Advent: peace

Full disclosure, I think I made myself a too little busy this week to adequately reflect on peace. But all was not lost, I thought, because I had a trip planned to the beach this weekend. What is more peaceful than leaving the busy city for the beach? Plan it with 10 other people, however, and that peaceful retreat you were hoping for will get challenged a bit. Couple that with having my first real experience with food poisoning… lets just say, it did not turn out how I was hoping.

But I think there must be more to peace than finding quiet time or quiet places, that is a part of it, but it also must be a mindset. I think peace, at its best, is when we can channel it even in the craziest of times.

Just before I left for the beach, one of my Thai workers at the coffee shop said something to me that threw me off a little bit. It was just a comment about a certain way that I handle things and interact with people. It wasn’t meant to be a criticism, if anything she was trying to be encouraging. But it tugged at an insecurity of mine that I have had for a long time and threw my self-critical mind into overdrive. The crowd, the sickness, and and comment ate away at my peace all weekend.

So the question I am reflecting on now is, how do you channel peace even in turmoil?

Well, I suppose the most obvious answer to that question is to turn to God. If I am honest, though, I sometimes still have a pretty hard time turning to God for comfort. I often feel like I want something more tangible, someone to hold me and tell me its all going to be all right or for God to just fix the problem and make it all go away. But the promise God makes us is that he will be with us, not that he will take away pain and problems. And sometimes that is hard. But again, Jesus showed us the way with his words to God in Gethsemane as he awaited death : “Not my will, but yours be done.” And I think that must be where true peace lies: letting go.

I just want to hold on to so much, but the more we hold on to, the less peace we have. And of course letting go is a lot easier said than done, especially if there is a lot of pain, insecurity, or uncertainly involved. But holding on to things doesn’t necessarily make things any better either. At the end of the day, however God cares infinitely more about us than we could possibly care about ourselves. There is peace so much peace in trusting that God has it all taken care of.

So really, we have access to that great peace in all circumstances. Peace that God is bigger than our circumstances, peace that God is made perfect in our weaknesses, and peace that God is with us, all the time. I read once that there are two definitions of peace. Most of us, when we think of peace, revert to the Greek definition “eirene” which means the “absence of conflict”. The Hebrew word for peace, “shalom,” overlaps some, but it’s core meaning is “wholeness” both personally and collectively. So “shalom” is not really about an absence of conflict at all, but ore about our journey to wholeness that Jesus is leading us toward, and there may be conflict along the way.

Some other thoughts, in the story of Jesus’ birth, there is a point at which gales appear to nearby shepherds:

And in the same region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.  And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with great fear.

And the angel said to them, “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.”

And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying,

“Glory to God in the highest,
and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!”

Luke 2:8-14

It seems these Angels were pretty excited to praise Jesus’ arrival, and these words of praise brought forth declarations of peace, as if somehow these things go hand in hand. Maybe one of the results of praising God is the receiving of peace. And I guess when I think through that more, this is absolutely true. Those moments that I am fully caught up in praise and worship of God are also some of my most peace filled moments. Maybe thats is why we are called to, elsewhere in the Bible, praise God during all circumstances. Something to think about.

Then there is the “peace among those with whom he is pleased” part. I guess the carol is wrong, its not a declaration of “peace on earth” but, rather, a declaration of peace on to those who God is pleased, namely, those who have come into his family. That is where peace lies; outside of God, there is no true peace.

So a benediction then, from the words in Philippians, in this advent season may “the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

Advent: hope

Here we are, it’s Christmastime. And what do you know, I am actually excited about it, not a normal thing for me. But I am in a season of newness and with that comes an eagerness to engage with this season in a new way.

Coming out of a particularly rough time has me on high alert. I want so much for this current season to be a good one. One far from the pain and confusion of the last one. I keep thinking about how I can stay on track, keep aware of and on top of my spiritual life.

I saw the new Hunger Games movie last week and there was a line that stuck me: “It takes ten times as long to put yourself back together as it does to fall apart.” I cringed a bit when I heard that, because I know that deeply. And it scares me a little too.  Some days it seems like such a fine line between “ok” and “not ok” and once you cross that line into “not ok” it takes so long to get back.

So my plan is this: to stay present. A lot of my anxiety lies in, in part, thinking about the uncertainty of the future, the dreading of it, even. There were hard things ahead I simply did not want to go through, which made it that much harder to find joy in the present. When I look back at difficult seasons I realize there was so much good too. Incredibly amazing things happened, but it was darkened by a cloud I could not get rid of; everything was tainted.

As I continue to reflect, what I realize is that I was failing to give God space to work in me. In my bitterness, I would shut God out, driving a big wedge between me and and his work. I was essentially giving God the whole “my way or the highway” ultimatum. And, well, that doesn’t work out too well.

Tearing down the walls that you build up is a tricky business. It involves a lot of thought retraining, taking that whole “every thought captive” thing way more seriously. I think what happens when I face great difficulty is that I replace hope with numbing. Checking out is way easier that dealing with life. But as I just learned from this incredibly well spoken “Ted Talk” from Brene Brown, when you numb, you don’t just numb the bad, you numb the good too. It’s much harder to see God’s goodness when you are numb.

*big breath here*

I feel like I am tackling something huge here. Bad habits are hard to break. But one step at a time. Its easy to justify my coping mechanisms (i.e. numbing) because, on a grand scale, I’m not an alcoholic or a drug addict or anything like that. But, really, numbing is numbing. When we cope with life by checking out and not turning to God, that is always bad.

Every once in a while one of the resident drunk guys from the red-light district I work in will stumble into the coffee shop early morning. I’m starting to open up the shop and start the day and he hasn’t even gone home to “sleep it off” yet. I don’t know much about this guy. As far as I can tell, he is from Europe somewhere, but every encounter I have had with him, he has been so drunk that I cannot not make out his slurred words. He stumbles in, saying things I don’t understand. I sit him down, get him some water, and listen to him “talk” trying my hardest to understand. Mostly I’ll just smile and tell him he should go home to sleep.

I have never been able to understand anything he said until the last time he came into the shop. It was toward the end of our “conversation.” He suddenly stopped, looked straight at me, and with tears streaming down his face, he said clearly, “I used to be happy…” I felt hit in the stomach. His sadness was overwhelming. And all I could think of was what a horrible affliction hopelessness was. And it made me so angry that hopelessness could get such grip on you. It’s one of our enemy’s greatest weapons; and it’s why numbing is such a problem.

Facing life in deep hopelessness almost leaves you no choice but to numb.

So maybe I don’t numb my waining hope by becoming a drug or alcohol addict, but I sometimes feel like I don’t blame those who do. How do you cope with life when your hope is failing? We all have our own coping mechanisms. Some are just more widely accepted than others.  But separation from God is separation from God, no matter what form it takes.

So how do we hold on to that hope when everything seems so wrong? That is the question I kept coming against. And I guess there is no easy answer to that. Sometimes you go through these great seasons where the hope of Christ shines though everything; and sometimes you go though seasons where you almost believe it was all made up. Where it almost seems easier to give up hope rather than to hold on to it.

When I look back on those seasons when I was nearly ready to give up hope, or at least hope in the right things, it was torturous. Not just because of circumstances, but because there was no anchor, nothing to keep me centered. How people get though a long life with out the hope of Christ as an anchor continues to elude me. What I have come to realize after every deep soul search in the darkest of times is that life with hope, even if it doesn’t always make sense, is infinitely better than life without hope. So, in this first week of advent, I thank God for that hope. That life saving hope. When Christ broke into this world, he changed everything. And he left us with a promise that he would be with us, no matter what, and that he would come again to make everything right again. It just makes my soul smile.

