Hello again readers, beloved brothers and sisters, and supporters,
Much of what God has done here in Costa Rica and Ecuador has been a celebration of His beauty and His faithful love manifest in the people and the events that have happened so far. So when a couple of weeks passed in which I haven't been so encouraged by great spiritual revelations, or grand adventures that God has blessed, I get nervous to share what's really going on in my heart on a platform that is supposed to be a reflection of Him. I have doubts, shortcomings, and aches that hinder me many times, and it seems kind of out of place. I'm supposed to be winning people to Jesus, building relationships, and being just like Jesus right? Well, the purpose of this blog is to lead to that through providing a platform to communicate my needs of prayer and grace to accomplish everything Jesus wants to accomplish in and through me. And my part is transparency, so I wish to share with you some of my heart struggles this past week, and leading up to now.
Monday and Tuesday mornings during prayer time, when the staff and interns get together to pray for one another and praise God, God really highlighted for me a taste of the struggles mission work brings. You live your life reveling in the sweetness of God, read books that inspire you to be an insanely radical follower of Jesus the Messiah and want to follow Him to the far reaches of the world so that people would know Him like you do. Then you arrive and everything is new, exciting, and the people you meet are excited to see you, and you're in a beautiful country where you're surrounded by the presence of Yahweh's original work, and you can easily forget your purpose for being here.
Sure my expressed and primary purpose for being here specifically is to contribute to designs that will be utilized for spreading the name of Jesus. But my expressed and primary purpose for living is bringing change, spiritual change to the atmosphere of every county, city and building I enter. Let me make a note and a request for prayer that I am a weak evangelizer. That weakness is rooted deeply within who I am, and is mainly in the area of initiating gospel conversation, so I ask that each one of you will pray for me to overcome fears and initiate the gospel with the people, and God will follow through faithfully. That does not however, diminish my growing (and fresh) desire to see people changed for Jesus in this city, and the atmosphere shifted and radically changed here in Atenas. This is why it is both refreshing and heartbreaking to have settled down enough to be reminded of my mission here through being confronted with the reality of abuse in Costa Rica.
Through the conversation Monday, God struck me with a strength of burden for the abused women and children here in Costa Rica and it, along with other things has really been a place of bitterness of my heart over this issue, and God has definitely been walking me along through it with grace. It's not that this has struck close to home here in Costa Rica, but rather the injustice of abuse, and how God hates it, He has highlighted that in my heart over this past week through being made aware of it, and I want to do something about it.
And this doesn't just happen in Costa Rica but all over the world, wherever this earth still belongs to the evil one but God is really digging deep into my heart to instill a burden for this situation here.
But one begins to ask so many questions. How does this happen? Why, God? How has Satan gotten a hold of so many men to entice them to beat, abuse and molest their children and wives. I don't know if I want to scream or cry, and I do neither because this depth of feeling is new for me and it's hard for me to do either. It's a blessing God has opened up in me recently to feel deeply and have both profound concern and deep joy. But as I ask these cultural questions of why and how does Satan stir up this abuse, and what cultural things does he use to do so, my mind is not always obedient, nor am I by my own self capable at discerning what is going on apart from abiding in Jesus, and communing with the Holy Spirit. And so as I'm trying to wrap my head around this issue that is rooted so differently in each culture, and to try and discern how this issue is rooted in the culture here, it is hard sometimes, in the zeal for righteousness, to discern what is true assessment about the situation, and what is false and premature conclusions. And my posture of heart, the grace with which I see Costa Rican culture, for both the good and bad, and the necessity for me to have a right and Godly view on this takes on a new level of gravity when I see my own church and host family within that culture. This is where it really hits home, and where there's a great potential both for graceful change, and for drastic bitterness and divisiveness to develop between me and the church community I'm in. I have full hope and assurance that with my obedience, God will bring the former, and direct me away from the latter.
But I don't want to stop. I don't want to forfeit having a true revelation and Godly instruction about the issue of abuse as it relates in this culture, nor forfeit bringing a better vision of Jesus to the church here in Atenas for sake of being too careful against offense, judgmentalism, or a sense of self-righteousness. I detest all of those things, but I'm also beginning to detest equally the fear of sinning in these ways, and I know that God is faithful. He will guide me and lead me in the ways of righteousness and the fruit of the Spirit along the way. But above all else, I don't want this burden to pass, nor do I want it to just sit and develop bitterness. I want to do something about it because Jesus wants it to change, and he has shared that desire with me.
At the end of prayer time yesterday, after me sharing some of this with the office, there was a present reality of the not-so-glamorous side of foreign missions. It is hard, not only to share the message of conviction with people, not only to relate with people whose values and Christian worldview are distinctly different with yours, but also to keep an adequate reign on your heart, to keep it from turning sour, embittered, and escaping from the conflicts that arise when Jesus enters a culture. And I'm not even in the thick of dealing with these missionary struggles - this is only the beginning. I'm reading Peace Child an autobiography on Don and Carol Richardson's mission to cannabilistic head-hunter societies in New Guinea, and comparatively, God's presence is strong here in Costa Rica. But it's not at its full strength, and I want to hasten the increase of God's presence and the ousting of evil here in this culture so that the people here may be more fully engulfed in the love of Jesus. And it is this burden which has brushed upon me recently, and a burden I want God to develop in me to lead to fruitful action against the evils of abuse, and to draw the church here more closely to Jesus. Pray that God would increase this in me, and lead me to participate in His movement here, and to be an effective contributor to the progress He is making here in Atenas.
Anywhere you see a 'want,' that is a prayer request, and I hope you find this helpful in following the Spirit's lead to pray for me. I love you all, and I look forward to sharing with you the tasty fruit God will bring to this.
Thank you so much for your prayers. Take a look at Kevin's blog. He posted some info on our latest adventure. Aparrantly there's a 200 footer somewhere north of here.
http://awinnersjourney.blogspot.com/2012/04/waterfall.html
May God fill you with His presence,
Brad
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