We love because He first loved us - Six weeks in Haiti

By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.  But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him?  Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.  (1 John 3:16-18)

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.  Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.  In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.  In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.  Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. (1 John 4:7-11) 

So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us.  God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.  By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because he is so also are we in this world.
(1 John 4:15-17)

Prayers as I leave for Haiti

I'm about to leave the country to spend 6 weeks in Haiti!!!!  My game-plan is: I board a flight to Miami, FL in less than 6 hours to meet my teammates and start planning, praying, and casting vision for our time together in Haiti.  We'll fly together to Haiti with 45 students & staff. I'll be in-country June 22-July 11 with Team 2, then I'll return to Miami, FL to debrief with my team while simultaneously meeting my new team (Team 3, comprised of 65 students & staff) who I will return to Haiti with July 13-August 1.

Let's vote how out-of-my-comfort-zone (can't do this in my own strength) this trip is.
1) I've never been out of the country for this long before
2) I've never been to a third world country before
3) I only know one other person going on the trip with me
4) I've never lived in a tent on a roof before
These & soooo many other reasons are why I'm pumped to trust God in HUGE ways and why I'm posting prayer requests to ask for your partnership in prayer!

Please join me in praying... 

Team 1 is returning from Haiti tomorrow morning, and we will overlap during debriefing/briefing in Miami, FL for about 36 hours. Pray that we can gain wisdom and insight from the little time we spend with them. Pray that we will faithfully continue what Team 1 has started in so-much as their work glorified the Lord, and pray that we will correct and avoid any faithlessness or sin that tainted their work. Also, thank God that 45 students & staff have gone before us, serving the Lord and preparing the way for us!

Pray for Team 2 to come-together as one body and one family. We are comprised of 10 staff and 35 students from college campuses all around the country. Almost no one has met prior to this trip, so pray that our unity will be instant and strong. Pray against lies, isolation and loneliness as we spend three weeks in Haiti together.

Join me in my urgent prayers for wisdom within our team members, and especially for our team leaders. We do not have all the answers and plans formulated. We are going to serve, to rebuild the nation of Haiti with the Haitians. Pray that God will give us wisdom in assessing problems, pain and needs so that we can correctly seek progress and solutions. Pray that He will grant us wisdom in how/where to spend our days. Pray that we will seek God's direction and truth. Pray that we will be humble enough to admit every day that our worldly wisdom will not suffice in helping the nation of Haiti -- we are in desperate need of God's wisdom.

And for me personally, please pray that I will abide in Christ, walking in step with the Spirit and bearing the fruit of the Spirit. Pray that God will instantly convict me of walking in my flesh and empower me to walk in His Spirit.  Pray that God will be glorified through me; that He will get all the glory. Pray that I will not make this trip about me, but that every moment of it will be about loving God and loving others. Lastly, pray that I will encounter God in a powerful and transformational way.

Up-to-date prayer requests, stories, pictures, and videos from our team will be posted on the Hope for Haiti blog.

Enjoy following-us and thank you for your prayers.

I know the God I follow is bigger than disaster

Praying for Haiti every day.



I'll be on my way there in 24 days...

Where You Lead Me - I Will Follow

In God's perfect timing a door was opened for me to serve in Haiti this summer.  I'm very thankful that God's sovereignty steered me towards this door... a door which I never anticipated to find myself at.  However, as I was on the phone earlier (being told for the first time, 'we want to send you overseas') a song came to mind.  I absent-mindedly doodled the lyrics across a pink sheet of scrap paper, and then I looked down and realized what I had written....

Here's the song that ran through my head:

Where You Lead Me

What is life?

A thousand roads, a thousand ways

Why am I so afraid to move

I crossed the line

I'm stepping out so come what may

I give it all cause I'm drawn to You

As long as my heart is beating...

Where You lead me I will follow

Where You lead me I give my life away

Where You lead me I will follow

Forever and a day

Forever and a day

God closed every other door along my path, because He wanted to bring me to this one.  With my heart racing and soul singing I will follow Jesus to Haiti this summer.

