The Briefing
Soooo yes, hello again… hopefully you still remember me, I’m sorry I haven’t gotten a post up in many weeks or months 😬. But I’m back on the grid now and will probably have one coming out like… every other day for a while to try to catch up. I’m in South Africa already. I’m out of Cambodia, out of Eswatini… yup. Ouch. That’s humiliating. But I have sort of been writing some posts along the way, just haven’t gotten the chance or been able to post them, so they’ll be coming out as fast as I can transfer them from my notes app to this one (a harder task than you would suspect). But let’s get on with it already.
The Beginning of the Post
Believe me when I tell you I’ve tried to sit down and write this next post 4 or 5 times and failed every time. But I’m two weeks into Swazi now (at the time) and I really got some stuff to share.
The reason it was so hard for me to write is that sitting down to do it I have a challenging mix of feelings. Half of me wants desperately to be able to share the true depth of love I‘ve got for this place, the kids, the ministry… but the other half of me doesn’t even want to try, knowing I’ll be disappointed with whatever I come up with. Like a beautiful picture compared to the real view… or a Hershey chocolate compared to Lindt… yum. Ok I’m good to go now.
I’ll write this one about something’s that went on and I realized inside of me, and I’ll write another post more tailored to stories about the kids next time. I got two things to share…
Thing to Share #1
The first biblical truth that I learned experientially is the simple fact that you can’t earn God’s love. I have a pretty motivated and productive mentality about most things, and my relationship with the Lord is no exception. I don’t mean to say that wanting to grow in depth in your relationship with God is a bad thing, cause obviously that’s very false, but I took it to another level. I started doing things, and sacrificing things in an attempt to obligate God to answer my prayers. I was out praying one afternoon though and was convicted by the verses that talk about the things that are better than sacrifice.
One goes: “To obey is batter than to sacrifice.”
Another goes: “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.”
A life of service to God is what we are called to live, but when those outward actions of sacrificial kindness become self-centered, you are no longer serving God, but serving yourself. Ouch. Sounds familiar though… doesn’t it? Pharisees didn’t just exist 2,000 years ago. Ouch again. Yeah it hit me pretty hard. I found comfort in the verse from In Christ Alone…
What heights of love
What depths of peace
When fears are stilled
When strivings cease
My comforter
My all in all
Here in the love of Christ I stand
Especially that part about striving about striving a ceasing.
Thing to Share #2
And the second big thing I realized was truly eye-opening. You remember me writing about Acatenango? Yes, the volcano we hiked in Guatemala. Watching the sunset from the top of that mountain was probably the most beautiful thing I had ever watched… and yet it didn’t “blow me away” for lack of a better word. One evening I was walking up and down the road in Cambodia listening to a book, and the sun was just down, and the sky was a like shade of purple, and I had to stop and take out my earbuds and just marvel. THAT blew me away. Why?
Here’s was I wrote in my journal:
“I can be watching the most beautiful thing I have ever seen and it feel meaningless and empty if I am not first filled by the Lord.
I can be seeing a mere tint in the color of the sky and be blown away by the glory of God if I am first in communion with him and acknowledgement of his presence.”
For the week or two surrounding Acatenango, if I’m being honest, I wasn’t very dedicated to my time with the Lord. Struggled to focus in reading the Bible and in prayer. The weeks surrounding this time in Cambodia though, my days had been saturated in prayer and relationship with God just seemed to come really easy.
I’m sure there’s a better verse to describe what I’m trying to say, but something that just came to mind was Jesus’s teaching, “It’s not what goes into a man that defiles him, but what comes out.” In the same way, it’s not what goes into a man that satisfies him, but what goes on inside that brings him to his knees in reverent worship to God.
That’s all I’ve really got for today, but I hope it was eye-opening and encouraging to you as well.
In Christ,
Jackson
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