Outreach is fast approaching! Only 15 more days till I board the plane and go to Cambodia! I’ve been thinking a lot about this upcoming adventure and am in the process of preparing my heart for a season of serving. The past three months of discipleship training, I have been learning how to be redeemed, restored, renewed, made whole, and set free from enemy harassment and stumbling blocks in my life that have constantly stood in the way of me fulfilling the call of God on my life. I am seeing more and more that the reason God heals us and sets us free and makes us whole is so that we can pour out and serve and love others. We are to give ourselves to being His hands and feet to a lost and dying world. Once we walk through the process of fortification and being made new and set free, we can walk into the fullness of the Christian life with two free hands ready to serve and pour out our life for those in need. We shouldn’t just take the truths we learn and keep them in our heart and life, hogging it all to our self, we are learning these things in order to become a blessing to the nations. The greatest injustice is that there are millions of people out there who know nothing about the love of Christ. They don’t know that there is hope, that they can be set free, that they are valued in the Father’s eyes, and that He wants to rescue them from bondage. They are treated as worthless, they are bought and sold into slavery, they are used and abused. So how are these precious children of Christ going to know who their Father is? Someone has to go to them and tell them and show them Christ’s love. That is the church’s duty, because we are His hands and we are His feet. We are the body of Christ and what would Christ be doing? He would be going to the oppressed, to the hurting, to the orphans, to the sick, to the abused. If we do not reach them with the love of God, who will? We are here on this earth to tell people about the Kingdom of God and His desire for us to follow Him. It is not just our duty, but our joy and privilege to share this good news with others. The call of Jesus is to go and make disciples of all nations. It’s a call of radical abandonment to follow in Jesus’ footsteps and pour yourself out in loving the unloved and serving the least. God’s Kingdom is up-side-down from that of this world. In order to be the greatest you have to learn to be the least. Jesus washed His disciples feet. He was born in a barn. He took the lowest position. He humbled Himself. He treated the rejected as royalty. The Christian life is not about us. It’s not about making us feel better about our self. It’s about living a completely selfless existence. Others must become more important to us than our self. God must increase, and we must decrease. We must put God’s agenda above our own. We must be willing to give up everything for the sake of the gospel, to reaching the lost, to setting the captives free. God gave everything for us, will we not give everything for Him? God’s heart is for those suffering and in need of the good news. We can’t just sit around and wait for these people to come to us, if we don’t see needs around us, we are to go, we are to seek them out. Where are the battles that we’re blind to? What are we oblivious to that we’re just living our own life and ignoring? When the hurting are crying out to God and asking if He’s listening to them, we’re the ones who are supposed to respond to that call. We are His hands and feet. What do Christ’s hands and feet do? They bind wounds, they offer forgiveness, they set captives free, they heal the sick, they minister to children, they seek out the sinner, they drive out evil from the temple of God, they walk the road to Calvary. We need to be doing something. God makes us strong not so we can spend our lives in selfishness, comfort, and ease, not so we can soak up the blessings and benefits of Christ while the rest of the world is dying. Jesus said as the Father sent me, so I send you. He sets us free so we can become like Him. So we can be for others as He is for us, a poured out living sacrifice that places other’s needs above our own. So our lives can be a living, breathing testimony of the love that triumphs over all. Living a poured out life of sacrificial love will be inconvenient; it will be out of our comfort zone. God never promised it would be easy. But He said we wouldn’t walk this alone. He will give us the grace and strength needed to walk this narrow road. Dying on the cross was not convenient or comfortable for Jesus, but He chose to do it in obedience to the Father. Jesus didn’t come to the earth just to say He loved us, He lived it, He backed it up with His life. Leonard Ravenhill’s definition of being a Christian: “You have no time of your own, no agenda of your own, no money of your own, Christ must become your complete master.” Ask God to open your eyes to who you can help now. What is the first step of obedience to take? Looking at the direction of my life a year ago scares me. I went to university with the intention of finding a degree that would get me the easiest, highest paying job possible so I could be comfortable, afford anything I want, and live a good life. Even though I claimed to have the Christian life, I was not yet living it. I thank God that He opened my eyes and gave me a new purpose now as I go back to get a degree. I will use the money I make to bless people in need, and use my degree to bring healing into the lives of the hurting.
Pray that I would treat each Cambodian I meet as the most important person in the world. They are royalty, and need to know it.
A praise: Everyone in my DTS got the money they need for outreach. God faithfually provided to many in miraculous ways. It was amazing to see all the miracles that happened in the eleventh hour.
“Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of Mine, you did for Me.” – Matthew 25:40
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