The Filthy Mattress

mattress

Every day on my lunch break I take a walk. I find it’s good to interrupt my otherwise sedentary desk job with a little blood circulation and fresh air. There is a strip mall just down the road from my company so I usually walk to it and go around the back of the plaza before looping around front and back up the street to resume work.

A couple of weeks ago as I was walking around the back of these buildings I saw that someone had thrown a mattress out behind one of the stores. It appeared to be clean and fresh – it looked brand new! On that particular day, it was warm and sunny with an ever so slight breeze. As I walked by the mattress, it looked so enticing. I thought, wouldn’t it be nice to just lie on a comfy mattress and watch the clouds drift by as the sun warmed my face in the cool breeze? It seemed like the perfect way to enjoy the beautiful weather and rest and relax. Of course not knowing where the mattress came from, I didn’t entertain the thought for long.

Day by day, as my walk took me by this mattress, I began to notice changes. After just a day it started collecting stray dirt kicked up by the wind, and falling leaves from a nearby maple tree. Within a few days, the corners started darkening slightly. After a day of rain, I noticed it had lingering water stains after everything around it had dried. It wasn’t long before the wet, dirty mattress became a breeding ground for all kinds of critters. The edges of the once bright mattress became black with mold and fungus. At some point, an animal evidently ripped a hole in the center and made off with some of the stuffing, the remainders of which lay strewn about the ground beside it. The once enticing mattress quickly fell into a state of filth and decay.

As I walked by this mattress for perhaps the dozenth time, the Lord spoke to my heart and said, “This is what neglect will do”. You see, the mattress hadn’t done anything “wrong”; it simply sat there as mattresses have a tendency to do. In terms of time, it was still new; only a couple of weeks had passed. But in terms of quality, it was far from what we would describe as “new”. Indeed it now presents itself as used and worn out. Worse than that, it is soiled and repulsive. The problem is that it was neglected and left unprotected in the elements. On that first day, the elements had been friendly and inviting and did not seem to pose a threat to its integrity, but in short-order they destroyed the defenseless mattress. Had the mattress remained inside where it would have been shielded from the wind, dirt, rain, and critters, it likely would have lasted for years. Without protection, it lasted only days.

In that moment the Lord reminded me that it is imperative that I remain under the umbrella of His protection. It might be tempting to go out into the world to find some kind of relaxation, but it is an illusion. What looks inviting at first glance can quickly destroy us if we don’t have the proper guards in place. We must guard our hearts and minds. We must take heed where we go and what we leave exposed to the elements. The Bible asks, “How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation” (Hebrews 2:3)? So let us strive not to neglect the things of the Lord. Let us hold them precious and protect them. As we embrace the teachings and safeguards that the Lord has put in place to protect us, He is providing us with shelter and demonstrating His unfailing love.

In His Love,

Rebekah L.

A Vision and a Prayer

Nov2

So, as I have walked through New York City, following a fairly steady route throughout the winter, spring, and summer (between February and August, and less frequently starting in September), there have a few people who have become staple parts to my daily commute. One in particular is a homeless man named Bradley. Sometimes he’s more awake than others, and sometimes his words are more slurred than others, but no matter what kind of day he’s having he is easily one of the most personable people in New York. He might be filthy, but he is always smiling and always cheerful. He talks about his past with fond remembrance rather than bitterness, though he is from another part of the country and it’s been a long time since he’s had contact with any loved ones.

I don’t know exactly what happened in his life and what issues he’s faced that caused his decline from then, when he had a wife and a stepdaughter he still refers to as his princess, until now. We have a game we play, where he gives me a name, I look up its meaning on my phone, and he relates the meaning of the name back to the person they were. I don’t know most of the names he gives me or who these people were in his life, just a few snippets he’s given me.

I do know that the first day I met him I was hoping to pray for him, but before I could even ask he was expounding on how the government was a big conspiracy and how Jesus wasn’t real, His miracles were impossible and the whole Christianity thing was just a made-up story that people get fed today because the governmental powers that be think we’re dumb enough to follow it.

