devotion over service

You ever have one of those nights where you can’t sleep because you feel like God is on the prowl?

I’m having one of those nights, so I decided to log some of my thoughts. Maybe it’ll tire me out so that I can sleep afterwards.

Uncovering a core value

Every now and then I wonder what my “Jesus core values are.” The things I would try and consistently impart to others. As an intern, I know Pastor Stovall consistently stressed the importance of not being offended and submitting to authority.

So those seem to be core values of Pastor Stovall.

For the sake of God’s purposes, advancing the Kingdom, reaching out to the lost, etc., you can never die to self or sacrifice enough.

I think that is one of my core values.

The natural is just not good enough

You can only get so far in the natural. You can only get so far with a well articulated and organized email with a specific call to action. You can only get so far.

The rest of the way requires some supernatural intervention. It requires God to come in and work his mojo. Maybe that’s why God asks us to pray. We can only do so much with our own hands.

To all my fellow co-laborers

Please don’t ever forget this chapter …

1 Corinthians 13 (NIV)
¹ If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. ² If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. ³ If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.

⁴ Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. ⁵ It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. ⁶ Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. ⁷ It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

⁸ Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. ⁹ For we know in part and we prophesy in part, ¹⁰ but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. ¹¹ When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. ¹² Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

¹³ And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

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This is a follow-up to my last post talking about ways to ensure continual spiritual growth. In the post, I talked about some big bucket areas that I wanted to check on monthly to ensure I was growing in them.

Along with those buckets, I wanted to look up some memory verses as reference points for my actions during the month.

Here are the buckets/verses I came up with.

Reading/meditating/memorizing the Bible

As I mature in my faith and understanding of God, it’s become more apparent how critical it is that I saturate myself in the Word of God. I’m getting to the point where I feel like it needs to be my #1 spiritual discipline.

I mean, it’s the stinkin’ Word of God in written form. Where else is God’s wisdom, advice and direction going to be more clear? It doesn’t get more burning bush than “Love God, love your neighbor.” Seriously.

Deuteronomy 10:12-13 (NIV)
¹² And now, O Israel, what does the LORD your God ask of you but to fear the LORD your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, ¹³ and to observe the LORD’s commands and decrees that I am giving you today for your own good?

Interceding for others

I have a tendency to pray for my issues and my needs way too much. Last I checked, there was only one me and billions of other people. To be fair, it seems like I should probably pray for some of those billions of people a little bit more than I have.

1 Timothy 2:1 (NIV)
¹ I urge, then, first of all, that requests, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for everyone

Ability to love people and demonstrate that love

Greatest Commandment (Matthew 22:34-40; Mark 12:28-34) anybody? We have always got to be growing in our love for God and other people.

Romans 13:8 (NIV)
⁸ Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for he who loves his fellowman has fulfilled the law.

Engaging others about Jesus

I live in a bubble. A gimongous, Christian bubble. It’s time to pop that bubble and get dirty. <— period.

Luke 5:32 (NIV)
³² I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”

Confessing sins

This was added after my initial list because it needs to happen. I need to continually be broken before Jesus about all the stuff I’m screwing up.

1 John 1:9 (NIV)
⁹ If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.

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Last Tuesday, Pastor Paul Scanlon of Abundant Life Ministries came and spoke to the staff at Celebration Church.

It was good stuff.

One of the things he talked about was creating an atmosphere of growth. He used a laptop as an analogy for human tendency. If you let a laptop sit there, it will eventually “go to sleep.” The same goes for us as humans. We naturally tend to maintain the status quo and be lazy.

But use a laptop just a little bit and the possibilities are limitless. Force a human to grow and his/her possibilities are limitless.

So I’ve been thinking about creating an atmosphere of growth in my own spiritual life.

For starters, there are a handful of things I know I need to be consistently growing in regardless of what season or stage in life I’m in.

• Reading/meditating/memorizing the Bible
• Praying (not just for my needs, but others as well)
• Ability to love and show love
• Being a light to those who don’t know Jesus

Those are the ones I can think of right now. I’m a systems kind of guy, so what I plan on doing is looking up some related scripture, memorizing them and taking a look at my progress on these areas each month.

Let’s call this Phase 1 of creating a growth environment.

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When you’re on the mission field, you expect God to move. All the time and in every little situation. You are more inclined to “go with God” and be open for the tasks and challenges placed before you.

Not so much in the United States. We have 9 to 5 jobs to attend to. Hobbies, friends, sleep to catch up on. Lawns to mow, errands to run.

