Thursday, February 21, 2008

The Struggle Between Hope and Mystery

Hey everyone. I am in Japan right now leading an outreach of 6 individuals (including myself and a co-leader). We've been here for two and half weeks and have seen some awesome fruit and some really cool things happen. But this isn't going to be an update blog. I want to let you guys have a sneak peek into the heart and mind of an outreach team:

There are 6 of us here in Japan. There should be 8. 2 of our teammates, Roseleen Mead and Mikhail Laxton, are still in Australia waiting to see the money provided so that they can meet us on the DTS outreach. Now, there has been this unspoken vow of silence in my outreach team for a few weeks about this ordeal. We've prayed a few times corporately and still haven't seen much. Secretly, each of us are mystified and disappointed with God. Let me explain:

YWAM 101-- God Provides for His servants and His children. There are tons of scriptures that back this (Matthew 6:25-34, Luke 12:22-32, Matthew 7:7-11 to name a few).
In fact one thing my school leader, Leah, said over and over to the students was this statement, "Our YWAM base has never not sent a person on outreach because of a lack of funds." It's been this hope we've been clinging to--- That YWAM Brisbane's history has seen God provide again and again in the most unlikely of circumstances.
And yet, my outreach team has not seen this happen. We've even given to other outreach teams in the past 4 months when they were in need.. And yet, we boarded the plane with 6 people instead of 8. Incomplete.

A couple of nights ago it had been a really long day of ministry. It started early in the morning, went late to the night and we were all just tired. I was particularly exhausted. I had just gotten a very disheartening email from my school leader telling me the situation with Mikhail and Roseleen. Inside, I knew that I needed to pray and process.. But dang was I tired. And I thought my outreach team needed it too.. but they were tired. Sometimes, I think exhaustion can be one of the most effective hinderances to running to God. The irony of it is that He is faithful to renew and refresh those who are weary.. And yet we find it so hard to run to Him when we are exhausted, when we really need Him.
In the end, I decided to follow what I knew to be right-- I brought the topic up. The one thing we had been avoiding talking about as a team.
I handed out pieces of paper to the team and said, "I know all of you can discern God's voice. We are going to spend time praying over Mik and Roseleen, but I want to KNOW what God is doing. I want to know what His will is so we can join with Him in this and see it come to pass."
We spent 10-15 minutes praying and passing in the papers. I read them out loud-- there were varied responses. Some talked about surrender, some about responsibility and some about initiative. There was no clear yes or no.

Do you ever notice that God rarely gives the yes or no answer that we really desire? The more I walk with the Father the more I see that when I ask Him questions He answers me by revealing to me His character.
In any case, none of us had a clear idea of what was going on. I decided to be bold and honest at this point. I brought up some things I was sensing God saying about bad attitudes towards having our team mates come and some other things and opened it up for anyone to share what they were feeling. Each of them responded so honestly! Some confessed resentment, some confessed disappointment in God, some confessed that they didn't think our team mates were doing enough.
And after all of that was out there, what were we to do?

We had no clear idea of what God was doing, we were divided in our thoughts towards the situation and as a leader I have just heard several very clear, honest confessions about fear and doubts we had. I don't know what happened within me, but there was a surge of assurance as I opened my mouth and began to speak this out:
"Alright. This is what we're going to do. God is Father. God is Provider. We know this. We are going to stand on this and FIGHT to see our friends come here until we are told otherwise by the school leaders. We are going to believe in God and in our friends to see them come here. And if we don't see them come, then we will deal with that by seeking the Father and asking Him to show us what we are not seeing."

After that I started to pray and something was different in the group. The Spirit of God fell upon our outreach team in such a powerful way. Each person's prayer was that of confession to God of who He really is and of our fear and doubt. But in each prayer their was a promise, a resolve to trust in Him, to believe in Him. 
Some of us led out in asking for repentance for how we have treated our team members. 