That was the one and only time I’ve seen him agitated. Suffice to say he was not receptive to the idea of prayer. But, That said, he has been heavy on my heart lately. I have been vaguely praying for him as God has led me, and praying into God’s plan for him, but the past few days God has gotten much more specific in how I’m to minister to him. Basically, He told me He wants me to do a bible study with Bradley, and gave me a specific place in the city where he wants this to happen. It’s near where I always see him, and it happens to be on some ground that I claimed for Jesus a few months back (possibly a story for another day, but long story short: God is pretty cool). He also told me in no uncertain terms that Bradley won’t willingly go there with me, and certainly won’t willingly read the bible with me (had God consulted me first, I easily could have told Him this part and spared Him the trouble of sending me the vision, but I digress). That being the case, my next direction was simple: if he won’t come with me, I am to go to him. Sit on the subway floor, by his side. If he won’t do a Bible study with me, I am to read my bible by myself, as I sit next to him. I am to simply talk to him. To seek God for wisdom and discernment on every word that comes out of his mouth. To seek wisdom and discernment over his heart. To let God fill my mouth with the words to minister to those places, and to supply the bible verses as needed. Eventually, there will be more direct bible interaction. God promised this, if I follow His guidance. In short, I am to go low and slow here.

I have never done anything quite like this before. But I’m game if Jesus is. Interestingly, I haven’t actually seen Bradley since this has been revealed to me. Either way, I thank Him for what He’s shown me, and I stand expectant and believing for Him to do a work here. And so today I just ask that you pray into God’s will over this man and my role in his life. That I would hear God clearly throughout and fully lean on Him to guide my steps. That most of all, He would move in this man’s life and do a work in him until he is walking in the fullness of the identity God has for him. Umm…..and also that if I am meant to move on this, I would cross paths with the guy. Or at least be told where he is so I can go find him. The city is huge, and there are lots of places where a homeless man might go when the weather cools – sometimes it would be so nice if directives from on high came with a GPS. Or a major clearing of the NYC smog so I could use the north star like the wise men, but honestly at this point I think dropping a supernatural Bradley-tracking device in my lap is the easier option. Umm…..and since wherever Bradley is, it’s probably somewhere like the subway floor (where I normally see him – he even makes himself comfy and goes shirtless and shoeless down there) or an alley, prayers for my protection would also be appreciated. Though I have to say, there’s nowhere safer than in God’s arms!

I will keep you posted if, after all this subway-sitting and alley searching, I also need prayers to supernaturally boost the strength of my washing machine.

Meanwhile, thank you all very much, and God bless!

~Rebekah A

The Fear of the Lord

Oct29

The secret of the Lord is with them that fear him; and he will shew them his covenant. –Psalm 25:14

There is a critical aspect to our relationship with God that is severely lacking in many churches and individual believers today. It is the fear of the Lord. We cannot truly have a right relationship with God until we have a reverent fear of Him. This fear is not a terror that He will hurt us, rather it is a respect for the awesomeness, the power, and the authority that He has in our lives. We don’t ever want to be in a position where we are not one of His. We don’t ever want to be outside of our Father’s presence!

When we have a true reverence for the Lord, it changes the way we interact with Him, with our brothers and sisters in the Lord, and with the world. The Bible says that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom (Proverbs 9:10). When we come to Him with a proper sense of awe, He will reveal the secrets of covenant relationship with Him. It is only when we come to understand the awesomeness of who He is that we can begin to love Him with all our heart, soul, and might (Deuteronomy 6:5). Why is this? It is because you can only love someone to the extent that you know them. Knowledge of God begins with a proper fear of God (Proverbs 1:7). The more we reverence the Lord, the more we know Him, and the more we can love Him. There is no greater transforming power than the power of Love. It was love that kept Jesus on the cross at Calvary. And is that love which transforms our interactions with God and His people!

The Bible says that the “fear of the Lord is a fountain of life, to turn one away from the snares of death” (Proverbs 14:27). It is the fear of the Lord that kept Joseph from sinning when he was tempted by Potiphar’s wife. He had been discarded by his brothers, sold into slavery and taken to a foreign land. Surely, in such a lonely and discouraging state many others would have fallen to the temptation, but Joseph had a proper fear of the Lord (Genesis 39:9). He did not allow his present situation to determine his actions; instead it was his fear of a Holy God that dictated his behavior. In the Bible, those that God called His friends were those who trembled at His Word and presence and were quick to obey, no matter the cost. In other words those who were close enough to God to be called His friends were those who had a reverent fear of Him!

