Love is Never in Vain

This past week, I traveled to New York City with 9 fellow Hopesters and one fantastic admissions rep for what we call a spring break immersion trip.  It's basically a mission trip with a more unique title.  If I've seen you in person I've given you a basic rundown of the big events, but this is more of what I've been thinking about since we got back.

It's usually what happens, but God so exceeded my expectations on this trip.  I'm a second semester senior.  I have to confess that investing in new relationships really isn't the first thing on my mind right now.  I was also the only upperclassman on the trip, which made me feel a little disconnected especially in the first couple days.  However, I was committed to being there and excited to get to know everyone, knowing that lots can happen even in a short time, but still not sure where I really fit.  Here's the problem though- I was shutting off my heart to what God could be doing during the week.

Some incredible things happened within those on my team that week, and those are probably what's most important to me looking back, and what gives me the deepest joy.  Friends who have a deeper desire to know and follow Jesus.  There is literally nothing better than that to me, because knowing Jesus is the best thing there is!  I think we all realized to some degree that God's world is a whole lot bigger than Holland, Michigan and that people are people no matter where they've been or what they've done.  Honesty is a big deal- whether it is in telling life stories, or just in the way we live.  Perfection is a lie, and striving towards it is pointless and impossible.  We all learned these lessons and many more.  But its now that I'm back in my own life that I'm realizing what God did in my own heart.

I don't have the easiest time letting people in, really letting them in.  One of my prayers this entire school is that my heart of stone would be replaced with a heart of flesh (Ezekiel 36:26).  I don't want to say goodbye because I don't want it to hurt.  It's easy to project painful past experiences onto the present.  I can have a really awesome relationship with someone but never let them into the deepest part of my heart.  I'm definitely not saying that every relationship is going to be super deep and meaningful because that would just be impossible.  What I am saying is that while it feels like I'm protecting myself by going into relationships with walls up, it really hurts me and makes me feel more disconnected in the long run.

We shared our life stories each night.  Incredible.  Tears in my eyes and jaw on the floor amazing people that God put together on this team.   I saw friendships form over shared pasts, I saw the freedom that comes from speaking things aloud, I see God's hand over each person in a unique way.  We spent our days together, sorting cans, working on a house, riding in the van, serving meals to the hungry, exploring one of my most favorite cities in the whole world, and laughing with and at each other.  Oh did we laugh.  The more time went on, the more the hardness in my heart seemed to chip away.

 I had thought that I had nothing left.  I knew the words God had spoken earlier in the semester: "God, how am I going to have the energy for this, how am I going to do this?"  "Baby girl, you're gonna do it with me."  Woah.  God did not forsake this promise in the slightest.  The growth and impact that I saw happen within all of us and the divine encounters that we had exceeded my wildest expectations for what the trip could be.  Because that's what happens when God does His thing.  Gratitude.  You guys, He's just that good!  He redeems and saves people and uses them to bring more of His glory to earth.  I'm in awe that I even get to be a tiny part of it, because I certainly don't deserve to be.

You've probably guessed where this story goes by now.  Heart of stone?  Shattered.  Gone.  Do I regret letting people in and loving them fiercely?  No.  Funnily enough, despite all of my fears and constructs, I don't.  I don't regret it at all.  All of the stress, anxiety, and planning that went into the trip?  Worth it.  Not only were my fears released but the anxieties that I was praying into were the prayers that were straight up ANSWERED.  Wow, God!  God calls us to love people.  I know for me, that the more time I spend with people, the more I love them. The more I pray for them, the more I receive God's heart for them.  I see them as incredibly made exactly as God wanted them to be.  How does all of this feel?  Joy.  Pure joy.  Loving people is never a bad idea.  It's hard and heartbreaking but its always worth it.  It's what we're made to do.

To my sweet team.  You impacted  me without even knowing it this week.  Thanks for loving so fiercely, me and most of all the people we met.  Thanks for being raw and honest and messy and beautiful with your stories, for seeking more of Jesus through them.  Thanks be most of all to God, for breaking my heart of stone and letting me experience Your joy this spring break!

To Bring Hope and Dignity to His Daughters

So I'm moving to Thailand.  I'll be working with NightLight International Bangkok, ministering to women working in prostitution.  I could be involved in a variety of activities, from doing outreach in the red light district in the evenings, to caring for children, helping with administrative tasks, working in the coffee shop (yes please!), or whatever else will be most beneficial to the ministry.  I'll also be learning Thai.  I'm going through an organization called Impact School of Missions, so I'll have training with a cohort of interns my first month in Bangkok though we will be placed in different ministries.  I'll be headed over in January 2015, and I'll be there for about a year.

How did I get here?  Why am I going?

Jesus.

That's the shortest answer that I can give.  Jesus suffered mightily on behalf of the sins of all humanity, because He LOVES US SO MUCH.  His love is freely given though it is undeserved.  His grace inspite of our sin is abundant.  Claiming to be a follower of Jesus means that I am willing to give my life in whatever way God asks me to.  It means that everyone deserves to know His name and what He did.  It means that since my heart beats for Him, it also beats for justice for the enslaved and healing for the broken.

The longer story of why I'm moving to Thailand for a year began in my freshman year of high school when I read Sold by Patricia McCormick.  It's written from the perspective of a young girl trapped in a brothel, sold for sex many times a day.  It was my first exposure to the existence of such atrocities and it blew my mind that a girl could be abused in such a way.  Not every child has the gift of this kind of innocence.  I read more books and learned more and got older.  Stopping human trafficking is something I've been passionate about for awhile.

