But I am like an olive tree flourishing in the house of God; I trust in God’s unfailing love for ever and ever.
Psalm 52:8
Yesterday Tim and I got talking about how good it is to have something to fight for! From the beginning of our lives, we both learned how to fight quickly so we just do not know life without a fight. And now that life is good for both of us, we see ourselves fighting again, in lots of different ways, for lots of different things. And it wasn’t till yesterday that we stood still and realized the blessing of a good fight. We just can’t imagine living life without having something to fight for.
The blessing is that the fight is hard, and we can’t fight alone. We are required to spend time with God daily to get our focus, our strength, wisdom, to get care for our heart. And that is such an amazing thing. Any fight is hard, and painful, and a great source of stress. It takes energy and to sit in my car last night being filled with God’s presence is such an amazing thing. I just can describe it, you have to live it to understand. And all I could do was praise over and over again: God, thank you for being faithful to my heart!
I write this post in honor of my friend Vicky , who fights a good fight. Her fight, like so many, is pretty unfair, yet, she won’t tell you that. Vicky only speaks of how good God is in the fight!!
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I think Tim and I have the personal aspect down pretty well. We serve one another first and fore most, before serving anyone or anything else. We have an eye for our neighbor and often reach out, even in the littlest, but oh so important, of ways. We want to be of service to our church community and have started that conversation with our church and beautiful things are unfolding. The global aspect is a clear one to most of the people around us. It is very clear we desire to serve globally and want to have an impact in the lives of people who have little in the developing world.
At times I feel I have not enough time to do what I want to do in those areas, so when I was challenged to talk about how we seek to live for others locally, I drew a blank. This is the piece I have been wondering about… am I to serve locally when I am already short on time and doing so much? We still have to work hard to get food on the table as we try to live a life style of service.
I am very curious to what picture God is painting with our life. Is He challenging our life style? For if we want to live a life of service and seeing, will the hours in a day really matter? We seek to see and love… and what if all of us cover all three areas: seeing and loving in the personal circle, the local circle and global circle… would God’s painting of the world not look a whole lot different?
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It was hard getting home. Tim and I had such a good month away that I was sad to go home, and once home I was even sad to be home. I needed time to adjust.
It was interesting to see that in Burkina none of our concerns from home mattered. There are certain things we’ve been focusing on lately, even to the point it consumed me. When away the past month we spoke about all those things and how it all seemed irrelevant in light of what we were doing in Burkina. How would we respond when we got back? Would we just be consumed over those ‘things’ again? It’s certainly not what we wanted.
I don’t want to be consumed by anything but with the matters of the Lord. I have written before about heart’s desires going unanswered. In Burkina it didn’t matter. Tim and I have been consumed by wanting to move. We live too far from community and church and it is bothering us, it aches. In Burkina it didn’t matter. I desired to go home with a new passion… focusing on the things that truly matter and on things that are way more important than my ‘things’.
And yet, what I feared is happening. I am getting consumed by the things here. The old things pop back up and seem to matter. And it saddens me. There are better things to be consumed by, like focusing on making this world a better place, wherever, however, but that has got to be my focus. I have lived a past and God has used it to write a story of redemption through my life. Sharing that has got to matter. Seeing need all around me, that has got to matter.
The first morning home I couldn’t wait to sit down with God and just be. He showed up as such a loving Father. Guess what He told me? He told me that ‘my things’ matter to Him! The things I get consumed by are obviously important to me, and so they are important to Him. That was a beautiful first awaking.
God said something else, something He’s been saying to me before. He said: “Don’t pray, let me do!” 