We cannot serve two masters. Either we will fear God or we will fear the people. If we believe God and rely on His Holy Word the choice is simple. The Bible declares that “the fear of man bringeth a snare: but whoso putteth his trust in the Lord shall be safe” (Proverbs 29:25). Compare that with the rewards of fearing God. When we fear God we begin the process to knowledge (Proverbs 1:7), wisdom (Proverbs 9:10), and sonship (2 Corinthians 6:18-7:1). Fearing God also brings numerous blessings such as guidance (Psalm 25:12), compassion (Psalm 103:13) and the promise to be happy and fed (Psalm 128:2)! He also promises us long life (Proverbs 10:27) and protection for us (Psalm 115:11) as well as our children (Deuteronomy 5:29).

A proper fear of the Lord changes our relationship to God because it allows us to have a relationship with Him as He intended. It reminds us to remain obedient to Him and it helps to keep us pure and holy before Him. “Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man” (Ecclesiastes 12:13)!

In His Love,

Rebekah L.

Perspective

Oct2

Tonight I am in a fog. Why? Well, ultimately it’s because God is doing some great things in the church I came from before I moved here, and He is doing some great things in me. He has completely lit a fire under me and I don’t want it to ever go out. Don’t worry, I’ll explain the fog part later.

The season I’m in has been months in the making. There is a very sick little girl that my old church has been praying for, which is perhaps a blog post for another day (a long one). Through a whole variety of things, God has shown us that He has some very specific and miraculous plans for her, and He wants us to stand with Him to carry them out. The time for that to happen is near, and so it is a time to press into God deeply. Nothing less than the purity of His truth and power will suffice.

While we have been waiting on that, God’s been growing us. Through a series of seemingly unconnected visions, dreams, and even random gifts, He has brought us to a season of tearing down high places within our hearts and churches, and again pressing in. And actually, He used me to reveal the connecting thread that brought us into this phase of deep growth in Him, which is awesome. It wasn’t an obvious connection and drew on prior knowledge that I had, that made God’s message clear when it was combined with this stuff that was happening. But I never would have spoken up (because it didn’t seem relevant), if my prayer partner literally the night before hadn’t had a word for me about speaking boldly no matter what I felt. So I listened to the word she delivered, spoke out, and it turned out to be right on the money. God is awesome in the ways He uses us. This is perhaps another long blog post for another day. My boldness has been increasing in leaps and bounds lately, and I’ve spoken out about a lot of things God has told me when I previously might not have had the confidence to do so, but this grew my boldness even more. Yay!

Anyway, the underlying thread of everything is that we are in a season to press into Jesus, to passionately and radically pursue Him. I like the sound of it already.

In an effort to ‘press in’, I have been fasting a bit more regularly. My typical fasting pattern is to abstain from food for a 24-hr period. Since this season seems like it calls for a more prolonged endeavor, I have gotten creative. I am fasting sugar. Detoxing from it, really. I know, I know. It’s a health fad. It’s a trendy kickoff to a trendy diet. Truth be told, I couldn’t care less about the trend. It is also something that my body is currently dependent on, and to me that is all that matters. I want my body to run the way it was created to run and to be dependent on nothing except for Jesus Christ Himself. It’s my physical manifestation of pressing in. The problem with detoxing from sugar is that you go through a mini withdrawal, and you get sort of sick for about a week. I am on Day 2, hence my brain fog. I’m also fairly convinced that someone drove into my bedroom with a Mack truck and ran over me while I slept, and then magically glued my walls back together. How they did it, I will never know, but I am definitely feeling the effects!

It has been interesting, to be spiritually on fire and physically foggy. I am pressing in, which is the whole point, and both reaching and expecting breakthrough. I am grateful for the season, because I am growing in leaps and bounds and am expectant that God will deliver on what He’s told me. I’m even grateful for the fog because it forces me to really focus to hone in on the spirit, and to depend on His help to get even mundane tasks done. I’m mostly grateful that God has given me some perspective on where I’m at, and where He’s headed both with me and the Body as a whole. I can’t wait to see what He does!

God bless!

