grab some affirmation here and approval there, definition here and fighting for this or that.
And in an unusual God-like way, this knowledge helped me to be more of a woman. I stepped off the False Woman spectrum. No more bouncing between the Trophy and Invisible Woman. I am free to express my glory, my womanhood without all the fear of rejection.
I can trust the Lord to lead and define and defend me. He said, His gifts and callings are irrevocable. I believe Him.
Understanding God’s glory in me has changed my whole perspective about everything, everyone.
I told a room of 20-something year old women that it feels like Jesus has washed my face; He has carefully but intently scrubbed off the lies and heartache and rejection caked on my face, and then rinsed it with His living water, and with my face cupped gently in His hands, He smiles and whispers, “Oh, there you are.”
Excerpt taken from Unhindered, Chapter 50
Let’s Get Real Here:
How do you think your thoughts about you would change if you heard what the Lord God Almighty called you? Why don’t ask Him? What’s your new name?
Ash Work
Part of the power of this story, is the woman’s willingness to claim her sin and then her willingness to lay it at His feet. Before there can be beauty for ashes, there has to be the ash work.
Wait a minute. Ashes? Girl — I’ve got ashes.
We say as women, “Listen, I’ve already got ashes, I have burned every bridge, scorched every relationship, singed every dream. I got ashes.”
But this is a little different. You have to put a name to the ashes.
Name the attempts: controlling, neglecting, hiding.
Name the false gods: food, sex, clothes, rejection, religion, pride, beauty, relationships.
Name the hurts and disappointments: parents, girlfriends, work, weight, the man, dreams.
Then set them on fire. Burn them thoroughly until they are ashes. Burned up. Not recognizable. Burned up ambition. Burned up pride, burned up beauty, burned up self.
Once that is a pile of dust at your feet, then it becomes the alabaster box. Because there is nothing left but the pure nard, or fragrant oil. All that is left is a broken and contrite spirit. What an aroma. It is death to those who are perishing, those in the room with Jesus, but to those who are alive, it is the aroma of Christ. (2 Corinthians 2:15)
True worship smells like this.
Excerpt taken from Unhindered, Chapter 48
Let’s Get Real Here:
What’s in your ash heap? Are you willing to take the time and pain to do the ash work in order to get to the aroma?