So as I'm gathering the last few things for my trip and thinking back on this semester I just want to say THANK YOU to everyone who has supported me in prayer and financially. You are the reason I can go.
I am learning much about trusting the character of God when I cannot see His hand in the circumstances. This semester was h.a.r.d. I realized I had to let it go (cue singing Frozen)...but really. I cannot micromanage my life. All I can do is be right here, right now, and walk in the way God has shown me... and trust that He will take care of the rest. And He does. I passed my first year of nursing school. I managed to keep my job and make it to every clinical despite not having a car for 3 months. In the middle of all the studying and stress, God poured his provision through friends and family and I counted the blessings and realized my mission trip was fully funded. God provided people to give me rides and helped my parents find me a car. Worrying about it did not make it better, and it did not make anything happen more quickly. It only took my eyes of Jesus to focus on my own insufficiency. I know I can't do it. My Jesus can. His character is unchanging, and He hears His children when they call.
Fear has no place among the Beloved.
Typhoon Haiyan hit the Philippines 6 months ago. The island I will be living on for the summer is next to the island that was hardest hit by the typhoon... but over here in America it is so easy for me and everyone else to be so detached from the thousands who died and the children without parents and the people without homes because I have a roof over my head and my next meal is simply a matter of what I choose to eat. I do not know what their life looks like. I cannot pretend to understand how it feels to starve, and watch your family die around you and scrounge for food in the trash. But I want to help, I want to offer hope because I am no different from them and the reason I have more is so that I might give it away and so my life might be spent in the pouring out of Jesus. He is the only good in me that I have to offer.
Biblical compassion is characterized by action.
So I am ready to board that plane and have my life come tumbling down around me because I know I will be broken by what I see these next few months. And this is good.
I want to learn to pray like Nehemiah ... he heard about the plight of the Jews and "As soon as I heard these words I sat down and wept and mourned for days, and I continued fasting and praying before the God of heaven..." (Nehemiah 1:4). Nehemiah had a life far removed from the troubles of the Jews, yet as soon as he heard of their troubles he was on his knees before God in prayer for them. He then used his position, as cupbearer to the king, to obtain the permission and supplies to go help. He trusted in the hand of God, went to Jerusalem, saw the impossible that God was telling him to do (rebuild the whole wall? Really God? You can't be serious....? It's destroyed! That will take years. I'm only one person...<<< that's what I imagine Nehemiah was thinking)... oh but Nehemiah trusted the character of God! He inspected the walls, recognized the extent of the damage, and then gathered the people, "You see the trouble we are in [we---Nehemiah becomes one with the people, taking their struggles upon himself], how Jerusalem lies in ruins with its gates burned. Come, let us build the wall of Jerusalem that we may no longer suffer derision. And I told them of the hand of my God that had been upon me for good..." (2:17-18)
He told them of God's faithfulness in getting him to that point, so that they might join him in trusting the character of God to make a way for this seemingly impossible task of rebuilding the wall. Chapter 2 ends with Nehemiah proclaiming to those who doubt, "The God of heaven will make us prosper, and we his servants will arise and build..."
Trust the character of God, even in the face of the "impossible" because God can rebuild the broken.
The Creator can bring life from the rubble.
My Jesus can take a comfortable worry-prone stubborn daughter and make her a vessel of His glory to bring hope to the nations.
The hand of my God has been upon me for good, and He isn't finished yet.
Thank you for your prayers! Please continue to pray for unity for our team, safe and complication-free travel, open doors in the Philippines, and for His light to break down walls, and rebuild the broken.
I am thankful for you!
Much love!
Amanda