~Rebekah A

His Incredible Timing, His Unrelenting Love

Sep21

I have a friend who is pretty much a full-time missionary, dividing her time between Haiti and Brazil. In Brazil she goes to places so poor that children are routinely fed warm water with salt as a meal. In Haiti she works in orphanages and teaches English. And so much more. I recently got permission to share with you readers her various testimonies, stories, and updates. This particular testimony made me cry when I watched it – so all you weepers out there might want to make a grab for the tissues now. It’s of a woman in a brothel and is one of many. God moves in dark places. He is there. When the bottom is falling out of our worlds, He has a place for us to land. To be held. To be loved. He is unrelenting in His love, it never lets up, and His desire to hold us close and abide with us is unending.

Be encouraged by this today, and God bless!

~Rebekah A

If Ye Be Christ’s

Sep17

I am currently in Taiwan, but I’m going to share my exciting story of what God did the other day when I was still in China! God is so amazing!! It was so hard to restrain myself from writing about it, but because of the way woman reacted, I felt it best to be a little cautious and not share what happened until I left. I was probably just being paranoid, but you hear all these stories of the Communist Party reading outgoing emails and blog posts so I decided not to take any chances.

Anyway, from the moment I stepped off the plane in the Philippines I had not had a minute to myself. Literally every moment has been spent with my co-workers or my host family, or my students, or the villagers. For an introvert who lives by themselves and is used to a lot of alone time, it’s a little difficult to always be “on”. I needed a few minutes to clear my head and unwind so when we finally got some downtime, I decided to take a walk. On my way out the door, something told me to grab my bag. I realize now that it was the prompting of the Holy Spirit.

I had intended on pretty much just walking a straight line so that I wouldn’t get lost, but when I got to a fork in the road I heard a voice tell me to go left. It was not a literal voice that I heard with my ear. I just heard it like a thought in my head, but it was the voice of my Chinese teacher (from my dreams)! Immediately, I remembered the lessons where he coached me to move left, or move right, or step back etc. without hesitation. Obedience. So I went left. I walked a ways further, and again I felt a prompting to take another left. So I did. Then I felt to just walk straight for awhile.

After a bit, I walked by a woman sitting on a bench. She called out to me, “Mei guo ren, mei guo ren” (American, American). I just ignored her because this has happened several times simply because people are surprised to see Westerners. But then she called out in English saying, “Miss?” I stopped. She spoke in a very thick accent so I had to strain to understand, but she said, “Miss, you are missionary or you are here for company?” I was surprised by the question, but just said, “I’m here with my company.” She looked really disappointed and just said, “oh, okay.” I started to walk away, but something about the disappointment in her voice stopped me. I turned back and asked why she wanted to know. She said, “Your God told me to come to wait on the bench until the missionary come.” At this I was taken aback. The Spirit had also prompted me to go there by taking those left turns. I sat next to her on the bench. I figured she must have some Christian understanding because she used the word missionary. She also seemed to associate this word with Americans since she called out to me. And she said “Your God”. This woman didn’t know anything about me so to say “Your God” was interesting to me. It’s exactly the way that my ex-boyfriend used to refer to God before he came to know Him for himself. I asked her if there was something she wanted to know. She said, “Yes, did American take their God from Jewish God? There was a man Abraham. And Jewish God promise him a lot of children and promise him he inherit what God have, right? Why Americans think they can have this God when they not from Abraham. Doesn’t the Jewish God make this promise to Abraham’s family?” I realized this was a very important question because she wasn’t really asking me about Americans. She wanted to understand how the rights and privileges of a child of God got extended to gentiles. Somehow, somewhere she had some teaching, but it was incomplete. She was longing to be part of God’s family, but if Americans didn’t really have a right to this God, then logically she wouldn’t either.

