Our team all met in Beijing for the first time all from different states and many different backgrounds. It’s was a beautiful thing to see and remember what Love can do to bring people together. Not just our team, but also us with the staff at Shepherd's Field. Cultural and doctrinal
differences are put aside. Walls fall down. Suddenly some things don't
seem as important when the unconditional love of the Father unites us and
drives us to the world. With eternity in view, personal preference is silly.
Jesus is always calling us deeper
into His love...And when we keep responding with a yes, sometimes He takes us
to places out of routine like China, so we can see how colorful and crazy His
love is. This trip was just another step of going "further up and further in", as C.S. Lewis put it.
~
Here is one personal example from
this trip:
She was lying there on the floor
of the Peace House, tears sitting on her cheeks; she groaned softly. I held her
for almost two hours. They told me she had West Syndrome causing severe mental delay and was blind and deaf.
She is Naomi. It means "My delight". Wow.
God spoke two main things to me: He said her identity is being the one in whom God delights. And her
ministry...listen: is being delighted in. I believe this: Her Father loved her so much to give
her specialties that subject her to total dependence to proclaim His delight in
her. Because that's who He is. I experience His delight in me because of her.
~
"The best and most beautiful
things in the world cannot be seen or even touched...they must be felt with the
heart", Helen Keller
~
Somehow in her only ability to
receive God's love, she gives it away; her receiving His love is so utterly not
in her control that it spills over and over like a river of life.
I think that is how our ministry
functions too. Jesus' has a high command: that we love one another as he loves
us. It's only possible because he loves us.
It would be a good practice to
hold children more often. We need to let our hearts sit down and be loved and
delighted in.
A theologian was asked what the most profound statement in the
universe was, he replied, "Jesus loves me".
We love, because He loves us
first. That's the only way it works.
The Greek word "stego" means love bears all things like a
roof. Love believes all things and hopes
all things. Love endures all things. Love has no reservations. It doesn't get
it's worth on reciprocation. It's never wasted. Love is no longer love when there is an agenda.
~
Elizabeth Elliot always said when
you don't know what to do, just do the next thing. The next thing often is a
necessity of life like laundry or going to the grocery store; most of the time
in those things we have no expectations of God doing big things and that makes
them perfect Spirit Space.
~
Because we are loved, all those
things should be done in love. Jesus gave the command to love one another after
washing feet, climbing up mountains, kicking down walls, tearing down lies,
bearing all sin, and raising all to freedom. I don't think anyone else can tell
us when it is "appropriate" to love, do you?
Jesus' love is reckless and extravagant. He
extends a hand and asks us to dance with Him. We've been told we must take up
our sword and fight for love, but Jesus says love has won for us. Let's let out
the sails of our heart, and let His love fill them and lead us out to green
pastures; there love and fear cannot abide even in the midst of pain in this
world. He promised that when we arrive home, we will see his face and no one
will take away our joy (John 16:22).
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