Love in every language

January 23, 2012 

I've been having such a great time here in Thailand.  I'm frustrated that I can't speak the language & the attempts I've made to communicate  have failed.  Epically.  Ha! I've also done some dumb things culturally where I've felt like such an idiot & the natives have just laughed & laughed.  Oh well.  I guess it's okay to mess up, & maybe they find it endearing.  The song "Show You Love" by Jars of Clay comes to mind:

        I'm gonna show you a love in every language

        I'm gonna speak with the words that need no form

        I'm gonna give you what you never had before

But there are some things that are universal.  Smiles. Touch.  Laughter.  Everyone knows & needs these things.  They are what makes us human.  Love knows no language.  I don't understand what they are saying & they don't understand what I am saying, but it doesn't matter.  I am here.  They are here & it is enough just to be around each other.  We can be a present to someone with our presence alone, to paraphrase Jack Johnson.  Cheesy, yes. But true nonetheless.

I wanted to share a journal I wrote this past Sunday.

January 22, 2012: Today at church in the village we sang "How Great Thou Art" in a bunch of different languages. English, Thai, Romanian, Portuguese, Finnish, German. "Every nation, every tongue." That is awesome to me to experience a glimpse of  the universal church.  God you are bigger than language.  Than culture.  You bring true culture, true community, true life.  You make us truly human.

Also, today I found out my cat died a couple days ago.  I found out on facebook.  I was in shock.  I wept.  I wept because I am the one who brought my cat home a couple years ago, while I was still in university.  I wept because he was part of the family & I wept because of the way I found out, no one told me, I had to find out through facebook through my sister's post; a crummy way to get bad news if you ask me. But if I could feel such remorse, such sadness over a cat, how much more does God feel for these people here.  For these orphan kids who don't have two parents to call their own.  This experience has given me a little inside into the heart of God.  It's weird how God is teaching me lessons these days. 

And as promised, here is a journal from the heart of God to me, and to you too.

December 14, 2011 "You have the freedom to be a child."

December 18, 2011 "Child, child, don't do anything.  Let good come to you.  All good things come from my hand.  You can't rush these things. It's coming. It's on the horizon. Soon. Soon.  You will hear a symphony.  You will see my hand orchestrating it.  You will watch as it all happens.  Like a play.  Watch as my artist's hand comes to make a masterpiece.  I set the lonely in families.  I will make a family for you, where you are my children & I'm your Father.  Trust my rhythm. I know this. I'm good at this.  I will make love & faithfulness meet together, I will make righteousness & peace kiss each other. I will gather all my children.  I am preparing a place for you.  You will indeed see for yourself all the goodness I have stored up for you.  Don't lose heart, don't give in, I have so much for you.  But believe in me.  Believe I can do it.  Believe I am good.  Believe I am not holding out.  I am preparing all things, making all things right & beautiful! Oh how great is my goodness which I have laid up for you my girl because you fear me & revere & worship me.  I have goodness which I have wrought, formed & fashioned for you because you trust & take refuge in me. psalm 31:19. My girl I got this! I have a plan. You just relax.  I know what I am doing.  You can put all your hope in me." 

What it's like here...

January 9, 2012

 I've spent 3 weeks in Malaysia & now I'm Thailand for the next 7 weeks. That is nuts!

I haven't posted a blog since Thanksgiving.  Wow.  But I have written in my journal, nearly everyday.  And God has been speaking me.  One of the things I've learned while being at ywam is how much God wants to speak to me. So I've been practicing hearing His voice.  And usually it's me just writing out my prayers, usually complaining & then His response to my complaints.  And it's always good. 

Before I write about that, I want to clarify something.  This whole trip has not been roses & sunflowers. "To touch the rose unfearful is to meet the thorn" as Jars of Clay puts it & let me tell you it's been more thorny than I thought.  I have more trouble than I'd like to think, and the trouble is within my own heart.  I can't pretend or run away here.  I am stuck with a group of people & I have to face them & face myself .  Facing yourself is one big mess;  a  real beast of a thing.  I find within my own heart a selfish little girl. But God loves this selfish little girl.  And that to me, is one amazing thing. 

So to start off this new year, I'm going to share God's responses.  It's for me but it's for you too, & that is pretty sweet! I'm also going to throw in some random thoughts that I've come to discover about God as well.  

December 8, 2011: My daughter, do not worry, have no fear for I know you.  I know you dearly & I will not let  you go.  I will not answer your every request you have of me because I see the big picture.  I am looking ahead.  You can trust that I know all & there are some things you won't understand yet.  You cannot fathom my understanding, it's unsearchable.  You don't always get what you want, but I will give you better than what you want.  You don't even know what you want, I'll know for you.  Trust me daughter, I've got this.  I love you! I am for you. 

