This week has been a hard week for me for two reasons.
It is so hard to wake up knowing that there are so many people here who do not know the Lord. So many people who do not know true hope. There are so many here who work, work, work, just to appease a god that does not talk back to them. There are people here living in slums, having barely enough to survive. There are people who feel like prostitution is their only option. There are people who are forced to prostitute. Men who take advantage of this because they themselves are empty and searching. All in need of the One true God.
Everyday that I am here I wake up to this reality, and sometimes have to pinch myself to see if it’s really real. Sometimes it doesn’t seem real because everything I have known my whole life has never looked like this. Oh, but it’s very real. And it’s not okay. And it breaks the Lord's heart, and so I want it to break mine too.
Almost every day I have also woken up sick, which naturally makes it difficult to focus on the hurt around me. I have asked why God would allow me to be sick at a time like this when I am supposed to be ministering to his people and trying to show them His love. I’ve been waiting for this moment to finally be here, and now that it is it looks nothing like what I signed up for or expected.
He has been revealing to me more and more as the week goes by the answer of why. He is after my heart.
In every situation, whether small or big, He is seeking to have full control of my heart. He doesn’t need my laboring. He doesn’t need my efforts, my time, or my ability to show someone love. He is a God capable of anything, and he does not need me to make something happen. But He WANTS me.
And when He has me it’s beautiful. When He has me, people I meet see Him and not me. When He has me, and fully has me, people can truly see a picture of freedom.
How beautiful is that , my friends?
If the Lord does not have me fully, I bring to people a picture of bondage and strife. But when the Lord has me, I can truly love. I can truly be free. And I can truly share that love and freedom with people who may have never known it a single day of their life, because HE is love and freedom!!
So I say: “Here is my heart Lord.”
“…I do not want what you have—I want you…” 2 Corinthians 12:14