God making his home with us

I once read a book by Max Lucado called, "God came near" what an amazing book. It talked about how God came near to us through Christ and his sacrifice for our sins. It was Christ who made it all possible for God to come near to us. Just the other day I was reading my daily scripture and it had this verse, "All who love me will do what I say. My Father will love them, and we will come and make our home with each of them" John 14:23. That last part really made me take a long hard look at my relationship with the holy trinity and myself. They will come and make their home with us. Think about that for a moment. The creator of the universe coming to make his home with you. This seems to have stood out to me in a large and personal way. God showing up at your door with his bag and saying, "can I come and live with you. Do day to day life with you?" Wow! That is just amazing. (As I smile real big writing this.) Tonight, as I remembered this scripture and seeing the sin within me, I wanted to put up this barricade over the door of my heart so that God would not want to come to knock on my door. How sad is that? Peter after Jesus had instructed him to cast his nets out one more time at the end of a long hard fruitless day and Peter obliged Jesus and does just that. He ends up calling other boats over to help with the catch because there had been so many fish. Peter then looks up at Jesus and says, "Away from me Lord, I am a sinful man" I believe we all may have felt or said just those words to Jesus at one time or another. But tonight, God made himself known to me. He really came into my office where I went to pray and do my nightly devotions and he made himself known to me. I was in awe of his presence. I took down every thorny bush, every nailed up cross board, and any other object to ward God away from the door of my heart and invited him in. He never accused me of any sin that was committed today. He forgave me of that sin as I confessed them to him, I was so thankful that he came by and sat at my devotion table and had spiritual dinner with me. He loved on me and shared with me his heart of compassion, then to top it all off, my wife, my gift from God came and joined me and just sat beside me during this time. My day ended so well before I went off to bed. What a great day to have the creator of the universe come and make his home with me. What about you? What things have you been without peace in or felt abandoned from? Maybe you have felt the way I have felt and wanted to put up a barricade over your heart hoping that God would not come and want to be invited in because you have some type of sin in your heart. It is worth taking that barricade down and letting him in. It is all worth it. 

Covenant Relationship

I wanted to share with you something a little bit personal, but I feel that it is important that I do because there maybe others going through the same thing that I had faced until yesterday. It all started while I was reading and spending time with God in my devotion. In this devotion was God's word reminding me of the covenant relationship I have with him through his son's blood and how that blood has made me righteous in Christ. 

While I was reading this, there were these thoughts telling me that, "it may be for others, but not for you. You do not have this relationship with God." At the end of my devotion it has a prayer and then it asked, "What is God saying to you?" I sat there for a moment and then I felt God begin to speak to me concerning these thoughts that I had during my meditation time with him. He said to me, "Those thoughts you are thinking are not my thoughts, nor have I given them to you. Know this; You are my son and I love you so very much. I will swoop down out of heaven and protect you. Lean not on your own understanding, but in all of your ways acknowledge me. I love you son."

At that moment it clicked. Like a light switch. God loves me like his own son because he adopted me through the sacrifice of his son. He has made a covenant with me to be not only God to me, but Father. Jesus told Mary after he had risen from the grave in John 20:17 that he was going to his father and her father, and to his God and her God.

You may be struggling with the same thing. Having the same thoughts that says that you are not in covenant with God or that God does not forgive you or love you. I am telling you, those thoughts are not God's thoughts and neither did he give them to you. It is Christ Jesus and his sacrifice that you are in a father-son covenant with the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Jesus our beloved savior.

Love without pain

Just the other day I went to the store and bought my wife a pink rose for her birthday, something that simply said, "I love you!" Later I put the it in a vase with water and I noticed that the rose stem did not have any thorns on it, being in landscaping for the past eight years on and off I have never seen a rose bush grow without thorns on them. How nice it was to behold this beauty and not get pricked in the finger by a thorn, to be able to handle it with no threat of pain. This got me thinking about how our society has viewed relationships. It seems that people in our society wants to go into their relationships with no threat of pain from the thorns that comes with it. If they see any sign of something that is going to cause them pain, they want to back out and run the other way.

Would it not be nice to pick out love as though we were going to pick out a rose from a floral shop that had no threat of being hurt?!?! But love is going to hurt some times. Why? Cause we are human and we are fallen. Just as it says in Romans 3:23 "We all have sinned, and we all have fallen short of the glory of God!" God loves us with an unconditional love that never lashes out at us or makes us feel any less than what we are. He loves us and fills us with His prefect love. The good thing is that we will one day love like this too. When Christ returns to get His bride the church that He is making spotless with His blood. It is then we will take off this imperfection and put on perfection.