Oh, and my heart has not changed for India and the 10/40 window, but that's what prayer and patience are for :)

Prayer and going to Haiti

A few weeks ago I read Wayne Grudem's chapter on Prayer from Sytematic Theology.  Since then I have meditated upon the power and importance of praying according to God's will.  Upon this topic Grudem points us to Jesus' example, "Jesus teaches us to pray, "Your will be done" (Matt 6:10), and he himself gives us an example, by praying in the garden of Gethsemane, "Nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will" (Matt 26:39)" (p 382).  Jesus' soul was troubled and sorrowful, even to death, driving him to fall on his face in prayer!  This is a posture of abject humility, from which Jesus lays his life before his Father in complete honesty and surrender - solidifying the earnestness of his words "Nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will."  Even in Jesus' most earnest and sorrowful prayers, he surrenders entirely to God's will as his ultimate request.

How should Jesus' example translate into my life?  Prayer is not just about getting what I want, but about making my requests known to God (my loving Father) while seeking that my desires align with His will.  We are told to delight ourselves in the Lord, and He will gives us the desires of our heart.  When our hearts desire what is godly and pure, He is able to bless us by fulling our requests, if that is His sovereign will.  Concerning God's response to our prayers Grudem writes:

Sometimes God will grant what we have asked.  Sometimes he will give us deeper understanding or change our hearts so that we are led to ask something differently.  Sometimes he will not grant our request at all but will simply indicate to us that we must submit to his will (see 2 Cor 12:9-10).

Concerning Grudem's last point, God, in His wisdom, at times will not grant our requests, teaching us to submit to his will.  In 2 Corinthians Paul repetitively pleaded with the Lord to remove a thorn from his flesh.  God's response was one of fatherly authority, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness."  To this, Paul responds, "Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weakness, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.  For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weakness, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities.  For when I am weak, then I am strong" (8-10).  Paul grew in a more accurate view of both himself and God as he learned submission and humility in light of God's supremacy.

For months I have prayed for an opportunity to go to Mumbai, India this summer.  I asked, and I kept on asking.  I followed God's word when He said, "And I tell you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you" (Luke 11:9).  I knocked, and I kept on knocking.  But God did not answer my requests by granting me what I had asked.  He did not grant my request at all.  Rather, He indicated that I must submit to His sovereignty and be willing to go anywhere.  So, now I'm left following Paul's example - being content with God's response, although it is not what I had hoped for.

It seems that God is leading me, not towards Mumbai, but towards Haiti this summer.  I feel ill-prepared, uncertain, and confused.   Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weakness, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.  The redemption of the world, and of a people to Himself, are God's plans and desires.  He cares and knows far more about His redemption than I'm capable of.  Thus, I can trust that His plans are far better than my own.  As Jesus exemplified, I also now say, "not as I will, but as you will."

Religious Affections and Haiti

In A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections Jonathan Edwards lays before his readers the biblical foundation of true religion: the affections. One’s affections are “no other than the more vigorous and sensible exercises of the inclination and the will of the soul.”

Edwards is not talking about one’s logical understanding or sudden passions, but the deepest enduring propensity of one’s heart. He makes clear the true religion is not found in fleeting emotions. Nor is it found in external change or performance. Rather, true religion lies in the affections of the soul. Edwards writes, “ That religion which God requires, and will accept, does not consist in weak, dull, and lifeless wishes, raising us but a little above a state of indifference: God, in His word, greatly insists upon it, that we be in good earnest, “fervent in spirit,” and our hearts vigorously engaged in religion.”

Edwards so powerful writes:

If we be not in good earnest in religion, and our wills are inclinations be not strongly exercises, we are nothing. The things of religion are so great, that there can be no suitableness in the exercises of our hearts to their nature and importance, unless they be lively and powerful. In nothing is vigor in the actings of our inclinations so requisite as in religion; and in nothing is lukewarmness so odious. True religion is evermore a powerful thing; and the power of it appears, in the first place in the inward exercises of it in the heart, where is the principle and original seat of it.

Religious affection originates in the heart, and once it is thus rooted it grows outward with great strength. Therefore, true religious affections will bring about the stirring-up of grief, compassion, and hope in response to the devastating earthquake in Haiti. And it is this inclination which governs us in our actions! Out of our grief we must be moved toward prayer. Our compassion must arouse us to give, send, go, or sacrifice. Furthermore, our hope frees us to trust in God’s great plan of redemption for every lost life and suffering child. These responses, without the deeper roots of religious affections will be beneficial, yet short-lived. Many of the aids and funds will run dry as history has demonstrated, but if we are driven by Christ’s love for lost and suffering people we will persevere in serving Haiti. We ought to be humbled by such a great responsibility and privilege to serve and comport the men, women, and children suffering in Haiti. Let us not grow weary or fainthearted while so many remain in need.