I went to the Urbana conference a year and a half ago.  17,000 college age students gathering together to learn about missions, God's heart for the nations, and to worship.  It was a life changing experience.  There's a night there where we stood up if we were hearing God's call to long term missions in some way, and filled out a small card with whatever our commitment was.  The speaker, after telling her own incredible story of witnessing to the Gospel in one of the most challenging places on earth, was talking about how the Light of the Gospel of Jesus needs to shine in the darkest of places on earth.  In my mind, I saw eyes- dead and without hope.  I saw a red light, shining in the darkness.  I wrote on my card "to bring hope and dignity to His daughters."  I checked that I would go into missions long term.  And there you have it.  Other moments I recall up to this point were hearing the song "Reckless" by Jeremy Camp at a concert over the summer, a late 4am night spent pacing my house in November and realizing that I would be applying to NightLight, the settling of the knowledge that the answer to my "after college questions" involved bringing light to women who have been undignified and abused.  Several people in my life recently have been set free from the effects of sexual sin, whether it be pornography addiction or childhood abuse.  We are learning how interrelated all of these issues are, such as trafficking and pornography, and just how deep this kind of brokenness can run.  Their perseverance and continual claim that Christ is victor, along with the pain that I feel with them for what has happened to them, has inspired me to combat this evil in whatever way I can.

As I talked to friends, family, and wise mentors about NightLight, I have not had a single person tell me that they thought it was a bad idea.  God uses His people all the time.  A wise teaching that I recently heard was that the way to discern things is through the Word of God, the Spirit of God and the people of God.  The Word has countless mentions sharing the Gospel with those who do not yet know it, going to the nations, shining light, and a host of other commands that directly relate to my experience.  This verse is a prophecy from Isaiah that was made about Jesus: "The Spirit of the sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.  He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives, and release from the darkness for prisoners" (Isaiah 61:1).  This is what Jesus is in the business of doing.  As far as discerning from the Spirit, I prayed and prayed.  I stopped praying for direct revelation and simply started praying that I would make the right choice and that God would put me where He wanted me.  I've been terrified at the thought of what lays ahead, yet I've never had the feeling that I was making the wrong choice.  I have to say, I think I'm three for three on this one.

This is about Jesus, not about me.  I want to see Him glorified in the time and place and with the people that He's going to be placing with me.  This isn't going to be a vacation.  I don't (yet) speak an ounce of Thai.  I don't know how to relate to someone who has been violated and abused for the profit of others every night for years.  I don't know what I would do if I came into contact with someone who could do these things to another human.  I don't know how I'm going to raise the funds that I need to be there.  I'm almost tripling the amount of time I've been away from home at any one time before.  I don't know how I'm going to process the darkness and pain that I'm going to work so closely to.

There's one answer: Jesus.  It's for Him and in Him and through Him that I step out into this next great unknown, away for the last time from this place called Hope, into a life that I can't yet imagine.  I am spectacularly unqualified for what I'm about to do, yet strength comes for the Lord.  These women deserve to know Him and be set free from their captivity, they deserve to know that they are fierce daughters of the Most High God, that He has called them by name, that His heart breaks for the evil that has been done to them, that He loves them pure and blameless, and that He wants them to know Him as Lord.  They deserve hope and dignity.

"The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it." -John 1:5

"There is no pit that God's love is not deeper still." -Corrie ten Boom

http://nightlightinternational.com/bangkok/
https://www.facebook.com/NightLightInternational

How He Loves

I remember a moment, three and a half years ago.  It was my fourth whole day at Hope College, at the annual favorite tradition, Groovin in the Grove.  Two straight hours of chapel band in the pine grove.  Hundreds of classmates giving glory to God.  I didn't know most of the songs we sang at the time, but "How He Loves" has long been one of my favorites.  It hit me in that moment, tentatively standing at the back of the crowd with my new roommate, looking out over the crowd, some with hands raised, all singing out.  These are my classmates.  I get to call this place home, go to school here, where so many people around me love Jesus like I do.  It was a new experience at that time, and it was so beautiful.  In a haze of lost and confused and what did I just do, God brought peace through that moment.

Fast forward, from semester one to semester eight.  After worship.  "How He Loves."  Everyone in the band stopped singing loud so I just heard the crowd behind me.  I thought of that moment freshmen year, when everything was so new that I didn't even have a context for it.  However, I knew that God would not forsake me and that He brought me to Hope beyond the shadow of a doubt.  I know that will be true of the next season.  There's something so powerful about declaring truth together.  Maybe we should do it more often.

I still love this song because it's so simple, yet so profound.  The God of the universe loves us, individually, by name, as His kids.  It's radical and beautiful.  I'm stepping into another season now, and its really important that I receive the love of the Father.  It's the response to His radical love that I live out each day of my life.

Especially in the big transitions, its important to seek more of who God is and to celebrate Him and the things that He does.  It's glitter snow and praying with friends and learning guitar and singing in community and Hudsonville Turtle Pecan ice cream during the Oscars. 

These gifts are not essential to the love the Father, and receiving them or not doesn't mean that someone is more or less loved by Him or that they have or haven't done (or not done) anything to deserve them.  It's just a tiny snapshot of the good things that come from Him, because He is goodness and He is the only way.