So as we pass by the roses in the floral shop knowing that they will not prick us when we pick them, just remember that the ones on the bushes are and there are band-aids to cover the wound up, just as forgiveness is the band-aid for the love that hurts sometimes. I was told to go and read the love chapter in the bible 1 Corinthians 13 about what does love look like and there it is, vs 5, "it keeps no records of wrongs!"

Something to think about...

Greetings friends,
I know it has been a while since I have been on here and posted any blogs. A lot has happened since my last post of me raising my funds to go to Ethiopia. Sadly I was not able to go, but as I always say, God has a plan.
Since then I was not able to reach the funds by my deadline a week later USCIS (United States Citizens Immigration Services) had approved our K1 fiance visa here in the United States. This meant that Hanna my beautiful wonderful fiance would be granted an interview for her visa at the U.S Embassy in Ethiopia. She got her packet and then told her that her interview would be on January 12th. A long time from October. Well today is January 16th and the interview has happened. Before I tell you the results of that interview, we had prepared and made sure we had everything she needed for the interview. I called my Congressman's office and had been speaking with John Wood. He had been awesome on giving me advise on what to do and not to do.

He had sent an email to the US consulate in Ethiopia that would be handling our case. On top of this we had been preparing for her interview. I went through and picked out the emails from the past year, my phone bills along with a copy of my calling card with the number I used and so much more. She had a stack of papers to take to the interview with her. When I say a stack of papers I mean a stack of them. The day before I pulled up questions that they would ask her and we spent an hour going over them making sure she had all of the answers for the questions. It was all in God's hands from then. She told me that she wished I was going to go with her cause then the consulate would be nice to her since she told me that they normally were rude with the Ethiopians. So I began to pray that God's kindness would be on the consulate and that God's confidence would be on Hanna. I spent the day praying and fasting for her and the interview.

Well at 3 am Thursday morning I got a call from my beautiful bride to be. She told me they didn't give her the visa. My heart just sunk and I began to question why, then she told me with a very excited voice they did give her the visa. I stopped her then and we just began to pray a prayer of thanksgiving. She told me afterwards that the consulate was very sweet and kind to her. Oh God you are so good. You answered my prayer and showed us favor. She told me how the interview went and she said she went into the interview with all of the paperwork ready to give it to her the consulate. The consulate was going over the application that I had sent in here, the U.S. She asked her one question that followed by another question and it was, "What does your fiance do in his spare time?" with no hesitation she said the answer with confidence, "He coaches!" Her next question was, "What does he coach?" and again with confidence, "He coaches football!" That sparked a conversation how the consulate loves football and then asked her where she got her hair done cause she loved it. Then she said to Hanna my wonderful beautiful wife to be, "Congratulations, you have been granted your visa!" As I write this I am listing Pandora radio and they are playing how awesome is the Lord most high by Chris Tomlin.

God how awesome you are. You have been so good to us. 406 days it took from filing to being granted a visa. God has been so good to us.

Whatever you are waiting on from the Lord hang in there. God is faithful as well as He is merciful.
Thank you for reading. God bless you!

Fueled by Heidi Baker

Last night we went to hear Heidi Baker speak at the Foundry. I got to say hi to a friend there I have not seen in quite sometime, Scott McLeod. It was great to see him last night. Then joined my friends to listen to Heidi bring the word. It was great to hear how God had worked on her heart for many of years. She was very honest about the things that bothered with things in America, then to hear how God brought her to a place to reveal His love for those things. God brought her to a place of brokenness as she walked into a bathroom filled with gold sinks and railings with plush red carpet. There God told her that He loved them just as much as He loved those who live in the dumps and slums of Africa.
She then went on to share how she had a vision and seen Jesus standing at the foot of the cross with His arms open wide. Here people would come up to him bow down and laying what they had at His feet kissing them. Then they would get up and go into the dark places of the earth. This was where Jesus light would shine the brightest in them.
When she reached the end of her sermon she had us stand up, close our eyes and ask the Lord to show us who He calling us to serve. When I had done this and I seen the young women who come from the small villages of Ethiopia to the big city of Addis Ababa. Here they are running away from a problem in hopes to find a solution to it, when they only find themselves in a worse position then when they had left home. When they arrive they arrive at the bus station. This is where men come and seek them out. With their smooth talk they take them off to make them slaves, prostitutes, or even worse some of them are sexually abused. Some of them come to Addis Ababa pregnant and have no one to turn to. This also causes a problem for them. They end up homeless and begging.
Why should this be? Sadly there is very little help for these ladies if they can find it. This is my heart. They are needing God's love just as much as you and I do. Who is going to show them? My heart longs to share them the love of God. You see they long to see their dreams fulfilled and they have heard that all the things that they need to succeed is in the big city. These are dreams that God had given them just as He has given us dreams and this is my dream. To see theirs fulfilled. I have joined  Mission Ethiopiawho seeks to fill the desires of these ladies, single mothers, widows, and the orphans. We share the same vision and calling of God's heart for them. I am happy to share this calling with them. While I am in Ethiopia I will not get any financial support from Mission Ethiopia. So I am asking for friends, family, and fellow believers in Christ to partner with me.  I am still lacking just $400 of monthly supporters to make this happen. I need your prayers in this and I also need your financial support. So I ask you to set some time aside to pray about being a monthly supporter. 