Back to The Hunger Games if I may (can you tell I just watched the latest movie?). I’ll try not to spoil anything in case you haven’t read the books (which I highly recommend you do). It is an incredibly well written story that tackles a lot of human issues, including the nature of hope. In case you have been living under a rock and have no idea what The Hunger Games is about. It’s basically a story of a future distopian reality where there is an oppressive capital and 12 districts under the rule of that capital. As punishment for a past uprising, the capital created “The Hunger Games” where each district has to send two of their children into a fight to the death, with only one survivor at the end. Morbid, I know. But the leader of this distopian land, President Snow, knows what he is doing and what hope is. Here is a discussion he has with the guy he put in charge of managing the hunger games:

President Snow: Seneca… why do you think we have a winner?

Seneca Crane: [frowns] What do you mean?

President Snow: I mean, why do we have a winner? I mean, if we just wanted to intimidate the districts, why not round up twenty-four of them at random and execute them all at once? Be a lot faster. [Seneca just stares, confused]

President Snow: Hope.

Seneca Crane: Hope?

President Snow: Hope. It is the only thing stronger than fear. A little hope is effective. A lot of hope is dangerous. A spark is fine, as long as it’s contained.

Seneca Crane: So…?

President Snow: So, CONTAIN it.

President Snow is using what he knows to be true about hope: it is stronger than fear. He manipulates it to his benefit, much like the enemy will. But great hope, that is a dangerous thing. It drives fear right out of our lives. That gift of hope Christ gave us was one of the most powerful weapons he could have given. One of my favorite lines from one of my favorite Christmas songs is this, from Oh Holy Night:

“A thrill of hope

the weary world rejoices

for yonder breaks

a new and glorious morn.”

I can’t remember the last time I was excited about Christmas. For most of my adult life, Christmas has mostly just been something I had to get through. It caused way more stress than joy. And lets be honest, America is a little crazy when it comes to Christmas. But Christmas is a much more mellow experience here in Thailand. Something you can nearly forget about if your not intentional. And I think thats why I am starting to like Christmas again, because it is something I have to be intentional about  instead of having the commercialism of it stuffed in down my throat. For the first time in a long time I got that “thrill of hope” for Christmas, excited to enter a season of thinking of Jesus’ coming. I am looking forward to these 4 weeks of Advent, to thinking about hope, joy, peace, and love. And it is my hope to post weekly in refection of each of those things. It will be a blogging record for me 🙂

Ok. One last Hunger Games reference…

I may have gotten a little too deeply connected to the story as I was reading the books. This happens to me sometimes. Throughout the story, I “made it through” all the tragedy driven by the hope that, in the end, everything was going to be ok. The ending, however, was a little more complex than that. Things resolved, but there was unrepairable damage and loss. I remember not being too happy with that; it troubled my soul somehow. Some might say it’s better literature to not wrap everything up neatly, but if I’m honest, that is what I wanted. I think that is what we all want. I tried to read the books again and I couldn’t make it very far without crying, because I knew how it ended and I didn’t like it. But I suppose we could say the opposite is true for the story we are all living now. As children of God, we know how this ends, and it is an incredibly good ending. That is our hope that keeps us going.

On that day, A shoot shall sprout from the stump of Jesse, and from his roots a bud shall blossom. The Spirit of the LORD shall rest upon him. … Then the wolf shall be a guest of the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; The calf and the young lion shall browse together, with a little child to guide them. The cow and the bear shall be neighbors, together their young shall rest; the lion shall eat hay like the ox. The baby shall play by the cobra’s den, and the child lay his hand on the adder’s lair. There shall be no harm or ruin on all my holy mountain; for the earth shall be filled with knowledge of the LORD, as water covers the sea.

From Isaiah 11

Happy Advent, everyone!

Make me a channel of your peace: lessons learned in Italy

I still feel like I can hardly get my head around what I just experienced.  Blessed, beyond blessed.

You know when you just need to be told that you are loved? Even if you know it already, you just need to be told it, to feel secure in it? Well Italy, the pilgrimage, the whole experience, was one long love letter to me.Undeserved, but needed.

I could go on and on about each day, the people we met, the food we ate, the wine we shared. I can’t think back on it without cracking a smile or two. It did not go on with out any hitches for sure, but it only added to the adventure of it. We literally had no idea how each day was going to turn out. We had planned as much as we could but there was so much we could plan ahead of time. What we did have planned out was booked rooms in towns leading up to Assisi, our final destination, the hometown of St. Francis. All we needed to do was make sure we made it to each of those towns along the way. Sometimes it was easier said than done.

    

The theme was, however, to focus of the life and teachings of St. Francis. If you don’t know, St. Francis is known for his service to the poor and disenfranchised as well as being very connected to and moved by nature. He grew up in a wealthy family uncompassionate to the plights of the poor or those outside of his class. But he then had a conversion experience where God put him in an encounter with a leper. His eyes were opened and the experience moved him to reject his worldly life and live in poverty. He began preaching on the streets and people began to follow him. Eventually he founded the Franciscan order which is still a major Catholic monastic order. The current pope, Pope Francis, chose Francis as his papal name in honor of Saint Francis of Assisi. I felt honored to be learning more about the life of this prolific man. We visited the towns and the churches that he went to or had experiences at. We walked the same valleys and hill towns he went to. It was a beautiful experience communing with God in the spirit of St. Francis in some of the most beautiful countryside I have ever seen.

But although it was beyond amazing, we also had our fair share challenges (as we do in everyday life as well as walking pilgrimages). But whenever I would come up against a frustrating something or another, I found that this St. Francis prayer/song would come up in my head that I learned growing up that I didn’t even know I remembered. “Make me a channel of you peace…” I couldn’t remember all the words actually, but I could remember that one line.  It would get me through that moment. One of the problems I think I kept running into this last season was not allowing myself to rest in God’s peace. I would remember God’s peace like an old friend I had lost track of. God’s “peace that transcends understanding” felt like something too far away from me somehow. If I’m honest, that kind of peace has been a bit elusive in my life outside of when I first came to know God. It was that peace that drew me to him initially, the letting go of all of my anxieties and insecurities, it was nothing short of magical. I couldn’t believe I ever tried to function without it. But as tends to happen, I kept losing sight, or the enemy was doing his job really well, because it is generally fairly difficult for me to stay in that sweet spot. But when you are there, when you are really there, tracking with God and trusting in his ways, even if the circumstances terrible, it feels so good.

    

There was one particular day on the pilgrimage that stands out from the rest. We had planned out our day as best we could. We were going to get up early and walk to a certain city about a 5 hour walk away, then we would take a bus to the next town we were booked to stay in for that night. We were fairly sure there was not enough daylight for us to walk all the way there, so this was a good solution, we thought.

So we strapped on our packs and began our trek. We walked through small farms, olive groves, vineyards, small towns, and stunning churches with their bells ringing as if they were singing out right to us. We took a break by a river, had good conversations, met fellow friendly pilgrims, and by early afternoon, we made it to the town that we thought we would catch the bus from to our next destination. We were right on track… until we found out that on Sundays in small town Catholic Italy, busses did not run…oops.

So we regrouped, we had no choice but to continue walking and HOPE that we could make it to the next town, even if it meant walking in the dark at some point. We had lunch and continued on our way. At some point we began singing songs, any song we could think of, to keep anxiety at bay. At the top of our lungs we sang as if the whole valley was our personal karaoke room. A couple of hours later we stopped to rest again, we were not making as much ground as we needed to. We looked out over the countryside, drank some wine, and pondered over what in the world we had gotten ourselves into. We had no clue what would happen, but we had to keep walking. We walked through more fields, mountain roads, even a construction site to stay off of a particularly dangerous looking stretch of road.

