Global Impact (WFI) Updates

our SE Asia team

It’s hard to believe that (1) it’s already the end of another month and (2) the NBA playoffs have already started. It’s been a full 4 weeks + 2 days of challenges and appointments. Besides learning a lot from a 20-something-th mission to Mexicali, I had the opportunity to meet with WFI’s interim executive director, Soctt Leggett (and his son), to pray and talk online with our SE Asia host and one of the SE Asia team leaders, to meet with our entire SE Asia team in person, and to re-discover Los Angeles on a “treasure hunt” for pianos. It was great to be reminded through different events and contexts of how music really does bridge gaps and open doors for conversation. At the same time, that reminder was also a restatement of the responsibility we have to use the gifts we’ve been given for His purposes and pleasure, music-related or not. Praise God for being such an intelligent and creative designer, creating gifts and granting joy for such an immense eternal outcome.

Maybe this month feels short because the first 20% of it was spent across the border, and the last 80% was spent trying to physically recover from back pain. Thankfully, God kept me healthy — even went “running” for the first time in Mexico! — while we were on the field. Not being able to move quickly or through a full range of motion slowed me down a lot more than I thought it would. It was a little frustrating because my mind was going full speed ahead, but I couldn’t even sit at a computer for long stretches of time to research and write curriculum to meet the goals I had set at the beginning of the month. This is my first experience with being somewhat incapacitated, so it took me a while to figure out standing is much better than sitting. Definitely glad a laptop is portable, and an art table is just the right height for standing. As of right now, everything feels about 80%, so we’re moving in the right direction! In the struggle to put everything together, a few things have fallen behind: completing documentation for another Perspectives class this fall and finalizing curriculum for upcoming classes. Please pray God will not only restore the time lost, but multiply the effort being put in over the next few weeks to meet all necessary deadlines.

The other reminder or main point that stands out in this past month is how God is such a happy God. No matter what challenges came along (and there were some unusually crazy ones!), His presence was never condemning and always cheerful. Even when I need to work out some of the deeper issues with Him, there is always a lightness and some laughing involved if I can just surrender to all of who He is and take myself less seriously. Thank God He is joyfully bigger than our sin and our stressors!

It’s actually been a pretty tough month in at least 3 different areas of life. The word that comes to mind is “devouring,” as if my resources (time and finances) have been devoured with little to show for it. Uplifting, yes? But on the heels of that comes this Word:

I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten… Joel 2.25a

If we just look at that phrase, it’s highly encouraging and makes a nice theme for a greeting card or plaque in a Christian bookstore. But if I step back and look at the big picture, I have to acknowledge the locust attacks are not just enemy-inspired attacks to keep us from our Kingdom assignments; they are God’s idea (see the rest of the verse). The “years the locusts have eaten” refer to impending punishment for Judah’s unfaithfulness. Not every trial or struggle is evidence of spiritual warfare, although every trial and struggle has the potential to affect spiritual reality. The great thing about God, though, is that He is always ready for real repentance, and He celebrates that in a big way (see the entire chapter)!

Whatever the causes (because I’m sure there is more than one reason) for the large sense of loss, it has left me feeling vulnerable. As I asked the Lord how I can look forward to May with realistic hope, He seemed uncharacteristically quiet. I’m not sure if all the unfinished overdue tasks were vying so loudly for my attention that I couldn’t hear Him or if He was waiting for me to walk away from all of that so He could get a word in edgewise.

It finally hit me that one of the points He has been driving home in me is the importance and power of words publicly expressed. Our salvation is evidenced by our confession that Jesus is Lord.⁰¹ We can bless and curse with our speech.⁰² We brush aside the importance of spoken words, but God created with just the sound of His voice. Genesis 1-2 doesn’t mention Him making anything in the way we usually think of creating–active, using our hands, busy at work. He’s just talking, and His audience is every spiritual being. His words spoken in that public arena had huge ramifications for heaven and earth.

I’m still trying to figure it out, but I know as someone who bears the image of God, an area I need to grow in is rightly harnassing the power of my communication to facilitate positive shifts and movements in my surrounding environment and areas of influence, both seen and unseen. I admit after this past month, I’m actually facing May with quite a bit of fear, and that is not ok. I want to grow in declaring the truth of God and His character so that every knee in heaven and on earth and under the earth bows to Him. I’m not sure I have to wait until I get to heaven to see that, although we’ll never see the fullness of that until time has fulfilled its purpose. Still, is it possible we can catch more and bigger and clearer glimpses of that even now?

This isn’t some name-it-and-claim-it theology. There is no magic in words. Somehow, though, there is a power dynamic. One of my goals this month is to grow in ministering strength and encouragement and blessing to those whose paths I cross with words divinely inspired for that purpose. One of my goals this life is to be known as someone who may not necessarily have a loud voice, but has an effective one. Please pray with me that as I recover from April and move forward in May on many fronts, the Lord will not only restore what has been lost, but will empower and train me to be able to make positive shifts and moves in alignment with His command. I’d also appreciate it if you’d try a little experiment with me this month of daily speaking aloud His restoration for me to surpass where I should “normally” be at this point in recovering from these areas of loss.

Thanks to those of you who have empowered me with encouraging words and declarations of blessing. If I have the chance to see you face to face, let’s speak these realities over each other!

The tongue has the power of life and death, and those who love it will eat its fruit.
Proverbs 18.21