What is grace worth to you?

"Twas grace that taught my heart to fear, and grace my fears relieved."

     

     I never really thought twice about this song before God changed my life's path. This was a hymn that I had sung probably a million times growing up, and to be honest, it was so repetitive. You stand up, turn in your Hymnal to page so-in-so, sing the song, and take up the offering. It was just another song.

     Now bear with me, here. I promise i'm going somewhere with this. Imagine you were not born an American. Imagine that you do not wake up every morning in a nice two story house with three cars in the driveway with all of the bells and whistles of modern day materialism. You don't leave for your job of choice and send the kids to school where they have the freedom to choose their future occupation. You don't wake up on Sunday morning secretly dreading having to get out of your king-size feather bed, and make decisions like what outfit you are going to choose from your walk in closet, and who to invite to your weekly Sunday dinner. You don't scramble around in frustration trying desperately to make it to Sunday school in time, and in the meantime you forget your Bible, but it doesn't matter anyway because the verses will be on the screen. You don't sit through the song service wondering who is admiring your outfit, or upset that the visitors are sitting in your pew. You aren't hoping that the visiting missionary will hurry up so the service won't go overtime. And you don't sit through the preaching service making mental lists of what you need to accomplish the following week. 

     I can write so freely about this, because this person was me. I was a comfortable Christian reveling in the fact that I had absolutely everything. And when you have absolutely everything, the most damaging of all sins filter through the cracks of your "spiritual" heart. Pride and complacency is a raging duo that will shield you from crucial necessities of God's ultimate instruction. This duo will utterly suck the passion and desire from the core of your spiritual being, and it will replace it with a fabricated contentment with sitting on a church pew and doing absolutely nothing. This was me.

     Imagine now that you are the young Chinese woman in this picture. You were not born in a free country, you are just thankful that you were born because your parents were only allowed to have one child. You wake up every morning in a tiny apartment, and you get ready for your job that the government chose for you. You are separated from your family because you committed the ultimate crime: you believed in God. You count the days until Sunday, so you can ride your bike for two hours to the secret location where you can pour your heart out to a mighty God that allows you to live and breathe. You sit through your small Bible study hoping that the police won't come again and arrest your pastor. You choose to stay all day Sunday, and you refuse to leave any sooner than you should because there is nothing greater on this earth than being with a handful of fellow believers, worshiping the Savior that has given you a hope of going to Heaven. You absorb every word the pastor says, and you sing the precious hymns with hands raised in complete and utter surrender and gratefulness. You open a Bible for the first time because a missionary family took the time to think of someone as insignificant as you. They had everything, but they gave it up, and lowered themselves to personally bring you your first Bible. You should be fearful that you are in danger. You should be afraid that you will face prison because you dared to worship the Lord, but you know that His grace is sufficient. His grace will carry you through the shunning of your family, through any prison term you might face, and any fear that you may have of being found out.

     What is God's grace worth to you?

"Twas grace that taught my heart to fear, and grace my fears relieved."

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words.

     It is a popular saying that "a picture is worth a thousand words." A simple snapshot can capture the essence of a specific time and place that at once meant enough to the photographer to document it. The funny thing about a picture, however, is that it always means more to the one who witnessed the subject in action than it does to whoever takes the time to appreciate the photo in passing.

     To you, this picture is a sweet gathering of little Chinese faces. If you were to notice this picture elsewhere, you might even take the time to admire it, maybe produce a mental "aww", and you would move on to the next interesting item on your imaginary list. In theory, there is nothing wrong with your assessment of this picture. It is, however, just a picture.....right?

     In this insane yet spectacular new journey that God has placed me in, I see everything in a new light. Previously dull colors are heightened in a new and brighter sense that I never really took time to notice before. I wake up every morning with a purpose, and a desire to learn more and to quench this never ending thirst that God has created in the very center of my spiritual being. Every day I am further away from the last time that I was in China, but that only means that I am closer to the day when i will return.

     To me, this isn't just a picture. This is an image that is forever burned in my memory as a reminder that what I experienced merely a week ago is real. It's a reminder that God has burdened not just my heart, but my entire existence for the people that have no hope. When I see the little faces in this picture, I see individual souls that the world has forgotten, but Jesus has not. I see hearts that will be broken, with no hope of ever healing because Christians would rather argue over church pew colors and what someone wore on Sunday than go beyond the comforts of home, and reach a desolate people that will never have a chance to hear the name of Jesus. I only wish that I could bottle up just a small percentage of the burden that God has placed in my heart, and give it out one by one to the people that I come in contact with every Sunday. If only there was a way to mirror the emptiness in these little faces that you see in this picture, and convince you that China is only the world's largest mission field.

     To me, this isn't just a picture. This is my vision. This is my new reason for living. This is my purified passion.

Is this real?

     I am not writing this blog for information's sake, or so i can simply document a week I spent in a third world country. I am writing this to remind myself that i tasted an intense and terrifying passion, and to hopefully show you a small window of what i was blessed to experience.
     People have always told me that God will lead you down a path, and that you will know exactly what you are supposed to do when He shows you. To be quite honest, this was merely a cliche to me. Verses such as "Trust in the Lord with all thine heart" and "Seek and ye shall find" became robotic phrases that I would read over, but think nothing of them minutes later. I always knew God would lead me somewhere someday, but i was comfortable living the life I was used to. I made so many plans that fed the typical "American Dream" complete with a husband, two kids, and a small house in the country. I didn't have a vision, and i didn't have a dream. I simply went from day to day going through the motions physically, emotionally, as well as spiritually.
     Last week, i went on my second mission trip to China. As i boarded the plane, i figured i was in for the typical trip. We would arrive, sight-see, visit friends, shop, do a little mission work, and then I would return home and go back to my normal routine. Little did I realize that God would stop me in my tracks, and completely transform my vision into a sudden, and completely terrifying passion for what I now saw.
     I honestly have never felt like this before. It was like having the breath knocked out of you in a dizzying and exhilarating fashion. I felt God like I had never felt Him before, and it was as if every step I took He was saying "Here, Alaina. I want you here. Here."It stopped me in my tracks because this wasn't supposed to be my ministry. This was my Dad's ministry, his passion. I had spent the last five years listening to him talk about what I was feeling at that exact moment. Suddenly I understood exactly what he was talking about when he talked about having a burden for something.
     I now had a burden for something. I had a burning passion to be completely immersed in the strange and absolutely intriguing culture that surrounded me now. I laid awake every night I was there planning on how I would get back. God had completely changed my life from wanting the American Dream, to wanting the precious dark headed population that now had become my heart. I knew no fear as God suddenly blinded me to the things I knew, and cast a light on the things I now couldn't live without.  I felt like Paul on the road to Damascus when God blinded him by the light, and turned his whole life around.
     The word excited pales in comparison to how i feel about this work that God did not lead me to, He literally pushed me into, and this newly found passion now consumes me in every facet of my life. I eat, sleep, and breath China, and my heart is literally breaking at the separation of it. I cried the last night I was there because i was not heading home, I was leaving my home.
     If you have ever experienced God's firm direction, then you know how I feel. My thoughts are now consumed with how to get back, and I know that I will not be satisfied until my feet are firmly planted on Chinese soil. I am scared, I am elated, and I am 100% certain that i have found my own personal purified passion, and I am more than ready to embrace it.