But here is the thing, this whole time I had this underling peace that it was all going to work out. Even if it was going to be difficult, it was going to be ok, we were going to make it. Sure enough, at some point (not long after I had just walked through a bush of stinging nettles) we come up to a few houses on the side of the road and see a man pulling out of a driveway turning to drive in the direction we need to go. And I get this idea out of nowhere, “This guy will take us.” Now, I wouldn’t really recommend hitchhiking if you are on your own, but there were five of us, safety in numbers and all that. Also, since there were 5 of us, finding someone to fit all of us seemed nearly impossible in the land of the smallest cars you have ever seen. But his car looked just big enough and he looked just friendly enough that I took a chance. Not knowing Italian, I just poked my head into his window and said the name of the town we were headed with a smile. He thought for just a second, then pointed to the back seat. We were in! We piled in and he zoomed us to the next town, even stopping at a waterfall he couldn’t wait to show off to us. Something we would not have seen had we tried to make it on our own. It was surreal, but more that that, it felt good.  All along I knew we were going to make it, a certainty I rarely feel.

It felt good, trust feels good.

If only I could translate that back to everything else in life. I think I just keep forgetting that everything is going to be ok.
At the end of all this, this life that consumes us, at the end of it all, no matter what happens in-between, its all going to be ok, we are going to make it. And it will all be ok, better than ok even. We just have to keep looking to the prize: Eternity, forever in God’s perfect beauty. I am sure Italy has nothing this new heaven and new earth thing God has promised us. But how easy it is to lose that perspective, to get lost in the daily battles, the uncertantly of tomorrow.

I realize that I get caught up in things that in the larger perspective, are pretty insignificant. I want to be able to understand everything, and when I am not allowed to, I get angry. It’s a type of sin really. I turn inward, rather then turning to God and just trusting he’s got it worked out. And when I turn inward, it’s much harder to see clearly. In one of the books I was reading about St. Francis, the author refers to the thoughts of another theologian and saint, Bonaventure:

“Sin, in Bonaventure’s thought, is a turning away from God and a turning towards self in such a way that we become bent over, blinded in intellect, and entangled in an infinite number of questions. We wander about in the world looking for goodness (or love) because we are unable to recognize it in our midst.” – Compassion: Living in the Spirit of St. Francis, Ilia Delio

This is where I get sometimes, blinded, unable to see God’s goodness. But this trip, however cliche it sounds, helped me to further open my eyes to that goodness again. I suppose all you need sometimes is a good reminder. My hope is I won’t always need a trip to Italy to be reminded of God’s great goodness, but I am grateful for it. And it feels good to be back, not just back in my place of service, but back on a better path of intimacy with God, getting back into that sweet spot. There is still work to do, disciplines to get back into, but I feel new.

    

So I will close with that prayer of St. Francis I could not quite remember all of the words of before:

Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace;
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is discord, harmony;
Where there is error, truth;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
And where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master, Grant that I may not so much seek
To be consoled as to console;
To be understood as to understand;
To be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

Beautiful.

It’s time to get real

I have been hesitating on posting about some deeper things I have been dealing with for quite sometime because, really, I am not one to put all my junk out there. My junk is usually saved for intimate conversations with close friends, possibly over a drink…or two. But I feel like it may be time to just write about it, in the open, for others to understand. And honestly, I think there will be a whole 5 people who will read this anyway. So lets just say this is more for me than it is for you.  Just a way to process my last couple of years as I finally feel myself moving into a new season.

The way I see it we all have tough times, so it is nothing to be embarrassed about. Life is hard, and that’s that. So lets just talk for a sec… or maybe 20 mins or so, this may be a long one.

When I moved to Thailand, I knew it wasn’t going to be easy. In fact, I kind of wanted it to be hard, I wanted to step out of my safe American world and be challenged. But when I say I wanted to be “challenged,” I had a certain expectation of what “challenging” would look like. I had these ideas that it would be hard, but there would be all of these blatant “fruits of my labor” that would make it all worth it. I was convinced that once I stepped out of the tame world of American Christianity I would see God work in bigger and better ways. And it would be hard and tiresome, but somehow, things would be more clear on the God front, at least not the same foggy God that I kept experiencing in my safe American world.

I guess you could say, without really admitting it out loud, I was “testing” God. Go ahead God, blow me away, show me just how real you are. But of course, as these things usually go, I was the one who ended up getting tested. yay.

There was the honeymoon period of course, when everything was new and exciting and hopeful. I was on this new adventure, and sure there were hard parts, but all very manageable, I needed time to hit my stride after all, right?

But the more you commit yourself to something the more you realize the harsh realities of it. These are no longer new experiences to get used to, but obstacles that are a part of my daily reality. Things that were once charming or hopeful before were becoming rough and hopeless. And all the things I was hoping to see happen more immediately seemed was going to take a lot longer to happen, if at all.

I guess you can compare this all to any relationship or commitment. There is the new, exciting, romantic part and then there is the “I didn’t sign up for this” part of it.

Ok so what else is new… its the story of all our lives, we get ourselves into something not fully knowing what exactly we were getting ourselves into, and then have to deal with it. I mean, I guess if we really knew all about what we were going to get our selves into we may choose not to do it at all. Maybe there needs to be certain amount of ignorance involved with every major decision, or we would maybe never do anything at all. And I suppose that is where the trust part comes in. But, things will inevitably get hard and then we have to choose how we are going to respond to it. And I guess I made some interesting decisions when it came to coping with my new reality.

I said before that I came in to this with a certain amount of expectations of how God was going to work. I was certain I was going to see God work in bigger and more amazing ways than I had ever seen before. And I waited and waited, and then, it was just more of the same. Week after week, more and more women falling victim, helping one out, only to see another one fall back into the darkness. The pain and brokenness around me constantly was steadily taking its toll. Yes I could make myself busy, and trust, for a time at least, that seeds were being sown, but I was waiting for something more. Thats not to say that God was not doing great things, he was, but eventually it never felt like enough. Where was this big God I was expecting? Why wasn’t more happening? Why weren’t more people being helped, restored, saved? Why wasn’t I feeling more fulfilled?

And then there was my personal life, to get even more, slightly embarrassingly real if I may. I had a certain expectation there as well, I realized. I was certain (even if I never admitted it blatantly) that if I stepped into the world that I felt God was leading me to, there my other half would be also. We would serve alongside each other, fall madly in love, and live happily ever after. Little did I know I was stepping into the unbalanced world of amazing single Christian women, with little to no single Christian men to speak of. Did you know that 80% of single people in cross-cultural missions work are female? I didn’t. Seriously, are you a single Christian man over 25 looking for an amazing God-loving woman? Come to Bangkok, they are all here. I stepped out of the man’s world of American church work into the the women’s world of international missions (but that’s another blog for another time). And there is nothing wrong with being single, but it comes with its own challenges. There is no “family unit” you can hold on to, no constant. And “big city” + “limited time commitments” =  people constantly coming and going. It’s literally a game of piecing together community. Its very unsettling, and very lonely.

And speaking of lonely, few people know this about cross cultural work: Once you leave your home country to make a home in another country, you effectively lose “home.” “New home” becomes “home” but “old home” is also “home,” but when you go back to “old home” its not “home” anymore, but “new home” will never be like “old home.” Following me? This, along with a few other things, are realities rarely talked about and certainly not regularly understood by others outside of cross-cultural work (this guy does a very good job at explaining some of the disappointing realities about being a missionary ) Again, very unsettling, and very lonely.