I had a bible in my bag. I wanted to take it out and show her some things, but teaching the bible outside the government sanctioned Three Self Church is illegal. Granted, persecution is nothing like it used to be, but an American will be arrested (and likely deported) if they bring their bible out and publicly start sharing it. It is fine to bring your bible into the country for personal reasons, but you can’t share it with others. But then I had an idea! I pulled out my phone. I have an offline version of the Bible in English and Chinese on my phone. If someone were to see her looking at a phone, they wouldn’t think anything of it. I started scrolling through Galatians. I knew what I was looking for was in that book, but I wasn’t sure what the exact verse was. Finally, I found it. Galatians 3:29, “And if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.” I read it in English and then switched it to the Chinese to let her read it for herself. I apologized that I only had a version with traditional characters. She excitedly told me that she knows how to read traditional Chinese. I explained, “If you belong to Christ –to Jesus, then God sees you as a descendant of Abraham and you get all the same privileges and blessings. Anyone; American, French, Korean, Chinese, anyone can be a seed of Abraham. They just have to belong to Christ. I told her that belonging to Jesus is where the real blessing lies. “The point is not to belong to Abraham, it’s to belong to Jesus because He is the only who can save us.” I asked her if she belonged to Jesus. She looked around nervously and began almost to whisper. She said she had started going to a church in a friend’s house. She continued looking around nervously. She said the problem is that they only have a small portion of the bible and the part they have talks about Abraham and so she thought maybe we stole the Jewish God. She said, “I know they sell bibles in the city, but they are government bibles and people here can’t afford to go to the city and buy them anyway so we just read about Abraham over and over.”

Suddenly I knew why I was there! When my ex-boyfriend sent me my Chinese/English bible, he actually sent me two bibles. One is the Chinese/English parallel and the second one was a Chinese/Pinyin parallel bible. He thought that would be helpful to me because I could see how the characters were pronounced if I came across one I had never seen. The trouble is that knowing how to pronounce a character does absolutely no good if you don’t know what the character means. Therefore, since that bible didn’t have any English, it wasn’t of much use to me. My Chinese is not nearly good enough to not have an English translation so I never use that bible. When I was packing for this trip, on a whim I threw that Bible (along with my regular bible) in my bag. I thought I might have an opportunity to witness to someone in Taiwan and then we’d both have a Bible to look at. It didn’t occur to me that this would happen in China because of the Traditional characters. But actually a Chinese/pinyin Bible is perfect for someone in China because in China they learn pinyin in school. If she came across a traditional character that she didn’t know, she could look at the pinyin, and through context would probably be able to figure out what simplified character it represented.

I hesitatingly told the woman I had something for her. As I was reaching in my bag, she said, “no no, you don’t need to give me anything”, but when I pulled out the Bible and handed it to her, her eyes got wide. She snatched it and hid it under her shirt. Then she looked around to make sure no one was watching and pulled it back out. She held it to her face. She kissed it! Then she clutched it tightly to her chest holding it in her arms. She quickly hid it under her shirt again. With tears in her eyes she said, “oh meiguoren, I knew you’d come.” We talked for just a few more minutes. I briefly told her about the book of Acts and that she should be baptized in Jesus name. She said she’d study the whole bible and share it with the church.

She told me how when she was a kid her grandmother had forced her to learn the traditional version of every simplified character she learned in school. She’d spend hours writing out the simplified characters and then her grandmother would make her spend hours more writing out the same characters in traditional form. She said she had resented it at the time, but now she knew it was all worth it. Then she admonished me not to tell anyone in China that I had given her the Bible. She was quite nervous the whole time which made me pretty nervous too, but I was sure that God was in it!

Now that I’m safely in Taiwan I felt to share this amazing testimony. We seriously have no idea what a privilege it is to have Bibles so readily available to us. Watching the way this woman held the Word of God was a reminder to me of how precious the Word of God truly is! Pray for this woman and her church!

Learning to Trust

Sep11

“So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.” ~ Isaiah 41:10

Any followers of this blog will have probably read by now that I’m in a pretty bad place financially. I’ve been living in NYC for two years now and have yet to find steady employment. And yes, I’ve been looking. First it was the house falling apart, so I lived off of savings while we sorted it out. Then it was part of my contract as roommate to a man named Jimmy with muscular dystrophy – part of the deal was to be around on Mondays and Tuesdays (the two days of the week when he’s not at work). As it turned out, the work I was qualified to do takes place in schools or hospitals, and most definitely involves Mondays and Tuesdays.

