I felt God saying that the work was his before I got there and it will be his long after I’ve left. God’s kingdom coming to Mokkattam wasn’t contingent upon my presence there. Heartbroken, I committed the work back to him. In faith, I committed the work back to him. I am not the savior. Nor am I the solution. God alone is. And I can trust him.
Growth
#growth
Since so much of my life has been invested in travel, much of it international, I’ve observed something about those of us who possess the power, privilege, and money to travel overseas; sometimes we end up treating the world like a product to be consumed.
Back at the end of March, we mailed out a print publication called Testify to all Urbana 15 participants. While we don’t have anymore Testify’s in print, we have been we publishing posts from Testify here on urbana.org. Here they are all gathered together for your reading pleasure.
What if we don’t really love the Bible because we don’t really know the Bible? Or rather, what if the Bible we know isn’t what the Bible was inspired to be?
God is not seeking so much to use us as to love us. Our participation in his work comes out of his love for us, not the other way around. If we really want to be a part of God’s work we must first linger in his love for us in the present.
There’s quite a bit out there regarding short-term missions, including quite a bit right here on this blog. Here are the best posts:
In John 13, Jesus commands his disciples: “Love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (verses 34-35 ESV). This passage stirs me each time I read it because it does not simply refer to the Christians we see face to face; it includes those who are persecuted, those whom we have not met. The way we love those whom we have not seen is through prayer.
You have been fearfully and wonderfully made (Psalm 139; Genesis 1:26). But you have not been made in a vacuum. Whether or not you’re aware of it, who you are is intricately and uniquely linked to the communities you’ve been a part of (your family, your church, etc.). The worship style that resonates with you most deeply—your worship story—comes out of these communities.
We wrap everything we’re afraid of losing in layers and layers of bubble wrap and overlook the thing which we ought to be afraid of—namely, suffocating in all that bubble wrap! All of our risk-averse padding has immobilized us; we’re choking in our protective gear.
It had been a while since I read the Declaration of Independence, so I went back and read it again. If I had ever learned that our Declaration of Independence refers to Native Americans as “merciless Indian Savages,” I had forgotten it. As a White American, it’s too easy for me to have selective amnesia.
Pagination
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