Out of the Darkness Shines a Great Light

I have been "in the dark" (communications-wise lol) for about nine days. First, I was in Aspen. Then, I arrived back home Friday morning and proceeded almost immediately to Lakewood, close to Long Beach, participating in a dinner to raise money and awareness for our group's mission to India. I was there all day long. That night, after the dinner, I traveled to Joshua Tree National Park to camp, fast, and praise God with nine men from Metro Calvary Chapel (that's my home church).

Since I have been out of the range of communication with anyone outside of a 300-ft. radius this whole time, I have fasted twice. That's a 200% increase in fasting over my total life.

And in those two days of fasting (and their aftermaths), God has spoken very clearly and has begun to clear some thought and behavior patterns out of tHis temple and replaced them with some major ideas. The best way I can summarize these is under the heading My. Yes, that's a capital M.

See, when I refer to God, I use capitals for His name, His pronoun, and His possessives. It is a way to refer to God that I believe shows I consider Him to be more than a lower case. It is by no means my invention, and nor do I mean it to be pretentious. I merely want to give Him His due glory.

Anyway, when He spoke to me last week, He started asking me several questions. "When are you going to accept My grace and stop trying to produce your own? When are you going to start living by My power, and not yours? When are you going to proclaim My name to your friends and family who don't know Me like you do? When are you going to start relying on My wisdom and insight for that which you pray? When are your values going to be My values - justice and freedom for the oppressed and those in bondage, love for your neighbor, to profess to them the
most loving Gift I've given them in My Son's death and resurrection?"

10 months ago I rededicated my life to Christ. I read Scriptures constantly. And I kept it up for a good 8 months. And yet, I didn't see the type of transformation I expected. I know that years of habit are difficult to break, but I thought that God would be able to turn me around in no time, if I only checked off a long list of items I thought would please Him enough to change me.

And yet, rather than transformation, I experienced stagnation. And the more and more stagnant I felt, the more and more I was tempted to give up relationship with my Savior. I would, at points, and things would go back to the way they were, and I would run to Him with my tail between my legs, asking, "When will I care for what you care about? When will I stop this endless cycle?"

And then, I fasted for a day. I gave up physical food on a day when I was in a high-altitude city, hiking and playing soccer. We went to my favorite restaurant in Aspen before my housemate's concert. My stomach yearned for the delicious tacos and nachos I saw at La Cantina. But, God was with me and kept telling me, "Rely on me." Throughout the day, I constantly had to tell Jesus, "I need Your bread of life right now. I need you to sustain me." And He did. The Holy Spirit constantly reminded me that He was with me and that this fast was for a purpose.

When we got home Friday morning, I was ready to go and spend time with our India group to prepare, host, and serve a dinner to sponsors. As I have told several people, I have never been a part of a group that works so well together. Each member was not a cog in the machine, but instead was performing each job so well that they were able to complete them ahead of schedule and help others do what they need to do. When people saw a task that needed to be completed, one, two, or three of us would step up and do it. It gives a whole new meaning to the words "unity in the Body." And to top it all off, my Bible study leader from Metro picked me up to drive us out to meet our pastor and several men from the church at Joshua Tree.

We woke up the next morning and Mike began to draw parallels between physical battle and spiritual battle. I was amazed as Mike and my pastor started talking about the enemy's knowledge of our critical vulnerabilities and how we need to ask God to shore them up. In warfare, a primary principle is to leverage all of your strength against the opponent's weakness. Spiritually, the enemy will take advantage of those critical vulnerabilities, pitting all of his strength against that particular weakness. It makes me wonder how many critical vulnerabilities I actually have. It also drives me to pray that God strengthens those areas, and also that I call on Jesus' strength, because it is at once my ultimate and only strength and the enemy's ultimate weakness. "Where, O Death, is your sting?"

And today, I get to share the gospel with a housemate. I was so much the more bolder for being in the desert and speaking about the realities of Christ and the realities of those who oppose Him. It gave me a heart to really open up to her in a much bolder way than I have before.

Then, Whitney sends me a link to a sermon from Francis Chan about the fact that because God's Spirit lives inside us, we should be the most powerful, boldest people there are. After all, it is the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from death back to life that lives inside us. What a powerful thought!

What an awesome week of reflection, prayer, and listening! May God use this last week before we leave as an awesome extension of that time for me to WALK OUT the ways He's showing me. Pray for our team heavily this week, that God would use us and give us more and more of His power and boldness to proclaim His Light in the midst of great darkness!

P.S. We also received our itinerary today. It is going to be fantastic. Let you know a little more about it soon!