Seeking Him

Prayer and Relationship: Lessons from Philly, Part 2

Our mission experience last week in Philadelphia was hosted by Adventures in Mission (AIM.)  Marcus, Kathy, Maddie, Melissa, Doug and Sara were wonderful guides, teachers, cheerleaders and partners as we sought to serve the community and grow closer to the Lord while we were in Philadelphia. 

At some point early in the week, Marcus said something during one of his talks with us that really resonated with me and continues to do so.  In fact, I would venture to say that this one sentence encompasses the power of what we experienced in Philadelphia last week.  Here is what he said:

"Prayer and relationship are the currency of Heaven."

I invite you to ponder that sentence for a moment.  Prayer and relationship are the currency of the Kingdom of Heaven. Prayer and relationship, relationship and prayer.  Prayer and relationship are the currency...the medium of exchange...that draws us into the Kingdom.  The Kingdom comes into focus as we invest in prayer and relationship.  Our experience of and participation in the Kingdom is intimately connected to our experience of and participation in prayer and relationship.  While I don't think this is new information to me, something about the simplicity of the sentence struck a chord with me.

One of the parts of this mission trip that I particularly enjoyed was the emphasis on prayer; not just talking to God, but truly creating the space to really LISTEN to God.  Every morning, before we did any activity that could be called "ministry," we were asked to spend a significant amount of time in prayer.  We prayed individually and we prayed collectively.  We invited God to speak to us about particular scriptures and we invited God to speak to us about where we should serve that day.  Although I would consider myself a person of prayer, I realized through our experience in Philadelphia how hurried and limited my prayers often are at home.  If I'm honest, back in Virginia, I often make my to-do list and schedule my "ministry" activities and then ask God to be with me as I run, run, run.  Here's my plan, Lord, please bless it!  By contrast, in Philadelphia, we were invited to enter into an ongoing conversation with God each day and ask Him to show us where to go, step-by-step, opening our eyes along the way to see Him powerfully at work. In Philadelphia, we asked God to surprise us and allow us to do things we could only do through His power.  As I consider the lessons from our time in Philly, I am beginning to think maybe my "Virginia" prayers are much too safe!

The other facet of this "currency" that draws us closer to experiencing the Kingdom here on earth is relationship; our relationship with God and our relationship with others. Through seeking the heart of God and taking time to really connect to the people He places in our path, we experience life as we were designed to live it.  A return to the Garden, if you will.  While we were in Philadelphia, and even before our departure thanks to the sermon we heard the morning we left, we asked God to give us "people eyes"...eyes that REALLY saw the child of God that was standing, sitting, playing, walking in front of us. As we prayed together and worked together, we experienced a deepening of our relationships with one another and a strengthening of the bonds that brought us to this place as a team.  Without the distractions of our busy Northern Virginia lives (including cell phones and computers,) we all had the opportunity to share at a deeper level and be better listeners with one another. As we grew closer to one another and to God, we were filled with His love and the confidence to risk a little more in our relationships with the strangers we met...the strangers who became our friends.  The children at day camp, the lady in the neighborhood, the homeless man at the coffeehouse on Kensington Ave....all part of this greater Kingdom that expands and grows as we open our heart to a bigger, deeper, better Love and offer ourselves to be used as agents of God's healing.  Connected to one another, strengthened by our bonds in Him, we are stronger and better equipped to go out be the hands and feet of Jesus.

I say this every time I get back from one of these mission trips with our youth, but I am just blown away by these kids.  I signed up for my first mission trip as an adult in 2007 because both my kids were going and I thought it would be wonderful for us to share the experience.  Since then, I go each year because I am completely inspired and awed and humbled by seeing our students in action.  It is a privilege to partner with them in this Kingdom work; our future is in good hands if these kids are a reflection of the next generation.  As one of my favorite songs from the musical Wicked says "because I knew you, I have been changed for good."

Prayer and relationship are the currency of the Kingdom of Heaven.  Thanks, Marcus!

Splanchnizomai and Brokenness: Lessons from Philly, Part 1

My eldest and I just returned this weekend from a mission trip to the inner city of Philadelphia. This was our senior high mission trip and we traveled with a total of 55 kids and adults from suburban Virginia.  As I have found with the previous mission trips in which I have participated, this was a profound, life-changing week where I learned more about God's heart...His heart for me, His heart for the students with whom I served and His heart for this broken world in which we live.  I have spent the days since our return trying to form words to describe our experience.

During our time in Philadelphia, we were given a devotional to use for our times of private reflection, devotion and prayer.  Through this devotional, I learned a new word which I can not even remotely pronounce "splanchnizomai." Splanchnizomai is a Greek word that takes its origin from another Greek wording referencing "the bowels or intestines."  This word refers to that sense of feeling something deep in our gut.  We can all relate perhaps to feeling things in the pit of our stomach?  In Jesus time, they would have referred to the bowels...or the "gut"...as the center of our emotions, in the same way that we refer to the heart today.  Our devotional guide told us that "splanchnizomai" was only used 12 times when the New Testament was originally written in Greek.  Each time, this word is used in reference to Jesus or God and is most often translated "moved with compassion." This word tells us the story of our Lord, deep in His gut, being moved by the needs of others and, in every case, being moved to action by that emotion.  Our God, our brother Jesus, is a God of deep, heart-felt, gut-wrenching compassion.