You find out someone is sick and respond with “I’ll be sure to pray for you.” And you forget. Been there, done that. You’re in Wal-Mart and the line is ridiculously long and not showing any signs of getting shorter any time soon. You get impatient.

In Costa Rica, when we find out someone is sick or has a specific prayer need, it’s like “alright, let’s throw down some prayer and laying of hands right now.”

What? Our plane is delayed because of a watermelon and we have to stay an extra night? God must be doing something. There must be a reason. What? We’re tired and want to go home and have been waiting on the curb for an hour. How about we sing some worship songs while we wait?

How about we go talk to that guy sitting by himself (Leslie) and lead him to Jesus while we’re at it.

At every step of the trip, our eyes were not tuned into our own needs and desires but the needs and desires of God. At every step, the question was not what about me, but what about Jesus? How can we use this situation, whether good or bad, to represent Jesus and bring the love of God into the world?

One of the things I took away from Costa Rica is the understanding that God can and does move in every little situation.

There is a way to bring the Jesus perspective into pretty much every situation. Even here in the United States amidst our “normal” routines. It’s just a matter of consciously being aware of and taking advantage of them. What if we were to pray with people on the spot? Sing worship songs in long lines. Talk to the people in line with us?

There’s too many unsaved people in the world to be ignoring opportunities given to us everyday.

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Angela

For one of our outreaches, we went into the community of Aurora to pray for people with needs. The first stop was a woman named Angela. <insert prayer requests here>

While we were praying for her, it was easy to see she was overwhelmed by the expression of love from the group.

All 17 of us piled into her house, laid hands on her during prayer and gave her hugs and whatever encouraging Spanish sayings we could muster before leaving.

I think Dios de bendiga (God bless you) was a popular one.

Serena

After praying for Angela, the next stop was a women named Serena.

Serena had been bed-ridden for the past five years with complications with her stomach. Again we packed as many people as we could around her bed and began to pray with her.

The presence of God in that room was thick.

But the party only just started. After everyone was done praying, the group started to funnel out of the house. About this time Serena began to speak. Lauren, our translator, said something along the lines of “that’s not Spanish” (i.e. she was speaking in tongues).

For some of our group, it was the first time they had heard anyone speak in tongues and see God manifest himself that way.

That prompted the few left to continue praying for Serena. Unfortunately, I wasn’t in the room so I can’t give you any more details. But what I can tell you is that when people walked out of Selena’s house, it was pretty obvious God had wrecked some of our group members through the entire experience.

Thank You Giovanni

The reason we knew about Angela and Serena was because people in their neighborhood knew they were in need and could use some prayer. After we had prayed for Angela, a boy named Giovanni said he knew of another woman who needed prayer. This woman ended up being Serena.

After all this went down, I couldn’t help but think of Duke’s talk about knowing your neighbor.

We found out from Serena’s daughter that it had been a long time since anyone had last came to visit or pray for Serena. But here was this boy Giovanni who knew her, knew where she lived and knew her specific need.

Because of that, we were able to see God move in a powerful way. Both through Serena and in our own personal lives.

As Susannah shared one morning, it’s the power of God through simplicity.

I know your name. I know your needs. I’m going to meet it.

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One evening, Duke Hammond (the president of 6:8), shared a little Bible nugget to the group. In part of his talk, he touched on the Greatest Commandment.

Mark 12:30-31 (NIV)
³⁰ Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ ³¹ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”

Love God. Love your neighbor.

Duke went on to share a little experiment they did with one of the teams. Each member of the team was given a picture of a tico (the common name for a Costa Rican) with nothing more than what part of Alajuelita they were from.

No name, just a picture. The task was to find the person.

What the team found out was that everybody in Alajuelita knows their neighbor. Every team member found their assigned person by simply showing the picture to people in the community.

Eventually someone would lead them to where the person lived.

I live in a townhouse with a total of eight connected units. Show me a picture of the person who lives at the other end of my building (less than a 10 second walk away) and I wouldn’t know their name. In fact, I wouldn’t even recognize their face.

How can you love your neighbor, let alone express that love without at least knowing their name?

This little nugget came alive and started to resonate within my spirit later on in the week with a woman named Serena whose story I will share in a future post.

It is a testimony to the power of knowing your neighbors.

Here are the eight people in my building.

• me
• Missy
• Neighbor 2
• Neighbor 3
• Neighbor 4
• Neighbor 5
• Neighbor 6
• Neighbor 7

I hope to fill in the missing names soon.

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Here’s a broad overview of the three types of outreaches we did throughout the week.