Empowerment

What does empowerment mean to you? Joseph Stalin had his own meaning of empowerment along with Hitler, Saddam Hussein, and Mussolini all had their own meaning of what empowerment meant to them. Sadly they used their meaning of empowerment only to achieve their own evil desires by crushing their own people. It was a far picture of what Jesus had painted for his disciples as one who thought about empowerment.

Jesus picked out 12 ordinary men that had already had chosen their profession in life. Some were fishermen as we gathered and one of them was a tax collector. People whom not everyone wanted to hang out with on a day to day basis. Especially a tax collector. Jesus took them all and empowered them to live a life bigger than themselves. How did he do it? Jesus spent His time investing in them. He knew when he needed to spend time alone and when they needed to spend time alone. He opened up his life so they could see into his heart. He would set an example everywhere they went. He demonstrated how to love, how to wait, how to engage aggressively and softly. When he had ascended to Heaven the disciples were well equipped to the task that was ahead of them.

Just as Jesus had promised that he would send a comforter for them in his place. So that day came when they were all in that room upstairs when the comforter had shown up. It was then that they would step out into the life of empowerment that Jesus had placed on their lives. Each one would step out into the very area that Jesus had focused on them individually. He found their strengths and of course he probably already knew their strengths, but just for kicks and giggles he probably just looked for them anyways.

Jesus set the example of what a good leader is and how to lead. In John we see him strip down and wrap a towel around himself, pick up a pot of water and a basin and wash the feet of those he was teaching. Why? So that they could see that by doing so they would never become prideful of any position that they would hold in life. This would be a lesson that each one would carry with them the rest of their lives. I had heard one of my former pastors say one time that I have never forgotten, "A good leader will always lead in such a way to make his leaders better then himself." Dave Buehring. That is something that I have never sat aside but have kept it close to my heart. Jesus had taught like that. He told his followers that great work they would do than he had done.

This is true empowerment of someone else. I pray as I step out into this calling that God has laid on my life to empower single mothers, widows, and orphans that I also lead in such a way for them to be better than myself. To me this is the only true leadership that there is. Anything less would be considered a dictatorship. I believe if you are not willing to give your all to those you are leading then why would want to lead then?  "It is better to lead from behind and to put others in front, especially when you celebrate victory when nice things occur. You take the front line when there is danger. Then people will appreciate your leadership." Nelson Mandela May we all look to those who led in such great ways to be examples for those behind us. Trust me when  I say that there are those who are watching, cause they not only want to be led, but they want to learn how to lead too.

Am I there yet?

I am here in the United States waiting to leave for Ethiopia. It just seems a matter of time when I leave, but when? When do I leave? I keep asking myself. I wonder when. When will I get to be with my fiance of three years? When will I get to start ministering and teaching in Ethoipia. As I ponder these questions from one day to the next giving thanks to God most high that it will be coming soon. Looking at lowering down how much money I am to need over there as a soon to be married man. It is not easy. If I were by myself then I would be able to do this on little as $400 a month in Ethiopia, but since I am not then I have to think about more than myself. I wonder at times will I want to come back to the states? Since I want to go there so badly and I have sold all that I have. At this time I have no plans to ever to return to the states to live again.

With a set budget for volunteering with Mission Ethiopia an organization that creates jobs for single mothers and widows so they can feed, clothe, and send their children to school is the very same dream that I had four years ago. If money was not the issue I would be there now. So each day I leave the house carrying letters with me for anyone that I meet or know someone that may not know what I am doing. Along with sending out emails day to day and following up with people. It seems like I am doing the really hard work now. I just wonder how hard the work is going t be when I finally get there. I just know that when I finally do, there will be some very happy people and one happy fiance. I just thank God that He has called me to a place that I had once begged Him to take me out of and not only has He called me to this place, but just so happy that He has placed Hanna in my life who from the very place I am called to. Can you say Praise God?