So about the time I was looking for different work, Jimmy’s full-time aide got hit by a NYC bus. He’s been recovering slowly and painfully and still has a long road ahead of him. In the meantime, we’ve had a revolving door of aids while looking for a replacement and through it all I have been the one go-to backup. I’ve been permanently on call for the better part of a year. None of these situations are conducive to steady employment but I’m trying. Unsuccessfully, so far, but I do have a few potential prospects so be praying that one of them comes through!

Anyway, things have come to a head with some of my student loans this week. I basically ran out of deferment time and have to come up with a lot of money now. Which I of course don’t have. Whenever it came up with Jimmy, he made it clear that he didn’t have it either. As for my family….well, if they had it, I’d have it. And we all very much don’t. I don’t even many possessions to sell – most of my clothes are wearing out and I sold my car awhile ago.

So here I was. Needing more than I had. Owing more than I could give. With no crutch, no options, no man-made solutions left. I have to say it was a new situation for me. I have been in places where I’ve needed God….but never in a situation where literally my only hope for getting through it was to count on a miracle. Until now. And I wasn’t happy about it. There were a few days (and a few phone calls) where all I could do was break down and cry.

So I told myself that God knew best, maybe it was for the best. He does all things for our good, right? If I am floundering, maybe I need to redefine what it means to thrive. And that’s true. I do need to do that. Eventually. But what I need to do most of all, right this second, is stop trying to define anything. Stop trying to scramble and come up with crazy solutions and then pray that God shows me favor when I try to make them happen. No. That’s not trust. That’s self-reliance and looking to God to be my sidekick. That’s what I’ve always done. I’ve always landed on my feet, figured it out for myself, and just prayed to God for backup support. Sure I give Him credit. I thank Him for the blessing. But that’s not true trust. Trust is letting God do the defining, letting God do the planning and providing. I thought I trusted God. But this experience so far has shown me that I’ve never fully depended on Him. I’ve never fully, with everything in me, trusted His full provision. I’ve trusted Him for favor in my provisions for myself, but I’ve never given Him full and complete control. Until I had no choice.

So I told myself that I was going to trust this time. I was going to ride this ride, and let God stretch the boundaries of my heart. Let Him push the barriers of my control. That I would praise Him through every painful moment, and on the other side I’d come out like gold. That I would trust Him to turn this trial into a testimony.

And wouldn’t you know, even with nothing left the temptation to take the reigns was still there. In email correspondence about a potential job, I was thinking through how to word things and what would best work in my favor. I started to pray, but as I opened my mouth I realized I was about to pray for favor in my efforts. I wanted SO BADLY to ask Him for that. But I curbed the impulse and instead asked for His will to be done. For Him to give me the words to use to help His will be done. That I was trusting Him as my provider to do what was best for me. Typed the email. Hit send. And then I praised Him and worshiped Him with everything I had.

I haven’t gotten a reply to that email yet. But sure enough, our faithful God delivered anyway. Where yesterday there were no options, today there are. I mean it. My school actually bought my biggest loan and is giving me more payment options. When does that happen? With nothing to offer, no escape route, and nothing to save myself with, I am leaning on Jesus. And He is upholding me and seeing me through.

I am learning to go lower, to give up more control and lean on God harder. The more I do, the more I’m finding Him. When that’s the result, I can only be grateful for the hardship. He’s well worth the cost and He’s showing me that more and more every minute! I think of it like leaning on a wall. You can lean to different degrees, right? You can be standing just about upright and barely making contact with the wall. If the wall disappeared you’d stay standing. Or you could be doing one of those workout moves like a wall squat or pushups or something. If the wall disappeared then, you’d be in trouble. I’ve leaned on God before, but it’s not fully leaning if I’m still supporting my own weight. Up to now, were He to step away, I might startle or miss a step, but I wouldn’t necessarily fall. This time around, I’d faceplant and probably concuss myself. And yet it’s working out better than it usually does. My relinquishing that last bit of control is letting God hold up this whole situation, and it turns out He’s much stronger than me. It kind of makes me wonder what I’ve been missing this whole time!

With that thought in mind, I leave you with a song that’s been on my heart today:

God bless!

~ Rebekah A

The God of the Impossible

Aug20

I have been talking to a Buddhist man at my job about Jesus for awhile now. He always listens to what I have to say and compares and contrasts my beliefs with his own, but I was never really sure if he took anything I said to heart. To me, it seemed that he wasn’t really interested in Christianity beyond an academic understanding.

