Witnesses

My house church has prayer every Thursday night. Basically, we get together and we spend time focusing on a specific topic or idea that we feel like the Lord has brought to mind or is working on with our community. Some of the prayer happens through singing and music and some happens through more traditional praying. Some pray outloud and some pray silently, interceding on behalf of others or the community or even themselves, just using the space provided to get really intimate with the Lord.

This past Thursday during prayer I felt really led to Hebrews 11, a chapter that I have read over and over. But it was one of those experiences of reading something I have read before but reading it like I had never read it before. FAITH, the chapter starts out is about understanding and relying on what is not visible. That which cannot be seen. And banking your whole life on that. And we know about other people who have done that, totally put it all on the line for something that was not visible.

They were people did things like: being taken up to be with the Lord without having to die; building a huge boat before there was even a HINT of rain; leaving their country without knowing where they going; living like strangers in foreign countries; putting their son in a basket down a river; marching around city walls seven days and blowing the trumpets on the last day to make them fall down! And as if these things were not crazy enough (please re-read that list if you are not struck with the wierd things God ask his people to do) He goes on to say that they were mistreated, tortured, jeered, flogged, chained, put in prison, stoned, sawed in two and put to death by the sword. They went about in sheepskins, goatskins, despised, persecuted and mistreated and THE WORLD WAS NOT WORTHY OF THEM!

You know what else he says in Hebrews 11? "All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance. And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had the opportunity to return. Instead they were longing for a better country -- a heavenly one. Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them."

Wow, I want to be in that place. A longing so deep within me for a better country that I will do whatever wierd things that God asks of me or things that make me seem foolish to this world. I want to be in that place where God is not ashamed to be called my God! I want to gain that perspective of living by faith in the promises that have been given to me, and going after it whole heartedly no matter how crazy it may look.

I have often wondered what I might think if some of these great "witnesses" that we are presented in Hebrews. I pray that God continues to tenderize my heart to His methods of spreading His Kingdom -- methods that are clearly beyond my understanding.

Perfect Plan Thwarted

After my post yesterday about my determination in using my Frequent Flyer miles, I got a call from American Airlines. They had to make a slight "adjustment" to my schedule. Well, they have cancelled one entire flight out of Tegucigalpa.

No worries, I will still make it home, just have to spend the night in Dallas on the way home too...probably sleeping in the terminal.

My determination has not been stalled even though my nearly perfect flight has faltered a little. Flying with me is always an interesting experience anyway. Stay tuned for the aviation adeventures of this particular journey.

Frequent Flyer Miles Take Two

Last summer I made my first attempt to redeem my frequent flyer miles. After years of loyalty to American Airlines I have accumated literally thousands of frequent flyer miles which have never been used. But when I ended up not being able to go on the planned trip to San Diego (I didn't actually lose those miles, I just had to PAY MONEY to keep them!) I was really sad and made a committment that this would be the year that I would use some of my miles.

So last December I set out with a mission. To use my miles on American to fly to Honduras. Now, anyone who has ever gone to Honduras from Oklahoma City (or read my blog entries about flying there in general) knows that this is no easy task. It is particularly difficult on American due to their routing through Miami. So I got on the job of finding a Frequent Flyer ticket that would take me from OKC to TGU direct flight. Ha. Usually these flights require you to spend the night in the Miami or Atlanta airport or somewhere even more random...like Kentucky. Anyway, I started in December and finally found a flight in April that would take me from OKC to DFW to Miami to TGU and require an overnight stop in Dallas on the way but would be a direct flight home! All for 30,000 miles and $25. A pretty good deal. So, I booked it.

Of course, all of that happened before my current housing crisis, which now means I will probably want to be closing on a house April 30. But nothing is stopping me from using this practically perfect ticket to Honduras, where Amber and I are taking her boys and Mariela to the beach. And where I will go up to El Magote and visit with the folks up there that I love. And where I will spend time with Cony, Guillermo, Jeny, Maritza and their kids. And eating at El Patio and riding in the bed of Amber's truck! I LOVE HONDURAS. Maybe this will be year I don't come home.

So thank you American Airlines for finally, finally, coming through on the frequent flyer miles. I am getting on that plane on April 24th. My loyalty to your company over all these years and flights to Japan (twice), Europe (twice), San Fransisco, Toronto, Honduras (at least once or twice on American), Australia (on Quantas), Kenya (on British), and countless other place, as well as my CREDIT CARD which gained me who knows how many miles over the past few years, well all that has more than earned me this trip.