So there I was. Disappointed. So. Much. Disappointment.

And disappointment leads to bitterness and bitterness, as we all know, drives wedges and makes us angry people. But it’s a slow process and the anger is the quiet, sneaky kind. You think you have it together in the day to day of your life but underneath it all you’re keeping this secret tally, wondering why you keep coming up short. Then its like, “Hello discontentment, I thought I got rid of you??”

What it all comes down to, I suppose, is entitlement. I had subconsciously made a deal with God (that he never agreed to, mind you) that if I made this choice to uproot my life and do one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, he would give me everything I ever wanted. Wrapped up in a nice little bow. God was not keeping up his end of the deal.

So this discontentment was slowly driving a wedge between me and God. So slowly that I never became too alarmed about it. I was sure it was just a phase that would swing back shortly. But I wasn’t really taking care of myself at that point, not well anyway. Enough to stay afloat, but not enough to thrive.

Then there was the proverbial “straw that broke the camel’s back.” To back up a bit, just as I was exiting honeymoon stage, I was abruptly given a challenging role I was not quite suited for. I won’t get into detail, but lets just say the last person who had this role left in a serious burnout. I was next. For over a year I tried to keep it together. I just put my nose to the grindstone and endured, trying my hardest not to think about things for fear of falling apart. With a replacement for this role coming soon, I knew I just had to make it through. Marathon mode. And I made it without dying, but not without some injuries. This was the point at which I took a three month break, “for rest and healing.” There was plenty of rest, but if I’m honest, not much healing. I think I just ignored it some more, hoped that the wedge would just fall away somehow. But it didn’t. I was mad at God, and I didn’t know how to stop.

But since I couldn’t really define what I was going though, and I was feeling utterly useless in America, I came back here. Really, this was junk I was going to have to deal with in America or Thailand, may as well be in Thailand where I had a function.

I came back to Thailand and had to move pretty immediately due to my house falling apart. I was welcomed into the home of two people who quickly became my family, the closest thing I had ever come to family in Thailand anyway. It was such a blessing. I moved in with the husband and wife team that came to set up the coffee shop project, they had already been here a year fundraising and I was to join them for the setting everything up stage of the project. That project was my favorite, most tangible thing that has ever happened (read previous blog for more about that) in Thailand. I felt things looking up, but then it came: the straw. This couple, my family, my project partners, were going to have to move back to America.

I felt actually heartbroken. I couldn’t believe I was finally getting some semblance of what I wanted, and it was being taken from me. I would have these dark moments just sneak up on me, intense feelings of hopelessness that I didn’t know what to do with. I didn’t know how to “give it to God” Those just sounded like vague words to me. Every hurt felt compounded and the every day of red-light district ministry weighed heavier. I felt so up and down I felt crazy sometimes. And no one would even know. I am such an internal processor the only people that knew were the few I told. I still had good times, but the highs were high, and the lows were very low.

The rock bottom low took place on Christmas day of all days. I went up north with some friends for some cooler weather and good times, my pieced together family plus a couple of others. I had just gotten the news that my roomies were returning to the states in 6 months time and I was a bit of an inward mess. I was trying my best to have a good time, and for the most part I really did. But on Christmas, the sadness hit me in the darkest of moments I’ve ever had as a Christian. I sobbed for hours, unable to stop, feeling completely consumed by the sadness, feeling abandoned. My friends found me and comforted me the best they could, prayed, and offered support, but I felt inconsolable.

I eventually fell asleep and honesty, the next day, although a little raw, I had an amazing day. My little family and I rode motor bikes up a mountain to a coffee farm and saw such beauty. I had some time to reflect. I knew that things could not go on like this, there was no living life like this. This sadness was not what God had for me.

I would like to say I pulled it together and stopped being sad, but the next few months leading up to my friends’ departure was tough. I was up and down still, but more so on the up. I still had crazy lows, but not as low as that lowest low. I made it though their departure, and yet another move, and I survived. I’m ok.

I’m ok.

This personal struggle mixed with the daily heartbreak of the world I live in, it’s a rough environment to thrive in. It overwhelmed me, it did, but God is bringing me up and out. I feel a newness, its baby steps, but its movement. God is helping me to open my eyes to more of his goodness. Blessing me with un-expected things, big and small. I was blessed with an all expense paid trip to Hong Kong for a justice conference a couple of months ago to revive me in my work. A little bit ago I was able to pull together enough money to go home for a wedding of a best friend and some much needed family time.  And now there is this newest blessing, a chance to go on a pilgrimage to walk the steps of St. Francis in Italy. I can hardly wrap my head around it.

So this post is actually a part of that; a cathartic unloading of my junk as a way of marking that I am moving on and up. I will be walking for 1o days straight, with the purpose of seeking out God, and hopefully gaining some direction. I feel God pulling me to newness and I am not entirely sure what that is going to look like. I know some changes are going to have to be made, but unsure what those changes will be. It’s exciting, but it is also frightening. I am hoping this 10 day walk will give me some time to clear my head, focus in on God, and hear his voice. So if you find yourself reading this, I ask for your prayers.

I have a good God who is blessing me beyond measure. I hope to lean into that truth more and more as I move forward in to this newness.

Serving coffee in a red-light district

 

I suppose I have fallen into the trap of most other hopeful bogglers out there. Starting off posting as often as I could, excited to share stores about what was going on. Then life keeps going and blogging is somehow not on the list of things that must get done. And now, today, I find myself back on here in an attempt to update some information on my support page, suddenly feeling inspired to write something about what’s been going on. So here it is, an update. God has taken me into a world I never in my wildest dreams thought I would someday be doing: Serving coffee in a red-light district. Here is how it happened:

Four years ago I was rolling my suitcase along the less than level sidewalks of Bangkok looking around at the various beer bars, food vendors, short time rooms, and street walkers wondering “what am I getting myself into?”

I was moving for the third time, since moving to Bangkok a year earlier, into a building smack in the middle of one of Bangkok’s notorious red-light districts. I figured if I had to move again, it may as well be there. NightLight had acquired this building in a miraculous way and we knew it was going to be strategic, we just didn’t know exactly what or how yet. In the meantime I moved in and this red-light district with all its craziness became my neighborhood. I lived on the top floor, the only floor that was really livable at the moment. The rest of the building was dusty and crumbling from un-use. We were still a long way off from turning the building into what is is now, but ideas were abundant. We wanted to to be a center of community, a safe place of service, but most of all, a true light in one of the darkest streets of Bangkok.

And that became my community, I remember blogging about that, all the people that became my neighbors. I remember standing on top of the roof looking down a the street after its nighttime transformation into Bangkok nightlife chuckling to myself, thinking once again, “how did I get here?” But I knew God was doing something, how else could you explain any of it other than God was doing something, and I was going to get to be a part of it.

We knew we were going to do fantastic things with the space and at some point “coffee shop” got thrown into the mix. It seemed necessary to have some sort of safe welcoming front to the whole place and good coffee in a welcoming atmosphere felt like just the thing. And really, Bangkok could use some good coffee. So for a couple more years we dreamed about what could be and slowly began renovating the building for use. I watched as each floor was transformed into something new; the old grunginess of the building fading away and the newness of fresh white paint and clean furniture filling the space with new hope.

Finally, two years ago we got the green light to continue with the final stage of our plans. God sent us an amazingly gifted couple to help fundraise and set up the coffee shop. I had already moved out of the building quite some time ago as renovations continued, but I felt too connected to the project and the neighborhood not to jump at the chance to be a part of this team that was to bring the coffee shop to life. It was nearly a two year journey start to finish, from fundraising, to barista training, to creating a menu, to hiring and training our Thai staff, to finally opening the doors, the smell of fresh coffee wafting about. It was beautiful, a difficult labor of love for sure, but absolutely beautiful seeing that empty space transform into the refuge that it is today.