Today something interesting happened. This man’s son stopped by my office (his son also works for our company). I rarely talk to the son because we don’t work in the same department and most of the decisions for this family are handled by dad. The son asked me a couple of work related questions, but each time I thought his question was answered, he hesitated about leaving. Finally, I asked him if there was something else he wanted to talk to me about. He took a deep breath and gave me a half nod. He said, “you’ve been talking to my father a lot recently, right?” He then stuck his head out of my office door to quickly look down the corridor to make sure no one was around to hear what he was about to say. I suspect he was double checking to make sure his father wasn’t within earshot. When he determined the coast was clear he said, “My dad wants us to ask Jesus to reunite our family.” You see, my co-worker and his sons are in the United States while his wife and two daughters remain in his home country. For legal and political reasons they have not been able to return home, nor bring the rest of the family to the US. Apparently my co-worker told his son, “We tried our home country’s government and that didn’t work, we tried this country’s government and that didn’t work, we tried lighting incense, we tried burning paper and none of it worked. What harm can come from trying Jesus?”

So the son asked me if I told his father that praying to my God would bring their family back together. The son was very nervous and careful with his words, but it was clear that his family has been through a lot and he didn’t like the idea of me giving his father false hope. He feels it is useless to keep pining away for something that is impossible and he does not want to see his father’s spirits crushed by yet another disappointment.

I can understand that he wants to protect his father from further pain and I admire him for his effort to do so. The thing is that I never told his father that Jesus could reunite their family. To be honest, his father never talks about the family back home and as insensitive and naive as it might sound, it actually never occurred to me that this was something he would consider. All I have done is share the testimonies of things Jesus has done in my own life. The fact remains though, that Jesus can bring his family back together! He is the God of the impossible! It is when things seem most impossible that Jesus can move. It is often when we have tried everything else and we are most desperate that God can show us who He is and what He is capable of.

Please pray with me that this man and his son will step out in faith to ask Christ to do the impossible in their lives. Pray that God will honor that faith with a mighty move to reunite this family. Pray that they will know without a doubt Who it was that answered their prayer and endeavor to follow the One True God. God is able!

In His Love,

Rebekah L.

A Day of Thanksgiving

Aug17

“For great is Your love, higher than the heavens; Your faithfulness reaches to the skies.” ~Psalm 108-4

If you are a regular reader of this blog you have probably heard of my ongoing saga to find a personal care aide for my roommate Jimmy, confined to a wheelchair due to SMA (spinal muscular atrophy). We used to have an aide – a great one in fact. This past February, he was hit by a New York City bus and has been engrossed in a slow, painful (and currently stalled) recovery.

This man, as a side note, was raised by a Muslim mother and a Hindu father. As he put it, “I was raised with so many religions, I figured I may as well celebrate the Christian holidays too.”. While this sounded promising, it didn’t exactly speak to a heart transformation. And so, after the accident, I prayed for him profusely. For a physical healing, yes, but mostly for a life-changing revelation of who Jesus is, for Jesus to rock his heart and his life and that he would experience the pure love and peace that comes from His arms. That he would know who he was celebrating.

I prayed…..and Jesus answered.

Today I went to what I thought was the Guyanese equivalent of Thanksgiving. I had no idea what was going on or what to expect. It turned out to be his and his wife’s personal day of Thanksgiving, of opening up their home to their entire church (via many, many chairs set up in the backyard) and giving thanks to the Lord for all they have.

Today I witnessed our former aide speak to his church. His face was contorted into a grimace of pain and he struggled to stand, leaning so hard on a cane that his arms were shaking. I knew he was using all his muscles to balance himself because he has yet to regain full feeling in one of his legs. But not a bit of that came into his testimony. Instead, the words out of his mouth were of such passionate gratitude that he started to tear up.

And so I have my turn to give thanks. I am so, so thankful that I serve a God who is so present in our lives that he can perform miracles – not just in the physical world around us, but inside of us. That we can know Him, walk with Him, live with Him, open ourselves up to His unceasing love and attention. Our God is not at an altar; we don’t have to go anywhere special to find Him. He’s not in incense, He’s not in fire, He’s not in flowers. He’s in us, with us and surrounding us, active in both the biggest moments of our lives and the minutia. He listens to the cries of our hearts – and He answers.