It is an illusion that it is free really.

But I can't wait to see her:

I Love These Kids

We took the Capitol Hill kids to LTC (Leadership Training for Christ) this weekend in Dallas. It was a great (but tiring) trip. The kids did amazing in their events and I was especially proud of their gold medal in drama! We also had some girls that worked really hard on pre-convention events and got golds in poetry, essay and even one who memorized 100 verses! She is awesome. Well, all of our kids are. I was reminded this weekend how much I love these kids and just how really special they are. Not only did they just act nice, but they pitched in and helped whenever needed and just really showed that their LIVES and HEARTS have been impacted by Christ.

Some of my favorite pictures:

Part of our Drama Group. Headed For Hollywood.

I love these girls. They were being silly and taking lots of pictures in the park.

Me and my girls.

Deep Thinkers

Making me a fool

I saw this on Kate's blog:

She recounts a story of John Wimber, the founder of the Vineyard Church movement seeing this sign one day. Kate also recounts her own personal story of learning to be a fool for Christ! I love this and when I read it, it really, really spoke to me.

I feel that this is a place God has had me in the past few months. You know, I lived most of my Christian life in that lukewarm "Laodicean" Christianity. Even when I was doing great "works" for Jesus, my heart just wasn't there. I didn't know God intimately. I was empty on the inside. And honestly that showed in lots of areas of my life. I was working for God out of duty and obligation and a sense of right and wrong. And God is good and he blessed me and he blessed other through the things I did during that period of my life. But I was not serving out of the abundance of my faith.

And so lately, God has been teaching me that knowing HIM is about knowing nothing but HIM! That when Paul said "God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise" he meant it. We sometimes have to look like fools for Christ in order to be completely surrendered.

I used to depend on my own self completely, my own power, my own money, my own abilities. I am not even sure what I needed faith for at all. My faith was in myself. Another friend pointed out that when Peter and John healed the cripped man at the gate called Beautiful, Peter was able to say, "Silver and gold I do not have, but what I have I give you." And he gave him Jesus! Healing in Jesus' name! And I realized that when my friend pointed that out that I couldn't say that, because all I could give was what I had. And what I had was stuff and worldly knowledge. And I will give out of the abundance of what I have.

So God has taken me on this journey of teaching me that I am going to have look foolish to learn about some real FAITH. That sometimes he is asking me to say and do things that might make people look at my funny or even think that I am crazy. And sometimes I may feel crazy. But right now, all I am hanging onto is Jesus.

The Flood Zone

Well, I guess I was a little over-confident when I said I had bought a house. What I meant was I had found a house and my offer had been accepted. Unfortunately I found out a few days ago that my beloved house is right in the middle of a FEMA flood zone. You know what that means...dreaded flood insurance and more difficulty with resale. It also means that my beloved house is destined to become someone else's beloved house.

I should have guessed about the flood zone seeing as how my house is located on a stunning beach and all.

What am I going to do now? Well...I have no idea. For a few minutes I thought it might involve putting everything in storage and moving home. As in to my parent's home. Then I thought I might buy this other house until I learned that the bricks might be falling off...great. So, at the moment I am staying in my dear old apartment that is already packed up until the Lord gives more direction.

FEMA, FEMA, go away, come again some other day (like come back for real when we have a natural disaster like a bad ice storm and really help us this time but stop zoning random parts of Oklahoma City flood zones).

Taking a Hit

A while back I read a book I really liked. It was one of those books I had to wait expectantly for from the library, but it was well worth the wait. Sudhir Vankatesh, a sociologist at Colombia University spent literally years doing a special type of writing called ethnography. It basically is the idea of writing about people or people by doing actual fieldwork. In other words, instead of traditional social research which sends out questionares and has them answered this type of social research goes into the environment and studies the people/people groups in a more holistic manner. Basically.

Anyway, Vankatesh did this for YEARS in a really rough Chicago housing project a recently published a book called Gang Leader for a Day. He actually did it by basically living in that housing project, very fascinating.

I highly recommed it. I have spent the past 10 years in and around housing projects in Oklahoma City (which I am positive do not hold a candle to the former projects in Chicago which have since been torn down). But I found this book absolutely gut wrenching and a real in-my-face check about what is actually happening to thousands of families today. Vankatesh does not glorify or glamarize what is going on in the housing projects or within the gangs, at least of Chicago.