At the end of the night, all of us had felt the Spirit of God move so heavily. We thanked Him, and we all felt sure of what we had prayed.

It's been a few days since then, and still no word from back home. This is something that we commonly experience as missionaries-- believing in God for who He is but having to submit to His will as it plays out differently then what we think or believe. I still have no answer for my team regarding what is happening, and why are team mates aren't here. But I am resolved in my spirit to know God as Father and as Provider despite what I see happening and despite how I feel. We are not dealing with unanswered prayer here.. He certainly has responded to my team's cry for help, but we are dealing with the struggle between hoping in what we know is entirely possible for God and in mystery in why He has not acted sooner. 

Yet, in all of this, I know that God is good. I know that He uses all things for the good of His perfect purposes. What is more, my heart believes what my head knows. And so I trust in Him and my outreach team as we are committed to Him and to His purposes for our lives and the lives of the people we encounter daily. 

I hope that through this you've tasted a bit of the struggle that my outreach team has and is still working through. It is through our struggles that God makes Himself so real to us-- He shows up as Comforter, Counselor, Provider, Lover. My prayer for all that read this is that they will look back on the times where they have seen 'unanswered prayer' and be able to see where God was standing with His answer for you. Maybe, it wasn't what you wanted to hear or see, but it was what was perfect for you in that moment. Just like my team received no final yes or no, but we did receive the Father's heart for how we saw our team mates. His answer to us was to adjust the way we saw the situation so that we could see through His eyes. 

Blessings,
Kelly A.

Wednesday, February 6, 2008

Evangelism in Japan.

Lately, I have been studying the 7 hebrew words for praise.
In our english translation of the bible we use the words, commend, extol, praise, give thanks.. and such things like this. Unfortunately, what is lost in translation is some very essential hebrew understanding of the principles of praise and attitudes of the heart that they created the words to describe. For example:
Halal, is the root word for Hallelujah. Halal means: to praise, to celebrate hilariously, to be clamorously foolish, to rave to boat, to make show.
Hallelujah is literally translated "Praise Yah", which means "Halal to Yaweh". We see an example of this word for praise in action and in attitude in 2 Samuel 6-- David dances so hard that his clothes fall off, and many see his nakedness. His response when confronted by this is, "I will become even more undignified than this, and I will be humilated in my own eyes." (verse 22)

If we are not aware of the true meaning of some of the words that we use to worship God than we can lose some very important principles of giving true worship to God.
The word hebrew word Tehillah literally means 'to sing Halal.' It means: to spontaneously sing praise and adoration to the Father, to the point of looking foolish in the eyes of others. And so this brings to light this scripture in Psalm 100:4 "Enter his gates with thanksgiving (Towdah) and enter his courts with praise (Tehillah); give thanks to him and praise his name."

So the principle we see in this scripture, is that to give thanks is to enter his courts, and to praise (Tehillah, or to sing Halal) is to enter his courts. Spontaneous singing, spontaneous praise to God, is to enter his courts.

After spending time processing that, I decided to take this principle out on the streets. We went out to the train station as a team, and I just played some chords over and over and did some spontaneous singing to my style of music for 30-45 minutes. Now, we didn't see any miraculous salvations, but there were a few guys who told us, "We see many musicians playing on this corner, but we came to talk to you today because all of you were smiling." There is a distinct difference between a worshiper of God and a musician, even in countenance. As I sang over hundreds of people walking by, I felt the presence of the Lord so strongly! And it was as if each word, each melody and phrase of worship to God was piercing the hard hearts of the Japanese people despite whether they understood it or not. I felt a deep sense of appreciation for the Father for choosing to spread my worship of God over the hearts of the people passing by-- It gave him the opportunity to step into the lives of his lost children and start to soften their hearts towards his amazing gospel of peace and salvation.

Often times I don't realize how powerful worshiping God in the midst of darkness can be. But it only takes one small flame to start an enormous forest fire.