And that is exactly what this place is, a refuge amongst the chaos of this street.

We hear it time and again as customers find their way inside, “Wow, what a refuge to find on this street” as if you can tangibly feel the change in atmosphere from outside to in. And we get all kinds travelers, locals, street workers, sex tourists. We welcome them all and we love them the best we can with our amazing coffee and fresh baked goods, encouraging conversation, making connections. Hospitality at its best.

People are often confused by us, we are clearly not like anything else on the street. We are nestled between to pubs and surrounded by bar after bar, nightclub after nightclub. “Why did you open this place here?” they ask, clearly wondering why we wouldn’t chose to make more money as a bar. “We just wanted to be different,” I often say. And its true, no other place here represents what we represent.

We now hold English classes in the upper rooms for the Thai women we meet in the bars, we have an ongoing men’s small groups for those interested in pursuing God and purity, quarterly medical clinics, and an always open prayer room on the top floor. We have dreams of much, much more.

In a world of ministry where there are so many ups and downs, this coffee shop is such a gift. It was a tangible gift of God’s goodness and first hand experience of what God can do with willing hands. I got to be a part of it, start to finish, it was great. And still I wonder some days, how did I get here? I spend my days making coffee, taking to tourists or expat men (who are in likely in the area for one particular thing). I teach our Thai employees how to bake (because Thai people don’t bake, so that makes me an expert here 😉 ) It’s simply amazing the things that God has used.

I don’t know what God has ahead for me, but for now I am grateful. Grateful for this experience, and happy to be of service to him in this crazy atmosphere of a red-light district coffee shop.

She will be loved

The way I see it, most people go through life just wanting to be loved. To be noticed in some way and cared for. We fill this need in the most crazy ways imaginable. Some seek it through power and money. If I can only make a name for myself. If I can buy anything I want. I will be important, people will notice me, people will love me, or at least respect me, which is a form of love is it not? And this is where people get caught up in materialism and greed and suddenly nothing is enough because it is not a lasting kind of fulfillment.

Then there are those in survival mode. Who are just living day to day. How will I pay rent, will I have enough money for food? And in the midst of the daily problems, they find themselves feeling, if only there was some escape. If only someone would notice me and want me, someone to take care of me for a change. And this is where one can get desperate for attention, giving pieces of themselves away to people who don’t deserve it. Hoping that there is something or someone who can take them away from their problems, their pain, their fears. But again, many put their trust in the wrong things, and none of it brings lasting fulfillment. Their may be short relief. But somehow, it is still not enough.

As normal as it is now to be here, it still breaks my heart. These women, these precious women, just trying to figure out who they are in a world that is constantly trying to twist them into something they were never meant to be. Even as they seek God, there is so much they must throw off, so much that hinders.

Don’t ever forget how blessed you are, those of you who are brought up in a place where you are valued as a person, as a true person, to be cherished and protected. We forget that not everyone gets that luxury.

Some believe and are taught they are only worth what they can sell themselves for, and they hope and hope that one of these men will want to keep them.

And one day, when they have had enough, and no longer want to sell their bodies, because they know, it is killing them. They stop. But they still have a hard time finding value, they still want that man to rescue them, so they give it away for free, just hoping, still hoping, for rescue.

Because they have had a lifetime of mistreatment, a lifetime of confusion, and struggle, and it takes time, sometimes it just takes time, to realize how easy it is to take on a new identity, as a child of God, fully restored, fully cared for…

Last week I had the privilege of visiting a woman who used to work at NightLight. I would like to say it was by random chance that we all ended up in the same place on our few day holiday, but I am sure it was God appointed. When they found out we were going to be in the same town as them, they invited us over.

We showed up not entirely sure what was going to happen, just that we wanted to be a blessing. We were not expecting such a nice house.

“Who’s house is this?” I asked.

“It is her boyfriend’s house”

Of course, her foreign boyfriend. The reason she left NightLight, the one that treats her like crap.

Security can be an dangerous thing. The kind that is not rooted in Christ anyway. Like I said, we just want to be loved, we just want to be taken care of…

And when you have a child, and boy does she have a beautiful child, well, he needs to be taken care of too. And here is this person who will do that for you. So you let him, you let him take care of you and your child and you let him treat you like crap too. Besides, it is every young Thai girl’s dream to have a foreign man as a boyfriend…

So after she offers us every drink and piece of food she has in the house someone suggests, “Let’s sing some worship.”

So we gather outside and bring the guitar and just sing to God. When you don’t quite know what to do, singing to God is not bad place to begin.

And of course we begin to feel God’s presence in a powerful way, and we begin to pray and as I am praying and I put my hands on her, she begins to cry. Not just crying, but sobbing. I know she feels something she has not felt in a very long time. A different kind of love, one that she longs for but does not quite know how to hold on to.

I would like to say she made a decision right at that point to leave it all behind and come back. Come back to her loving NightLight family that will build her up in Christ. But she didn’t, because sometimes, it just takes time.

But I know, that she knows we are here, waiting for her when it all falls apart.

There is hope, there is always hope.

Trust and waterfalls

I feel like my time here in Bangkok has been a series of one transition after another. I have moved more times here in Bangkok than I have in the entirety of the rest of my life. In the same way, due to short-term commitments to NightLight most people make, I have “made” and “lost” more friends in a two-year period time of my life than any other time. This also makes for a challenging job description as I am continually picking up new responsibilities and filling in where holes are left. This, in part has left me felling like I do not have much an identity here. Of course my identity in Christ remains, but everything else feels up in the air.

Just over the past couple of months however, I have picked up some more steady responsibilities that are playing more into my giftings. I have been teaching our women at chapel time once a week as well as helping with the “Heart Groups” that many of our women participate in where they can learn more about their identity in Christ.I feel like a part of me is being awakened again. Not that simply being a servant and doing the incredibly necessary practical things that it takes to run a business and a ministry center has not been a fulfilling, especially since it is for such an amazing purpose. But the teaching and the hope of being able to pour into people in a more spiritually deep way is stirring me up again.

However, being called up to this next level stirs up many more fears, the fear of not knowing how to truly help these women being the highest. The problem is, I have never been a woman who grew up in their particular culture and with their specific circumstances nor have I ever been in a place where I felt I had to sell my body to make a living. In fact the concept of selling my body is so outrageous to me that that is part of the reason I ended up in this line of work, to be a part of a system that breaks that cycle. No woman should have to sell the most precious part of them. That fact that sex has turned into a commodity means something is deeply wrong and it stirs up a holy discontent in me.

But how do I relate to these women and how do they relate to me? I have grown up in such privilege, and they know that. I often wonder how I would take advice from someone who clearly has never dealt with the types of things that I have gone though. After all, it is our brokenness that binds us, our ability to relate to one another because we have made the same mistakes. When I was at home working with teenagers I felt somewhat qualified because I WAS a teenager at some point who grew up in relatively the same circumstances and culture and faced all the same temptations that American teenagers face. But here, it is all so foreign, in more ways than one.

And sometimes it makes me wonder if I really belong here at all…

I guess it is a questioning of every thing… again. Because I have been here before. Caught in the middle of something I thought I understood but is becoming increasingly more ungraspable. I know this is how we mature in grow in Christ, but it is still tough.

 I want to understand God so much more than I do, but there is a part of us that has to live with the dissonance of never being able totally understand the Being that we share the deepest kind of love with.

