Xapa to the World

Author: xapatotheworld

  • Day 1 & 2 – 10 Days of Prayer

    One of my favorite Christian artists went and got married a few years ago to an amazing woman and…as most amazing women should, she started a blog.  It’s probably one of the few that I read consistently.  Her name is Kelly Needham and recently, she decided to do a 10 day Prayer and Repentance deal while her husband was out-of-town/country. You can find the start to her 10 day adventure here.

    But I decided to do my own 10 day time, starting yesterday.  I’ve been feeling a little in a rut and recent events have left me wondering if God is trying to tell me something and I’m not listening to Him. 

    I felt yesterday, that it would be good to start with what Kelly began within her reflections.  Her first point was, “It’s not about me.”  And I really like the Scripture she started each day with, so I’m definitely keeping that.  Here it is:

    “Search me, O God, and know my heart;
    test me and know my anxious thoughts,
    See if there is any offensive way in me;
    and lead me in the way everlasting.
     – Psalm 139:23-24 –

    I was saying over and over in my mind, “It’s not about me, it’s not about me,” but nothing was coming.  And then I realized that I had forgotten how to pray.  I’m not saying totally, as in, I never talk to God…but I definitely have opted for the whole “pray continually” throughout the day without much concern for God speaking back to me.  To spend an hour, in determined prayer…it’s hard if you’re out of practice.  I went away thinking that it had all been a waste of time.  I didn’t feel like my prayer had been anything substantial.  Or had it?  I was determined to reflect on one thing and that one thing only while God was seeking to open my eyes to something else: my double-mindedness.

    I’m caught between the two sides – truly investing my heart and mind in God and all that He is and pretending to do so, which is to say, to not invest my heart and mind in God.  I have been well-trained in looking the part.  But not only that, it is easier to camp in the place of “Do well” and not mean it, than to face the reality of my double-heart.  It’s easy to go in with purpose and meaning, and then live out your time steadily more for yourself and out of habit. 

    And so, for today, the sermon on Contentment and the joy thereby was great and touched me, but I think God wants me to reflect on my bitterness.

    “The heart knows its own bitterness, and no stranger shares its joy.”
     – Proverbs 14:10 –

    “Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice.”
     – Ephesians 4:31 –

    “See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God; that no ‘root of bitterness’ springs up and causes trouble, and by it many become defiled.”
     – Hebrews 12:15 –

    I’m very good at hiding my own bitterness.  In truth, I hardly recognize it myself.

    [Insert list of things bitter about]

    “…and many become defiled.”   It’s like when something begins to burn in the kitchen and you slowly realize the smell is there.  Then it takes a long time to get rid of the smoke and smell.  That’s how this bitterness feels in me.  What is contained in that list is not what matters.  That’s between me and God.  He has known it for some time and some of it I only just realized today. 

    But I am bitter about these things because I am thinking that I know best what I need.  And as God shows me that and how, I flip back and forth between joy and sadness.  I can try to force myself to joy, but I don’t think that’s what God wants.  He could do that, if He wanted to.  But He desires me to want it, and not just to show it or know that I need to want it.

    “Jesus, You are my greatest treasure,
    Nothing this world can offer
    Could ever compare to You.

    ~Nani yori mo
    Nani yori mo
    Nani yori mo
    Anata-o~”
    (Jap – Above all else, give me Yourself)
    Above All Else by Vicki Beeching

  • Short Story – Gladys Aylward

    I found this in the book I’m reading, Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood compiled and largely written by John Piper and Wayne Grudem.  As you can expect with those two authors, I’m still wading my way through the Foreward…and what a trove of treasure in those few pages. 

    I have, for a long time, enjoyed reading about some of my favorite women of the faith, especially missionary women, and especially those who have worked in the field while single.  These are primarily Amy Carmichael (India), Lottie Moon (China), Elisabeth Elliot (single for a time after her husband Jim died and missionary in Ecuador, to the people who murdered him), but I keep forgetting about Gladys Aylward, missionary to China.  I haven’t read too much of/by her, but this little story makes me want to raid my personal library for her bio that I know is in there somewhere.  The story is related by Elisabeth Elliot in the Elisabeth Elliot Newsletter:

    She had been a missionary in China for six or seven years before she ever thought of wanting a husband.  When a British couple came to work near her, she began to watch the wonderful thing they had in marriage, and to desire it for herself.  Being a woman of prayer she prayed – a straightforward request that God would call a man from England, send him straight out to China, and have him propose.  She leaned toward me on the sofa on which we were sitting, her black eyes snapping, her bony little forefinger jabbing at my face.  “Elisabeth,” she said, “I believe God answers prayer!  He called him.”  Then, in a whisper of keen intensity, “but he never came.”

    I will not close a door that God may be keeping open, but I am no longer trying to force it to remain open.  It can do as it wishes and I will be content to stay on this side of the wall until God gives me a reason to go through it.  And the peace of that is amazing.

  • NightLight

    NightLight International.

    Check out this great site/organization, rescuing women from exploitation in the brothels and bars of Thailand and giving them skills and industry to maintain a life of freedom.  Some of the jewelry is a little expensive, but how much should freedom cost?

    “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned.” Isaiah 9:2

    NightLight is an international organization committed to addressing the complex issues surrounding trafficking and prostitution by catalyzing individual and community transformation. NightLight’s vision is to offer intervention to sexually exploited women and children, to enable them to discover their dignity, and to provide a program of holistic transformation, empowering them to live and work in their community.

    NightLight’s mission is to build relationships and provide hope, intervention, rescue and assistance to women and children exploited in the sex industry by offering alternative employment, vocational opportunities, life-skills training and physical, emotional and spiritual development to women seeking freedom. NightLight builds support networks internationally to intervene and assist women, men and children whose lives are negatively impacted by the sex industry.

    In Bangkok, Nightlight operates as a business (NightLight Design, Co. Ltd) and a non-profit (NightLight Foundation). In the United States, NightLight operates as a 501c3 with branches in Los Angeles and Atlanta.