Our trip last week was, in many ways, all about allowing God to develop this kind of compassion in each of us.  We prayed for God to break our hearts for the things that break His.  Because we made ourselves available to see the world through God's eyes, all of us walked away changed to some degree.  Some of my favorite moments of our trip occurred during our debrief each evening when the kids were given the opportunity to share what God was doing in and through them that day.  It was powerful.  While those are not my stories to share, I can tell you about my own experience.

On Wednesday of last week, we began our day with the opportunity to pray individually and as a group about how to spend our morning.  On Monday and Tuesday, each group was given specific assignments about how to spend our morning (we all served in one of two VBS sites in the afternoons.)  On Wednesday, we were given a couple of choices and asked to spend some time praying about where God might be leading us to go.  I quickly joined the group that felt led to go to Kensington Avenue to pick up trash and be available to minister to the people that God might put in our path while we were there.  We loaded up two vans full of teenagers and, along the way, stopped to purchase bags full of Slim Jims, cheese sticks, breakfast bars and water bottles to share with those we met who might be in need of food.  We arrived on Kensington Ave., parked our vans and took to the streets armed with trash bags, gloves and bags of goodies.

If you are unfamiliar with Kensington Avenue, as I was, these were streets that I would not have traversed without several large teenage boys as my companions.  These are not streets that anyone cares about or loves...these streets were overflowing with the refuse of people who have lost hope.  The trash alone was overwhelming.  As we walked along and filled bag after bag with trash, I tried to make eye contact with every person we passed and offer a greeting.  A few people were curious about what we were doing and we stopped to talk to them.  A gentleman in his 80s named Bob shared his experience of a lifetime of watching the decline of this neighborhood, his despair as he watched so many young lives stolen by drugs and crime, his determination to teach his own children a different way.  He joined hands in prayer with our little group of 5 and offered a blessing for us...his new friends and brothers and sisters in the Lord.  We also talked to and prayed with Lloyd and Michael who both shared that they were headed back to rehab and were believing that this time, the Lord would set them free from the addictions that had enslaved them for so long.

While I was blessed by the opportunities to encourage these folks we met along the way, the majority of the people we passed seemed oblivious to their surroundings...like they had given up entirely. Either anesthetized by chemicals or depression, noone was home inside.   As I tried to make eye contact, time after time I was met with dead eyes.  Eyes so full of hopelessness that they no longer saw the human beings around them.  Eyes so tired, so weary...the images from scripture about "crushed bones" came to mind. Bone crushing weariness, bone-crushing despair. The light was gone from so many eyes and the sense of brokenness was palpable...and there was NOTHING I could do to make a difference.  During our drive back to our lodgings for lunch, my van was almost entirely silent.  As tears streamed down my face and the face of the young woman who sat in the front seat with me, these words were on the radio reminding me that the Kingdom is coming:

Though it's not easy 

But faithfully, I will wait ,Yes, I will wait 

I will serve You while I'm waiting, I will worship while I'm waiting 

I will serve You while I'm waiting, I will worship while I'm waiting 

I will serve you while I'm waiting, I will worship while I'm waiting on You, Lord

Over lunch, I had occasion to share my broken heart with some of the other adult leaders and we found that we were all in a similar state of mind.  We talked about brokenness and remembered that God does not ask us to surrender our hearts to be broken and then allow us to stay broken.  Our God is a God of healing, redemption and renewal.  Our God is a God of hope and new life.  Our God is a God of mercy and restoration. Like a broken bone that is re-set and heals stronger than before, our broken hearts surrendered to God are transformed.  Ezekiel 36:26 (New Living)  "And I will give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit in you. I will take out your stony, stubborn heart and give you a tender, responsive heart."  As we moved into the afternoon's activities, I waited in expectation to see what God would do next.

That evening, we had the opportunity to go back to Kensington Avenue to attend a coffeehouse.  Stuck on a vacant lot in between two buildings, we found a gravelled oasis where several times a week the local residents are invited in for music, coffee, lemonade and good news.  The local ministry who runs this coffeehouse is a consistent presence there in that neighborhood.  The two gentlemen who we met from their ministry had been rescued from those very streets and found renewal and healing through the power of God working through similar ministries.  Both have families now and were a testament to the fact that God had not given up on the people of Kensington Ave.  As the evening unfolded, I had the privilege of spending almost 2 hours talking and sharing and praying with Maurice, Kenny and Greg.  Their stories are not mine to share, but suffice it to say that God is working powerfully in the lives of these folks.  As I looked around to the other picnic tables at our students, including my eldest, listening, sharing and ministering to these our brothers and sisters from the streets of Philly, my heart found healing.  God IS at work through His people as we allow ourselves to be used as His hands and feet.   Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and love your neighbor as yourself = the kingdom of God brought down to earth.  A little glimpse of heaven.  In allowing me to see and experience the coffeehouse that night, the Lord reminded me that engaging in the process of compassion matters.  Caring about this broken world, although sometimes painful, allows us to see people through God's eyes and offer hope....whether in the ghetto of Philly or in the relative comfort of Northern Virginia.  Sometimes all we can offer is to look someone in the eye and listen to their story.  Like the loaves and fishes, God can multiply our humble efforts into healing and restoration and new life.  What a privilege!!

More tomorrow!