One Voice.

I want to write my heart tonight.

As you read, assume you already know I’m writing from the perspective of one who is now “homeless” and on the road for most of the summer with a husband and three children doing the very thing we’ve tried to avoid most of our married lives: “raising support”. Grueling and exhilarating. That means asking people to give us a paycheck and a ministry account. More than that, we are giving other an oppourtunity to be a part of what God is doing all around the world! Exciting! Still, we trying to be delicate yet bold, vivid yet not pushy, prayerful yet intentional. We get blank looks, we get engaging conversations; we never know! God is hand-picking our team, but still can you imagine our audacity? Actually there are probably hundreds of us fools for Christ wandering the land this summer doing the very same thing.  We then ask people to also  pray for us like they really believe that we can’t do all this without serious intercession. They usually think that is less of a sacrifice than money.

Wrong.  

We spent our 13th Anniversary with three kids all sharing a bed in a hotel room. My husband leaned over, winked and said, “Babe, in thirteen years we’ve not even come close to the American Dream. In fact we’re the poster children for how to fail at the American Dream.  We’ve got 3 kids, no house to call our own, no paycheck and no retirement fund let alone savings. We are driving around for months with three kids strapped in a van, one who is almost two and so screams the majority of the time. Maybe we should panic or something.”  And then we laughed ourselves to sleep. This is all great, really.  We’ve told so many people about what God has called us to, but tonight I am weary of relating the details, so please just go HERE if you’re interested. 

For now, let me write my heart.  

I’ve been thinking on the words of Jesus when he said, “No one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age…and in the age to come, eternal life.”  When you do the math, this is really no sacrifice. I mean c’mon, we are only in the First Story.

But to be honest a sense of home, my own nest is rather important to me. I love my own space and creating culture within our own walls.  I’ve talked with Jesus every night about this and I am finding that I want more of Him more than I want a home for my children.  And if I had to choose between my very own bedroom and a hearing more stories of how He has revealed His manifest presence in the lives of the people we meet on this trip and at the mission where we serve, I think I’d rather hear of His lavish love.

He’s relentless I tell you.  He knows how difficult it is to live as a human being and how much we battle the old man within us and the adversary against us that tries to seduce us with idols, chain us with addictions and immobilize us with fear and yet He still comes to us.  He reminds us that no child of His is ordinary and left without a power within them greater than all the oppression against them.  And over and over He delivers these minds, these bodies, these wills.  We act like we must do something to show our allegiance, to show our indebtedness, to illustrate His goodness and to testify to His power.  But all He wants is what any of us really need to do and be: to know Him and love Him.

I do.  Yet it seems small. 

I seem small.  Just one funny often shy voice coming from a skinny too-tall blonde to declare that He is worthy to receive our best and brave enough to receive our worst.  Would He take this voice and make it into a roar like the sound of a million lions to shake the nations? Would He let me walk into the places where women are hungry and thirsty for Living Water and let me pour Him out? Could He use a little family whose children bicker and parents often clash to walk on foreign lands, washing the feet of those who serve the least of the least, pressing them to keep on? 

And this voice, oh this voice that chokes up every time it sings of the nations that will one day, every tribe, people and language bow around the throne and sing praises to the Lion of Judah who delights in crazy obedience–it will continue to testify that He is good.  And faithful.  And patient with a woman who can get real nervous about what lies ahead. 

Yes, this is my heart.  It’s good to let it out.