Happy Thanksgiving!

November 22, 2011
I'm listening to Christmas music at the library and I realize that it's been almost a month since my last update.  I almost dread writing because there is so much to say and words do not suffice to describe all that is happening with me.  

I'm going to miss spending Thanksgiving on Thursday with my family and with my friends on our traditional Friday Thanksgiving potluck.  Happy Thanksgiving everyone! 

Each student had to present about a name of God for 5 minutes. The goal is to practice for outreach and condense all we want to say.  It's been really fun doing this & trying to come up with something deep & profound in just a couple of minutes.   The last presentation this past Friday was very impactful to me; the Lion of the tribe of Judah.  I wasted lots of time late Thursday night just getting lost on the subject of Jesus as the lion researching facts about lions and listening to their roar on The National Geographic website. 

Something happened towards the end of my little speech that I can only define as the Spirit of the Lord touching me.  As some of you may or may not know, I am a pretty emotional person, but it is kind of hard to cry in front of people.  Oh, I'll cry at a movie in the dark but I try to avoid it in public.  

But I was moved to tears by the thought that God used the tribe of Judah, the 5th born of the least favored wife of Jacob and the one who was the intercessor of his little brother.  Jesus the humble king, who chose to come to us as a baby; weak, subtle, quiet, unexpected.  This is Judah.  I heard somewhere that Jesus did not come through the Levites as one would expect but through the tribe of Judah, good ol' Judah who is a lot like me; unnoticed, weak, a train wreck.  

I was moved by Jesus humble ways, and the foreshadow of Jesus in Genesis 44 when Judah was willing to take his brother's place to be a slave, to take the blame, to carry all the weight of the consequence because He knew how much the Father loved his brother.  And he loved his brother.  He did it for his brother & for his Father.  


I am very excited & nervous, in about ten days we will leave for our outreach to Malaysia & Thailand. Woot! Crazy! We will be working with kids mostly so it should be lots of fun but super busy.  Please send out a prayer for us. 


I've changed a lot since I came here.  My views on a lot of things are different like the Holy Spirit & Reformed theology etc.  I'd be happy to share but I think that is enough information for now. 

How about an update eh?!

October 25, 2011 

I went back home for my friend Dana & Casey's wedding which was super fun & I got to see my family too which was really special for me!  

This past week we were in Alberta, Canada, the next province over which is about a 14 hour drive from where we live. We went to a conference along with three other ywam schools from across Canada.  It was called the "Go Conference" to make us aware of the unreached across the world like the countries in the 10/40 window.  For more information about this conference or summaries of each day visit: http://www.ywamnexia.org/mobilizing/conferences.html

Today is day 44 since I've been here & I must say it's been awesome.  And sometimes the awesome-ness is also very difficult & filled with self confrontation.  I feel attacked many times in my sleep by bad dreams & also by my thoughts of distraction.  I feel self conscious & battle lies I've believed for years.  

I've noticed that I am afraid to ask God what He thinks or what is next.  I'm afraid of God.  Wow. Isn't that weird?! I'm afraid because I am so unclean, so ashamed of myself, of my humanity & I'm afraid to be rejected.  But this is not God's heart towards me, towards us.  He loves us.  He has good news for me.  

As you may or may not know, I love Jars of Clay & love singing God those songs.  What is absolutely incredible is that when I do set out to ask God what He thinks of me & the mess I've made or what is His heart towards me, I find that He is singing those songs back to me.  That is so touching.  I am brought to tears! Such tender love.  

Some of the things God says to me is

"I want to make you sing another love song. I want you to trust someone, me. Let me pick you up. Don't bury your head full of shame, you look like me!" 

"No one loves you like me" 

Ugh! Such good news.  So though I beat myself up, God's love reaches to the heavens & His faithfulness to the skies. (psalm 36:5)

That is a good enough update for now.  More to come, I'm sure! 

Love, Linda

For the world you love

October 1, 2011

God loves the world.  The broken. The sick. The weary.  The oppressed.  Especially the oppressed.

Every Thursday we have intercession for the world.  This week's topic was human trafficking.  I was appalled, disturbed and just really really angry at what I found.  

God is angry too.

I found out that human trafficking is going on all over the world.  It is defined as selling people for forced labor or sexual exploitation.   Most women who are prostitutes are kidnapped & forced into the industry from all parts of the world; they think they will work as a nanny or housekeeper in another country.  Many of these women come from China, Korea, Eastern Europe, places like Moldova, & Ukrainian orphanages, yes the people who run the orphanages actual arrange for the orphan girls & boys to be sold. 