1. Community outreach/relationship building
2. Prayer walks
3. Construction-related (e.g. building a roof, painting, etc.)

Community outreach/relationship building

You don’t have to be with 6:8 Ministries for very long before you realize they have a strong emphasis on knowing (by name) the people in the community. A lot of what we did involved interacting with local kids and families.

This was done through various types of outreaches. Teaching English, feeding people, doing a vacation bible school, playing with kids in the park, or just walking through a community and talking with the people you come across.

Prayer walks

Prayer walks at 6:8 take it to a whole new level of personal. It’s not just walking through a community and praying for the people and families with it as if they were all strangers. It is rolling into people’s homes, knowing their names, their specific needs and being able to pray for them.

Construction-related (e.g. building a roof, painting, etc.)

6:8 runs a community center which they are partnering with a local church to use as a food distribution center. To help with that, we began to convert one room into a kitchen by cleaning it out, adding a roof and painting it.

Future Celebration teams will continue where we left off.

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I was reading today in Deuteronomy and came across this verse.

Deuteronomy 4:9 (NIV)
⁹ Only be careful, and watch yourselves closely so that you do not forget the things your eyes have seen or let them slip from your heart as long as you live. […]

Coming back from a 5-day mission trip to Costa Rica, there has been a lot that my eyes have seen and things that have touched my heart.

Costa Rica was my fourth foreign mission trip (sixth overall). As I think about each one, I regret not doing a better job of journaling and keeping record of all that God did for each individual trip.

But not this time around.

For as many posts as it takes, I hope to share with you some of the things I don’t want to forget and give you a glimpse of what God did in Costa Rica both through our team and within me.

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A few years ago I found out my unsaved grandma was about to die. Unfortunately, my Chinese was not up to par, so I couldn’t say what I wanted to say to her. Instead, I wrote a letter and had my aunt read/translate it to my grandma.

The purpose of the letter was to tell her about Jesus. I don’t know why, but I felt like digging it up and sharing it.

And I wish I could tell you there was a happy ending, but there wasn’t.

It’s okay though. Through it all, I came to understand Jesus still sits on the throne in situations like these.

The Letter

Dear Grandma,

I want to write you a letter and tell you how much I love you. You’ve
always been very close to my heart even though we’ve been separated for
awhile. For the longest time you were a mom to me, making sure we got
up for school and taking care of us when we were sick.

I remember when I was younger I would wake up in the mornings and lay in
bed for a few minutes. Then I’d yell “Grandma!!” and wait for you to
answer. Once you answered, I’d be satisfied and get out of bed. If you
didn’t answer, I’d keep yelling and yelling until you would. Sometimes
I’d even start crying until you answered. I didn’t want to talk to you
or anything; I just wanted to know you were still around and close to
me. It made me happy to know you were.

I love you. I want you to know that if I could, I would take your
sickness on me. I would even trade places with you and die so that you
could live instead of me. I never understood that kind of love until
someone did the same for me. Someone died for me. And now I want you
to understand that kind of love. Listen to me now because I would give
my life to anyone if only they’d believe and understand what I’m about
to say.

The man who traded his life for mine was Jesus Christ. To him I owe
everything. I owe him my life and my complete devotion. He’s done so
much that I have to share it with you so that you have a chance to love
Jesus as much as I do. Jesus lived awhile ago and spent his life
sharing God’s promises. These promises eventually led people to kill
Jesus because they were afraid of him. Jesus could have run away and
avoided dying, but he let the people kill him because He wanted everyone
to know how much he was willing to sacrifice for us. He wanted to show
us his love for us.

Even though Jesus died, three days later God raised him from the dead so
that we could experience God’s promise. That promise is that if we
believe Jesus was the Son of God and that God raised him from the dead,
then we can also be raised from the dead when we die. Everyone who
believes will be able to live forever in Heaven with Jesus and everyone
else who believes. But only if you believe Jesus died for you.

Grandma, that’s what I want for you. I cry at night when I pray for you
that you would understand this because it would hurt me so much to call
your name in Heaven and have you not there to answer. This is important
to me.

So Grandma, know that Jesus loves you. He traded his life for yours as
well as mine. Jesus wants to see you in Heaven. I want to see you in
Heaven. All you have to do is believe in your heart that what I just
told you about Jesus is true. I know it is because I’ve believed in
Jesus for five years now and Jesus has revealed himself to me, letting
me know He’s still alive and in Heaven waiting for me.

I pray that you would understand all that I just said. I pray that God
will heal you so that you have more time to live and let Jesus reveal
himself to you as well.

I love you Grandma,
-Alex

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