God bless!

~Rebekah A

Guest Post: Emerson of Words From a Feather “What God Has Taught Me About Marriage and Love”

Aug11

Editor’s Note: Our weekly guest spot is our effort to help our reading community connect with each other. Emerson is the daughter of our very first guest post contributor Heather Mertens of 40yearwanderer and what a talented family they are! For all of us still waiting for “Mr(s). Right,” may her words encourage us now.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately – about love, marriage, future family. I know every girl dreams about it, but this is different. I’ve started seeing it in a whole new way. True that I’ve gotten older and more mature, but something happened that changed my perspective. I started to really see into the details of what it means to love. I don’t see it as trying to find the right guy to fall in love with almost as if it would happen by some magic, but instead I see it as completely giving it over to God and trusting Him because He always takes care of me in every part of my life. I always knew that if God’s plan for my life included someone to share it with then He would bring me the right man, but what changed for me recently is how I feel about it. It was always a nice thought, but I never really thought too deeply about it. Now, I’ve started to realize just how amazing it is that He loves me and cares for me so much that he has someone waiting for me who will love me – truly love me, even with all my many imperfections and mistakes.

I realized the more I focused on God and my relationship with Him and the more my love grew for Him, the more free I was to love others and myself. And then something happened that I can’t even begin to describe or even completely understand. I started to feel love for my future husband. I never knew it was possible to have that deep kind of love for someone I don’t even know. It makes me so excited and emotional to think about being able to actually get to express that love to my future husband someday, and it makes me cry. Cry like I just watched a Nicholas Sparks movie kind of cry. Only much deeper. It’s a true longing and desire to know the one that God has made for me to love. I actually feel a sense of missing him, and I don’t even know him yet.

Maybe you think I’m crazy. I know nothing about actually being married, I’ve never had a boyfriend, and I’ve never even been on a date before so I don’t know what it’s like to love a person to that extent. But it’s not thinking I love someone I know, it’s knowing I love someone I don’t know. There’s a big difference there and I’m aware of that. I know that this is something that is coming from me getting closer to God and wanting what He wants for me. God has put that love inside of us all, and it is a true love because it comes from Him.

I see now that the biggest blessing in marriage is not to be loved by someone, although that is an incredible and indescribable blessing, but to given someone to love and to be able to fully love them. It’s something I know only God completely understands, and He’s giving me only a small glimpse of it. I really wish I could put how it makes me feel into clear words, but there is no way to describe it exactly. I want to tell everyone out there how it feels to know that God has already taken care of it all and the peace it brings, and that they don’t have to go searching for love. Love has already found them, and He has someone for them that will love them more than they could even begin to dream about.

I talk to God about it and I pray for my future husband all the time. I pray for our future relationship and I pray for his relationship now with God. Instead of trying to find the “perfect guy”, I’m striving to become the person and the future wife that God wants me to be while I wait for the one He has for me. I always want to be myself and be loved for who I am, but I want to always be the best of myself – the woman that God made me to be. So instead of only wishing and dreaming about love and marriage, I’m preparing myself for when that time comes. I want God to always be first in our relationship, and I want my husband to always put God before me. I pray that we can build each other up and also help and support each other in our individual relationships with God. This has also made me see friendships and family in a whole new way, and how every kind of love is an amazing blessing from God. I don’t ever want to take any of it for granted.

I could really write about this forever because it’s such an amazing thing to think about, and that is only a tiny bit of what God is showing me now and how I feel. That’s all I could manage to get into words, and I prayed that God would give me the right words to express it in the best way that I could. I just wish everyone could see the truth about His love and what He has prepared for those who accept it. I hope this helps anyone who is waiting for their future spouse to come along. It has certainly helped me and I am beyond excited about the future and what God has planned. And I have to admit, I’m more than just a little excited to finally know who it is that God has had for me to love all along.

-Emerson

Emerson Mertens is a 19 year old choreographer, dancer, and teacher, who writes about what God has taught her already in her young life. You can read more of her inspired, faith filled life at her blog.

http://wordsfromafeather.wordpress.com/about/

Published by permission of the author. Submit your own post at beingrebekah@outlook.com.