The bottom line in all of this is that God cares about these people.  There are people out there that are addicted to pornography & most of those women in those videos are trafficked.  They are adding to human traffic injustice & they think that what they are doing is only affecting them.

This really pisses me off!! It makes me really angry & I believe it makes God angry.  He wants us to do something about it.  After the prayer, I was left angry & helpless.  I thought about what God wanted me to do.  And here is the first step.  I can raise your awareness about this topic.  I encourage you to take a second to pray for those oppressed & watch Timea's 8 minute video depicting her story, one of the millions of people trafficked.  http://thetruthisntsexy.ca/pages/page-2

My Canada Experience So Far..

September 24, 2011 

Well here I am at the library on our day off.  It's been an amazing time so far, feels like I've been here forever but it's only week 3 wild! 

I love not having a computer or a phone, makes me think I was made to be technology free. 

There is so much to say about what's been going on, so much that I feel that I can't put into words or describe, you just gotta be here.  But I'll try... 


First of all, we have a schedule to follow each day, & it is a full one!  Each day we have class for about four hours a day then in the afternoon for about three and a half hours we do things like community involvement, one on ones, outreach preparation & intercession, bible study, processing & review.  Every afternoon the schedule changes so we don't do all those things in one day.


We also have work duties and my work duty along with two others is to prepare the meal each night Monday-Friday.  Mom, you'd be so proud! It's great because the food & recipe is already prepared for us, all we have to do is put it all together, I've really enjoyed doing this. Cooking for twenty people each night, wow I didn't think I could do that.


So what am I learning so far?  Well this week we had a guest speaker named Luba and she spoke about hearing the voice of God, I took like fourteen pages of notes, yikes! 
But here's are some things that stood out to me: 
Sometimes God's answer needs to come in a group setting.
Am I living for God's glory? If so, it doesn't matter how long it takes. 
There are promises to those who fear God. 
God cares about our healing & the world. 
Hearing God is a process, the process of relationship. 
God cherishes intimacy over activity. 
Relationship is mostly intimacy & communication. 
God can't be put in a box because He wants us continuously in relationship, asking. 
God does not see us as damaged but as just what He wanted. 


We also had a time of prayer with Luba & the staff where we each took turns confessing lies we've believed about God, ourselves or others & then they spoke over us truth & what God says.  It was amazing! 


I've had a chance to have some amazing conversations with people while we walked to the little Asian church we're renting, or while we're cooking, or just hanging out before we go to sleep.  Throughout these convos I've noticed that we are struggling, we are each wanting desperately to hear God's voice on what to do, and how to be but it is hard.  Which makes me think that there is a war going on, that what we are doing is primarily spiritual & the things that we are struggling with whether it's an insecurity, or an annoyance, or a distraction is spiritual & we must pray that God would help us & not let the enemy win.  


So with all that said, what you could do after reading this is send up a prayer for us, the students, the speakers, the staff.  God is definitely at work! 


Love you guys!

The Pruning Season

February 3, 2011
Based on Scripture reflection from John 15:2, "and every tree that bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit."

Farmers know that pruning happens every year.  I saw a video on how to prune a vine & it had diagrams.  Some particular diagrams had fruit while others were completely empty, just lonely branches.  The vinedresser knows just because the vine doesn't have fruit at a certain time doesn't mean it's unfruitful.  It just means it's not the season of harvest.  My friend Laura wrote an email about this topic:

"Every season is not a harvest season.  There are plowing seasons, planting seasons, watering seasons, etc.  Without the other seasons we wouldn't really be prepared or fully matured.  It is during the plowing season (pruning) that God brings to light what needs to be dealt with."

Pruning is good & right.  Even though it may not look like anything worthy of fruit is happening-that is exactly what is going on. The vinedresser knows that pruning will make the branches able to produce more & even better fruit. 

 Humbled & joyful-being pruned should leave us in this state of mind of two seemingly opposites; knowing we can't do it all & we need God, but God loves us & is completely smitten by us & He wants my joy to be full John 15:11, "that your joy may be full."

The most healthy & beautiful fruit come from vines that have been pruned & tended to.  Pruning is like being humbled: no leaves, no fruit, empty, naked, torn, seemingly useless. But when we see that it's not us it's the vindresser, it's not the branches rather it's the vine, then we can rejoice & be happy with the pruning because we trust the vine, the vinedresser & the process of growing fruit. 

Joy in humility
How can we be happy when we are aware of our wretched putrid sin?  When we're truly humble, we see don't see us anymore, we see God.  And He is the reason for our joy because of who He is. Zephaniah 3:19 "God says, "I will save the lame... I will appoint them for praise & fame in every land where they were put to shame." I trust that fruit will grow because the vine dresser is cultivating me. Pruning makes us ever aware that it's not about the branches, but about the vinedresser.