Alright, this might be one of the most amazing books I've read. I was told about this book and told I had to read it. Well I read it and now I'm telling you to read it. It's amazing and convicting and sad and beautiful and amazing. Katie Davis is a 18 year old girl who feels like God has called her to Uganda. She takes a short trip there and finds herself. She is now living there and has adopted 14 girls. She is just 18! She truly understands what it is to live out her faith. She certainly puts my faith to shame. "And even though I realize I cannot always mend or meet, I can enter in. I can enter into someone's pain and sit with them and know. This is Jesus. Not that He apologizes for the hard and the hurt, but that He enters in, He comes with us to the hard places. And so I continue to enter." Sometimes coming alongside is all that we can do. "Why do I care so much? The answer is simple: Because the Lord who created you loves you. Because He created you for a purpose and He wants you to fulfill that purpose. Because the God who knows every hair on your head desires to lift you out of this dust and into His glory." We care because He cares, because every single one of us was created in His image. "Adoption is a redemptive response to tragedy that happens in this broken world. And every single day, it is worth it, because adoption is God's heart." Adoption isn't easy but it is worth it because it is God's love displayed just like He adopts us. "Frederick Beuchner writes, 'The last place God calls us to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet.'" I think that is a beautiful picture of doing what God called a person to do. "I was learning that the powerless, broken, dependent place was actually the place where the Lord was closest to me." Funny how He finds us in our brokenness, a place where we feel along, He is with us. "I want to give my life away for Christ. I want to exemplify Him in my every day. I want to live an open and expansive life, giving myself freely to all those around me for His glory. God answers this prayer every day of my life with new opportunities. I want to live openly and expansively, loving my neighbor as myself, until Jesus comes back." I think this would be a great prayer for the start of every day. I say I want this but then I question myself and think, do I really want this? "The assurance that I must obey and be faithful only to what He has asked of me, even when tangible, earthly results or successes are not seen." Just doing the next best thing that He asks, no matter the results, just obedience. "God's love made known is worth it, even if only to one. I will not save them all. But I will keep trying. I will say 'Yes.' I will stop for one." If we only share His love with one other person at least that is one more soul saved. We must love, one person at a time, one heart, one soul at a time. "Courage is not about knowing the path. It is about taking the first step." And that first step takes a whole lot of courage, but God is there and He will not let me falter, He will pick me up, He will guide me. "I have learned along my journey that if I really want to follow Jesus, I will go to the hard places. Being a Christ follower means being acquainted with sorrow. Joy costs pain, but the pain is worth it. After all, the murder had to take place before the resurrection." Those are some deep and hard words. In this life we try and avoid pain, at all cost but, we will never know true joy without that pain. When we go to those hard places with others we can share that there is unspeakable joy after the pain. "Suffering. Rejoicing. Squalor. Beauty. Love. Pain. These are the things that surround me, and all of them are from Him. This life is beautiful and terrible and simple and difficult, and He is using it for His glory." All of it. All of it is for His glory. I can endure when I know that His glory will be shown. "They are the least of these, they are His heart, and He is coming for them and for us."
No comments:
Post a Comment