So, I recently came across another piece of research (a working paper, not completed yet) that Vankatesh and economist Steven Levitt are working on regarding prostitution and found it equally as fascinating. Vankatesh and Levitt were able to hire tracker (mostly former prostitutes) to gather information about wages, safety, etc. on prostitution in three separate Chicago neighborhoods. What they found was fascinating. It is not pretty, it is ugly. It is bad. It is no wonder our country is in trouble. And it is dangerous.

I love being a social worker. I love being part of seeing people's lives change and helping them figure out how to make those changes. These two pieces of work fascinate me because I have had glimpses into these worlds and understand these issues on a broader scale is really important. I won't even start on the spiritual implications...Maybe someday I will be a sociologist.

In other news, I do still have a black eye. I had not yet made it public on this blog, but it is true. That is the hit I am referring to. Not to worry, it is all related to a baby and a roll of a duct tape and I won't go into it here, but for all interested in seeing my first (and hopefully only) nasty black eye (warning this picture is really scary)...

Lightening Up

So, at the beginning of this year I felt a really strong calling that this would be a year where I would stop relying on material stuff! And in that idea I stopped shopping. I mean, kind of. I stopped buying stuff I didn't really need. By this I mean I stopped going to buy clothes, shoes, purses, new face washes, lotions, candles, socks, mittens, photo albums, useless gadgets I don't know how to use and even books (mostly). I did make one big purchase (um...my home..but so far it hasn't really cost me that much and the bank still really owns it so it doesn't count, okay? Plus this home thing was about obedience.).

Granted I have been at this only two months, but I am serious about this. When God says do something, I mean, you do it! So let me share what has happened in my life over the past two months.

I used to frequent:

My last official "shopping" trip was to the Gap, on December 21, 2007. I will not forget it. It was actually one of the Outlet stores in Texas. Oh, it was a good trip. Lots of Gap clothes for oh so cheap. I didn't know at the time that it would be my last time to buy clothes for so long and it is probably a good thing or I would have spent way more money. I was recently tempted by a Gap coupon that came in the mail. I got it out of my mailbox, looked at it, my mouth watered and I RIPPED IT UP and threw it away before my car could even start to drive in the direction of the mall!

But even more often than the Gap, I could be found at:

Oh, how wonderful did my trips to Target seem. Baskets full of organic goodies and cute clothes and high quality store brand items. How can that even be, high quality store brands? But somehow it is, buying the Target brand is somehow actually cool. I really can't even hardly step foot into Target. It is just a bad deal for me. I just stick with Wal-Mart. Much less temptation, get in, get out (hopefully alive) and don't worry at all about looking cool. That cannot happen in Wal-Mart.

You know, my life has changed a lot. The temptation really isn't that great. Well the past few days have been kind of hard as the weather has gotten warmer and I bleached a favorite shirt and had the urge to "go replace it" with a new one. But God has been so good to me! I have some new favorite places to spend time.

Like:

Yes! The Library! I found out that I don't have to buy books because I can get most of them for FREE at the library. And it is even really cool when I have to put my name on the waiting list for a book I really want because then the anticipation builds and I wait for the email to come telling me that the book is ready and waiting for me at the lovely downtown library. Which, by the way, is a dream come true for those who love to read. And the last time I ran into a book that the public library didn't have I got it from the OU Interlibrary Loan System! It actually came from OSU. I was pretty darn proud of myself.

And then of course there is my new favorite:

The Prayer Room! I love to be there in person or through the internet! I love that I have learned about entering in with God in really intimate ways all the time, everywhere I am at. I love that I am not spending my time doing things to please myself but that I totally seeking after something bigger than me! I love it! It is raw and sometimes it doesn't work out very well and sometimes it kind of hurts or I really want to go to the Gap, but I remember that is something bigger. Those shopping trips just provide momentary satisfaction and my heart is desiring something greater. To go deep, to learn the deep things of God and to be satisfied deeply with God.

The reason I stopped buying things wasn't because buying things was bad. For some poeple it isn't bad at all. It was because for me, my whole world revolved around the purchasing of things. And when I stopped that, things changed a lot. It hard to describe with words but all I can say is that when we do the hard things that God is asking us to do, HE REALLY BLESSES US!