I went on a little trip a few weekends ago to visit a famous waterfall not too far from Bangkok. It was this wonderfully whimsical type of waterfall that had seven tears and all of these crystal blue pools that you could swim in at each level. It was exciting to discover each new tier and we laughed and splashed around the pools, daringly jumped off of the shorter waterfalls into the water below and watched people use some of the rocks the water was trickling down as waterslides. I felt adventurous and giddy and peaceful. And as one who is continually trying to compare life experiences to our walk with God, I immediately made the connection that this is often how our God can be. God offers us those same thins that that waterfall did. Chances to be adventurous and to have fun and to feel his peace.

But then I remembered another waterfall that I had visited on a previous trip.  This waterfall was much larger and stronger with no crystal blue pools to swim in. This water was mysterious and churning from the large amounts of water pouring down from above. Standing next to it was loud and disconcerting. Looking up at its immensity filled me with a certain bit of fear. I backed up from the water’s edge worried that I might accidentally fall in, knowing that it would immediately pull me into its rolling current. It was… overwhelming. And this too, I realized, can be our God. So big and consuming that you hardly know what to do. Because however much peace our God offers us, there is still a fear that we have of this large entity that we can only begin to describe. And He can pull you in to his rolling tide before you even know what is happening…and it’s frightening.

He is the safety net, but we still must walk the tightrope. Which is both exhilarating AND frightening.

I knew that when I left America that I would be giving up a lot of securities. I knew that I would not have a steady income; I knew that my chances of a husband and a family (and therefore some form of steady support system/community in my life) would dramatically diminish; I knew that I was entering a culture that I would likely never fully fit into while evermore driving a wedge between me and my own culture; I knew that I would be entering into a battle against a large darkness that consumes Thailand and would likely only be making small seemingly insignificant dents.  And these realities are all frightening if I let my self linger on thinking about it too much. The chances of failure and discouragement and looming depression are so large that I wonder how I continue to function from day to day.

But I do know how I function in my day to day, it is because our God is bigger than all of this. And although this big God and the life he calls us into can sometimes be frightening, it is worth it.

So as I wonder about my future here I will trust that my big God, for as long as he wants me here, will equip me. I will trust, that even though I do not understand everything and that sometimes I am still filled with fear of the future, that my God has a plan. And I will trust, that somehow, my God will deeply connect my world with the world of these women… with him as our all consuming God.

“I am like an olive tree flourishing in the house of God; I trust in God’s unfailing love for ever and ever.” Psalm 52:8

Pieces of hope

This past month in Bangkok has been a bit tense. Before I returned many of the staff here had gotten involved with a high stress case involving some women that needed help. Since then, the whole atmosphere has been thrown off a bit. Every day this is more news and it is not always encouraging.

This month also brought in another run in with the young teenage boy we took in off the street about a year ago. After finally getting him back home with his mother and connecting them with the right people for counseling, things finally stared to look up. Him and his mother had even begun coming to church every week where his mother miraculously accepted Christ. A couple of weeks ago, however, he had run away once again and showed up on our doorstep. After trying repeatedly to get a hold of his mother, we decided it would be best to let him stay with us for the night, but with a bit of a frustrated heart. It was Valentines Day and a had planned on hanging out, instead I found myself staying home caring for this troubled individual… not exactly what I had in mind for a Valentine’s date.

But the frustration did not lie so much in that I could not carry on with my original plans, the frustration was more that we had all put so much time and care into getting this boy in a safe place with plenty of help, only to see him right back where he started… back out on the streets in the red light district.

Sometimes it is so discouraging to know of so many people wanting to help and see justice and restoration prevail yet to see such little progress being made. As is common with this type of work, you see the same issues rise again and again and you begin to wonder if there is any hope in sight.

But I suppose that is where a certain kind of faith comes in. A number of years ago I remember reading a book called God on Mute. It is written by Pete Greig who happens to be the guy who started the 24/7 prayer movement. He wrote this book during a long struggle with a sickness his wife had of which she did not receive healing. This can leave a man who has witnessed many healings in a very confused state. In this book, he describes something calls a darker trust:

“As we mature in Christ we begin to understand that God’s logic is rarely ours and that his path to joy is often marked by suffering. The world is full of people willing to trust God for promotion, prosperity, and popularity. And this is good, because God loves to give good gifts to his children; it is certainly better to trust God for these things than to trust ourselves for them. But as we mature spiritually, God asks us to trust him in the hard times as well. There is faith in God’s will when it is our will too, but there is also faith to trust God when his will is not what we would choose.”

It is in these times of uncertainty that we have to lean into this darker kind of trust. And in many ways, this is the more comforting kind of trust. The kind where you simply get to let go and trust that you know God is handling it, even if you don’t understand.

Sometimes it seems like every month we have another financial crisis. The questions linger… “Are we going to have enough money to pay our workers… to buy more materials… to keep things going?” But every month everything miraculously comes through. It is hard that there is never enough money to feel comfortable about our finances from month to month, but it sure does keep us clinging to God.

There is a story in the Gospels about a woman who comes to Jesus with a request of healing for her daughter, and at first, it doesn’t look like he will be helping her out. “He says to her, a Gentile, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not right to take the children’s bread first and feed it to the dogs” (Mark 7:27). Jesus had a mission, and it was to the Jews, which she was not.

Ouch. Here she is asking in faith for help, not for riches, not for popularity, but for the healing of her child, and he seems to be telling her no.

But her reaction is something to take note of. She doesn’t stomp away, she doesn’t get mad at him or start to feel sorry for herself. She simply answers with more faith, “Yes Lord, but even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.”

“Lord,” she starts out with, a title most of his own people haven’t even given him yet! She knows who he is, even if she doesn’t hear the answer she wants. Willing to settle for even crumbs, she responds to her Lord with intense faith, regardless of how he responds.

Ultimately, her daughter is healed and this turns into a story of miraculous healing. But what stands out to me most in this account is her faith, almost more than the healing. Because lets face it, sometimes, things don’t always work out the way with want them to. Sometimes the miracle we are looking for doesn’t happen.

It feels like a lot of life is standing in that place of faith this woman is in before the healing happens. Waiting in a place of hope and trust, even if the healing never comes.

Not that God doesn’t heal, he does, in the most amazing ways, as he eventually does with this woman’s daughter. But there is a greater healing we are all waiting for, the healing that comes when Christ returns in his fullness and makes everything as it should be. For the complete restoration of all things… we still wait. And until that time comes, life will be full of hard, unexplainable things.

So as we wait in this in-between time, wading around in the mess of injustice and brokenness, we hold on to that hope that God instills in us as his followers.

Even in these stressful times as a ministry, there are still many pieces of hope. The young teenage boy is back with his mother now and they retuned to counseling together. Just last week, a few of us who have been working with him got together with him and his mother to celebrate his birthday. And as we were all sitting in a circle laughing and eating cupcakes…I could sense hope settling in again.

Our God is good and he will make all things right.

Settling in

I can hardly describe the sensation it was that overwhelmed me while I was home. Being in Thailand had made an unquestionable change in me and leaving it felt very weird. I loved being home and seeing family and catching up with friends, but the whole time I felt very… unsettled. I knew that my heart and my purpose was elsewhere and the longer I stayed in the states the more unsettled I felt.

I had no idea Thailand was going to grow on me the way it did. Southeast Asia was never a dream of mine. When I thought of being a missionary, it was always in Africa or South America in some off the map place with no electricity and rare communication with the outside world. As far as I was concerned, Bangkok was a stepping-stone to somewhere else.

