"This is where you live."
In my wildest dreams I never could have imagined all that could go wrong in 7 days. Brawling girls, bloody machete fights out our front door, suicide threats, runaways, breakdowns and conflict everywhere….
The truth was ALL HELL HAD BROKEN LOOSE! Literally.
I had found myself, our staff, and our girls in a wild storm of conflict trying not to get swept away with doubt, anxiety, fear and despair.
I called in the prayer troops and met with our staff several times over the following days. We were struggling to find unity on some important fronts, so I took two days to fast and pray.
God gave me the gift of clarity…
"You can’t solve your problems based on any past learning or experience. Your culture will let you down. Your training was upside down from my kingdom. You must depend on me! You cannot attack your problems the “American way” or the “Dominican way”. It MUST be My way. "The Jesus Way."
I began to consider all that we faced and ask what the “Jesus Way” might look like in each situation, refusing to lean on my own understanding. The Kingdom principles are like God: always good, always enough, always rooted in love, mercy and justice.
We must ask ourselves:
- Are we being faithful with even the little morsels God has put in our hands?
- Are we praying for the work of our hands or the work of God’s hands to prosper?
- Are we loving with the love we have received from our heavenly father? --The kind of love that bears each other’s burdens and covers a multitude of sins.
- Do our faces light up when we walk in the room at the sight of the people we see there? Or do we focus on the messes instead?
Praise God that He sees me and loves me with all of my mess. His love enables the cleaning of my mess as He rejoices over me with singing.
Lord help us to walk in your ways with your love…only love, only grace, only you.
In this time when doubt, anxiety, fear and despair pushed to consume me, I kept holding onto God’s word to me and pressing in in the ways I knew to. Then I was reminded of a word picture given to me a few years back…
I was in a storm- a wild raging windstorm. I couldn’t see or even get my feet underneath me. I walked with my head leaning into the storm fighting the force of the wind, until I hit a pole. I grabbed it a hung on for dear life and prayed out loud. Lord come! Help me! Get me out of here! And God replied, “This is where you live.” When the storm settled and I could see my surroundings I looked up to notice that the pole I was holding onto was actually the cross.