But as is the case with many love affairs, Bangkok took me my surprise…

After having been gone for quite a bit longer than I wanted, when it was finally time to return, part of me feared that there was going some sort of awkward transition back into to Thai life. I was happy to find out slipping back in was quite normal.

Like returning home, every thing felt welcoming and familiar.

And what a wonderful thing to realize that Bangkok is home to me. Not home in the sense of “this is where I am from” but home in the sense of “this is where my life is.” And I mean life in the strongest sense of the word.

I feel so lucky to be here.. well, not lucky, blessed. When I was home most people that heard about what I was doing thanked me or responded to me with a “you are so sacrificial for moving to Bangkok and doing the kind of work that you do” kind of way. Truth be told, that always made me kind of uncomfortable. I don’t feel like I am making a sacrifice so much. I love where I am and I love what I do… there are so many other people that cannot say that.

I was walking down a street in Bangkok with a friend the other night taking in the sights and the noises and the eccentricities of the place. Bangkok never ceases to fascinate me. There is always so much more to discover. It is so immense; there is so much going on, so much pain, yet also much joy. The culture and everything surrounding it seems almost too big to get my head around, but still, it is my home and I am settled within it.

Beautifully enough, concurrently, there is another settling process going on. Knowing and settling into God’s love has always been somewhat of a battle to me. I have, for a very long time, known God’s love in the factual sense, but there seemed to always be a part of me that couldn’t quite understand it in the deep emotive sense. Without overtly knowing it, there always seemed to be a small part of me that longed to earn more of Gods love. As if there was something I needed to do to tap into the fullness of it. And more than that, every failure, every time I seemed not to measure of to some invisible standard, I somehow felt that God was disappointed in me.

In one of my very early blogs at the beginning of my move to Thailand, I talked about the crisis of irrelevance. How moving from a place that I had a very clear role and function in a position of leadership and familiarity to a place where I knew no one, had no clear role as of yet, and had to learn everything, including the language, from scratch was teaching me painfully how to define myself in God and not in what I do.

Over my first year in Thailand I let God, perhaps for the first time, love on me in that way, freeing myself of the self imposed guilt of not being better or doing more. I am happy to say that I am finally coming to a place where I have never felt more settled into God’s love. Not comfortable complacency, but true freedom.

I am looking forward to so much this year. I can’t wait to see what God is going to continue to do with me and with this ministry he has chosen me to be a part of.

Remember

I think blogging is a great way to unload. In fact, I’ve made it a bit of a discipline in my life. I love to sit down, process through my month, figure out themes, look for what God has been teaching me, and write it all out to share with others. I realized, however, it’s not just for others that I write this blog, its for me too. I love to read back and… remember. In my darkest of times what helps me the most is when I take time to remember everything that God has faithfully done for me and taught me. So much of the Christan life is about remembering, I think.

Over my time spend home, I didn’t blog at all. I did do a lot of speaking engagements, however. Being able to speak and teach was an important element in my time home. Again, it allowed me to process my first year here in Thailand and relate to to other people. Each speaking engagement was an exciting reminder of how great my God is and how amazing it is to be a part of what he is doing in this world.

In an effort to fill the void of a few missing months in my blog, Following is a sermon I gave at the college and young adult ministry at my home church on the book of Esther. It is a message calling the hearers to do exactly what I was just discussing… to remember.

” So we are coming to an end of our time in the book of Esther. And as a quick recap, In this story the Jewish people had just been in Babylonian Exile. Persia is the reigning power, Xerxes is our king. His wife disobeys him so he gets rid of her and he needs a new queen. All the beautiful women of the land are brought together for a year of beautifying… Enter Esther. A beautiful Jewish girl who wins the favor of the king and becomes the next Queen.

Then the plot thickens, enter the antagonist of the story, Haman. This guy has a thing against the Jews, wants to kill them, convinces the king, sends out a decree that all Jews should be killed. Mordeci, Esters uncle and former caregiver, finds out about this and goes to Esther for help. She’s scared because she could die if she displeases the king, but goes to him anyway making Haman look the fool, then he is hung, and here we are. Haman dead, Esther still in the good audience of the king.

Like any good action story or movie, just when you think all is resolved, the guy you thought was dead is suddenly alive again, found a gun and, is shooting at the main character again. Haman does not return from the dead in this story, but what we do have is the existence of that decree that was sent out calling for the execution of all Jewish people. The reason this is such a problem is because a decree, once sealed with the Kings seal, is irreversible. Problem.

However!, since Haman’s decree could not be reversed, Mordecai was allowed to write a “counter-law,” if you will. According to the new decree that was quickly sent out , the Jews were warned and informed that they were to defend themselves on that same day. In fact, in chapter 9, we are told that the Jews armed themselves, and rather than waiting on the enemy Persians to attack, they went on the offensive and decided to attack their enemies first.

The Bible says that the Jews killed 500 people in the palace city of Shushan, and another 75,000 people throughout the 127 provinces of the kingdom. At the end of the day, Esther even asked the king for an extension of time, so the Jews in Shushan continued the fighting throughout the second day as well. Since the extra day of fighting could not be communicated throughout the provinces, everyone outside the palace city rested and celebrated their great victory on the 14th day of Adar, but the people inside the city were still fighting. These fighters, then,  did not rest and celebrate until the 15th day. Rather than try to get everyone to recognize one day or the other as a day of celebration, Mordecai and Esther decided to allow both days to be days of celebration, and as we are about to read, those two days became what we know to be the “Feast of Purim.”

Esther 9:20-28-

²⁰ Mordecai recorded these events, and he sent letters to all the Jews throughout the provinces of King Xerxes, near and far, ²¹ to have them celebrate annually the fourteenth and fifteenth days of the month of Adar ²² as the time when the Jews got relief from their enemies, and as the month when their sorrow was turned into joy and their mourning into a day of celebration. He wrote them to observe the days as days of feasting and joy and giving presents of food to one another and gifts to the poor.

²³ So the Jews agreed to continue the celebration they had begun, doing what Mordecai had written to them. ²⁴ For Haman son of Hammedatha, the Agagite, the enemy of all the Jews, had plotted against the Jews to destroy them and had cast the pur (that is, the lot) for their ruin and destruction. ²⁵ But when the plot came to the king’s attention, he issued written orders that the evil scheme Haman had devised against the Jews should come back onto his own head, and that he and his sons should be impaled on poles. ²⁶ (Therefore these days were called Purim, from the word pur.) Because of everything written in this letter and because of what they had seen and what had happened to them, ²⁷ the Jews took it on themselves to establish the custom that they and their descendants and all who join them should without fail observe these two days every year, in the way prescribed and at the time appointed. ²⁸ These days should be remembered and observed in every generation by every family, and in every province and in every city. And these days of Purim should never fail to be celebrated by the Jews—nor should the memory of these days die out among their descendants.

Feast of Purim began in this time as a feast of remembrance that the Jewish people, from this day on would celebrate.  It is likely to have been celebrated by Christ , and still celebrated by Jews around the world today.Of the various feasts that the Jews observed and are mentioned in the Old Testament, the Feast of Purim is one that was not instituted by God. It was however initiated by His people and appears to have been blessed by God.While you and I don’t celebrate it, the Feast of Purim is an annual reminder to the Jews of several lessons they learned about God during their time of great sorrow and grief.

Now most of us are not a part of the Jewish nation, but we do, as God’s people, share a special relationship to Him, and because of this special relationship, we enjoy many blessings that are common to all who call on the name of the Lord. So as God’s people, why does God call us to remember? What is it that God wants us to remember each time we read the book of Esther or encounter its story?

You see – the story we find is the same story that is being told over and over again throughout history.

It is the story of your life, the story of our church, the story of your family, being told over and over again; and I believe that unless we realize that we are caught up in this story and learn the lessons God has for us, we are destined to lives of sorrow and grief – not because your circumstances will be any different than any one else’s, but because your eyes have not yet been opened to the reality of how God is being played out in the story of your life.

So what are the things that the story of Esther teaches us?

First, it is a reminder that we will always have an enemy in this world… in short, there will always be Hamans.

One of the first things you realize when you step into Thailand is the feeling of oppression. Spiritual oppression runs very deep but is also very much in the open. I live in a very dark place where the enemy feeds on even the smallest weakness. I live right in the middle of one of the red light districts in Bangkok. The view from my window is a banner of half dressed girls advertising a bar called planet pimp. Every night I fall asleep to bar music, a constant reminder of what is going on around me.

My walk home is anything but peaceful. The streets are lined with girls looking for a customer. Bar after bar is full of even more women beckoning at any foreign man that walks by. A few buildings down is the entertainment plaza. Three floors of go-go bars where girls dance for the customers making it easier for them to “check out the merchandise” they stand there complete with numbers tacked to their boots to make it easier for the customer to point out which one he wants as if they were some type of value meal at Mc Donald’s instead of a living breathing person.

Even walking into one of those bars is a mission in and of itself. The atmosphere is so dark, our presence alone is breaking ground. There is no ignoring the advances of the enemy there. Here [in America] it is easier to forget that there is a battle going on around you. We get smothered by our comforts  and our hurry and its easy to avoid the things we don’t want to see.

But sometimes as a whole we need to become more aware of our enemy. Satan knows exactly what buttons to push in your life, what gets you angry, what distracts you or takes you out of the battle. Don’t ever underestimate the advances of the enemy, he has done his homework.

Whenever we go on outreach we cover ourselves in protection, that God would make us aware of how the enemy might be trying to attack us so that we are able to stand against it.We are fully aware of the battle we are in. We know that this side of heaven we will always have an enemy, there will be trouble, but…

Second, God will always have a way of deliverance for his people

While the Jews were in despair down in Egypt, God was raising up a Moses.

When they couldn’t get in to the Promised Land, He was preparing a Joshua.

When the giant Goliath taunted the people of Israel and there seemed to be no hope, God was preparing a David.

And when the people of God were being threatened by Haman, God was preparing an Esther.

Over and over again we see this miraculous story of deliverance.

Those of us who know God each have our own story of deliverance. No matter what the age, no matter what you face, God always has a means of deliverance. The point is simply this – God is going to bring deliverance to His people whether we choose to be a part of it or not. Sometimes it is spiritual deliverance, other times it may be physical or emotional, but you can count on this one thing – the Lord Jesus Christ cares more for you than you could possible care for yourself and has made a way of deliverance for you.

Why did Jesus come in the first place? He said in Luke 4,

The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

Whether we fully understand how the Lord works in our lives or not, the fact is that He said that He has come for the express purpose of deliverance – He wants to free you.

Most of us will never know the terrors of physical bondage or the kinds of fear that the Jews experienced under the death wish of Haman, but you live with fear and worry and anxiety every day of some sort. God wants to deliver you from all of it. And he’s good at it, God has his hand in everything, he will always provide away

I see this all the time at Nightlight. Testimony after testimony of girls being delivered out of their dark circumstances. One such girl states in her testimony, “Working in the bars was like walking in a storm all the time…” This same girl now leads worship almost daily at our morning chapel times….

It can be hard and draining work going on outreach week after week seeing one broken girl after another, but when I step into the Jewelry buildings and I see all these girls that were once lost in the sex industry rescued from that world… it is the best encouragement there is.

I get so amazed when I think about the provisions God as made for his lost ones. I know of a ministry that specifically reaches out to children from Cambodia who beg on the streets of Bangkok, another ministry that specifically reached out to the Lady Boy community, I even met a group of missionaries from the Philippines who are here to minister to the Filipinos who are in Prison here in Thailand! God has his hand everywhere.

If you are here tonight and you believe you are caught up in something that is too big for God to fix, you think you have a past that is too dark for God heal, I am here to tell you, you are believing a lie…

The third thing we can learn from Esther’s story, We all have a part in what God is doing in this world.

The bible is a continual story of deliverance and one of the coolest things about this story is that we get to be a part of that story. Not only does he want to deliver us, he wants us to be a part of the deliverance story of others! I always get really sad when I meet people who stop at their own personal deliverance, as if that is where the story ends. Because there is so much more! When we become one of Gods own he will launch us onto the adventure of a lifetime if we let him, cause there are so many more people who don’t know him, so many people who need help!

He doesn’t need our help, but he wants our help; And not his sake, but for ours…

One of my favorite things Mordeci says is when he sends a message back to Esther after she tells him of her fears about going to the king. He says: “Do not think that because you are in the king’s house you alone of all the Jews will escape. For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish…”

When I first read that I was like, that’s messed up, he just trying to freak her out. But then I noticed with such certainty he says “for if you remain silent relief and deliverance will arise from another place.” This guy knows his God. Mordeci know God doesn’t need us, if Esther decided not to do this, God would have used someone else.

But he placed Esther is a place where she could have the privilege of being a part of this incredible deliverance story.

And then Mordeci finishes this little plea to Esther with basically the theme verse of the whole story “And who knows but that you have come to royal position for such a time as this?” (4:14)

Which poses the question that we touched on a bit last week. Why are you here, in this place, in this time?  What royal pupose has God been preparing you for?

We are all a part of a royal inheritance made for a royal purpose. 1 Peter 2:9 says, “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.”

God is inviting us to be a part of what he is doing in this world. The reason God is always calling us to remember his stories of deliverance is #1 so we don’t forget what he did for us, but #2 so we don’t forget why in the world we are here…

What royal positions has God put you in to help those who are currently around you?

What are you willing to risk or suffer to save people that you will probably never meet?

What voice has God given you to speak up for those who are not heard?

What resources/connections has God given you to be an advocate for those who are alone?

A lot of us live very fearful lives, we have somehow convinced ourselves that we are not capable of much and so we mostly never even try. But what we must remember is that God is perfectly able to make us able. He is just waiting for us to step out and test him on this.

This is one of the things I love about Ester’s story. God does not just use the ones who seem to have super star courage right off the bat. He simply uses people who are willing. People who are willing to get past their fear and step out in him.

You’ll remember that when Esther is first asked by  Mordeci to approach the king she isn’t so sure. This is no small task. Its no wonder she is afraid. The girl does not want to do this… but she does it anyway because her uncle explains her back into the purpose of her existence. She thinks about her people, she thinks about her God, and then there is no question.

I may sound like such a brave person moving to Bangkok and living and working in the red light district.. .but I’ll be the first person to tell you that I’m just as much of a coward as anyone else… All I do is walk in trust that God will enable me as I go along, where ever that leads me. Esther teaches us how to live in this world with courage and integrity, carrying our responsibilities to the best on ones ability and trusting God in his providence to protect and provide.

So what is it that you need to remember today?

Some if us need to remember that we have an enemy in this world and need to spend some time equipping ourselves accordingly.

Some of us need to remember that our God is a mighty deliverer. We need to spend some time remembering our personal deliverance stories and trust that whatever we are dealing with now, God is able to deliver us from that too. Some if us have never let God be that deliverer in our lives and we need to finally let him do that.

And then some of us continue to forget that as the delivered, we are now invited to be on God’s team of deliverance. We need to remember the ultimate purpose that God has called us to and brace ourselves for that amazing adventure.”

Message given at Seven24, New Song Community Church, October 4th, 2010