Chapter One

 

  

 

 

Chapter One

 

By Heather Amundsen

 

Summer of 2008

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 Hello family.  I have been compelled to say hi and invite you take a walk with me as I share a little of my life with you.  I so appreciate your company in this life, even if I’m not around you very much.  I see your love and endurance as I think about you here.  Your choice to live, your choice to love and hopefully your choices to forgive—both for yourself and others as they too live and grow around you. 

 

I’ve broken down this letter into some topic headings.  These topic headings by no means give light to my day-to-day reality, but they will to some of it and the inclusion of these headings indicates their importance to me.

 

 

 

 

 

Food

 

My first subject fortunately applies to everybody.  Everybody—everybody—has a relationship to food.  I am in a classroom with the Lord of this area of my life.  I thought in the initial stages it was just something I needed to address before him, get down, and move on.  How wrong was I.  Did you know the Lord wants to liberate us and walk us into health and wholeness in every area of our life that we’ll allow him to?   So I handed over the reigns here—or so I thought—about three years ago when I first moved to Cairo. 

 

All Christians are called to fast.  It’s an expectation of our walk with him that Jesus had.  It is a co-tool with prayer.  The two are joined at the hip all throughout the word and over and over again, God moves.  It’s all about voluntary humility and ultimate trust.  Sometime the voice of our flesh is so loud we can’t hear the voice of the Holy Spirit.  Or if we do, on a full stomach, sometimes we feel more inclined to ignore it. Although the title of the class may be the same: fasting; it truly looks unique for every individual, but isn’t that the way love always goes?  It’s so unique between every individual.  And so the Lord’s been good and I’m in places I didn’t know existed having been led step by step through obedience to what I felt the Holy Spirit was calling me to lay down.

 

I tell you this has transformed my outlook on food, my relationship to it, and ultimately my health.  Did you know that people in the bible all the time had to lay down the ways of their forefathers and the people around them even in their diet to follow the Lord?  I too am not leaning on my own understanding but His.  The Lord will always lead us to our good.  I know this because he loves me.  I know this because I desire the good of those I love…their best in fact. 

 

And so through fasts for certain periods from different things I am walking in more and more liberty and freedom from things I was bound by before.  As I write this now, it sounds real comprehensive and abrupt but this has been over the course of three to five years; some lessons taking a lot longer than others.  And I also want to highlight that all of these started merely with the holy spirit highlighting some area of my health—fatigue, headaches, digestive things, swelling—then I would be lead to an understanding of what was causing it.  There were addictions, imbalances, and unhealthy patterns involved that I will never have to feel or suffer again because of this journey. 

 

And I’m telling you now I’m not done.  Understand these things may not be for a life time but they are for my LIFE right now and have ultimately—I know—have redirected my health for the rest of my life.  The voice of ‘normal’ in the eyes of the world will never lead you to true freedom.  My freedom has been found in the Lord.

 

So here are some communicable landmarks in the subject of food for me. I have been fully relieved of any addiction to caffeine and no longer intake it in any form I know of.  I had been drinking it daily from a young age and not only that but as I became an adult it developed even into higher content through coffees, mochas, and more.  These were things I took comfort in, that I took rest in, that I took peace in, that I enjoyed but I can honestly say things are temporary in gratification and do more harm than good.  I had huge energy swings and lapses. I had overwhelming symptoms of withdrawal without it.  Caffeine in these ways have never been a benefit to my body or my health but I continued to drink it apart from this knowledge and the dent on my finances it was making. I’ve

learned to identify harm, despite how it might be wrapped in a pretty bow of taste, feel, or sound.

 

I also know its actually destructive to different systems and parts of your body in ways that over a lifetime take its toll.  In the Lord’s mercy that response was sped up and I was having terrible impact from these drinks over a period of time and still I would turn to them.  Long story long, through selective periods of fasting from this I would once again return to it and after doing that over the course of years I now no longer even have the desire.  Celebrate with me friends.  I no longer have the desire.  That’s awesome to me.  No coffee, chocolates, teas, etc.  The rest of the following were a similar process but I am also fully free of any addiction to processed sugars.  Corn syrup, sweets, desserts, artificial sugar based anything, all of it.  No desire.  That’s still a kicker to me.  No desire. 

 

I enjoy putting healthy things in my body!  I enjoy natural things.  Who knew there was a place where there is guilt-free eating and enjoyment too.  I am also currently taking a break from eating all meats.  Anything that died to feed me.  And guess what?  I still feel no lack.  God’s mercy and grace through all this has been amazing.  I used to exercise more regularly until one day I just knew I wasn’t supposed to anymore.  I couldn’t even run on the treadmill and ignore the Holy Spirit anymore.  Now a common response might be, “exercising is healthy for you!”  Although that is true, God knows what he’s doing for our good, whether we understand it or not.  That’s why he calls us to unconditional obedience through trust, not obedience according to our understanding. 

 

In his goodness I did come to understand his wisdom as time played out.  I would go and exercise the day after I overate or I would overeat knowing I could exercise.  It was another way for me to cope and be comfortable with unhealthy eating habits.  I still am not exercising as of right now, but like I said I am not finished yet.  This is still an area where I know I need work, where I know I make mistakes, where I know there is more freedom but I tell you it’s the journey I’m in for—not the destination.  It’s the walking with him that’s my reward, not the destination.

 

The most recent and last one is salts.  Did you know you can be addicted to salts!  Who knew!?  I didn’t.  But I am in the midst of this one right now.  No processed foods, canned foods, things high in sodium.  It’s not for my good!!  I’m not going to choose a diet that reaps diseases and death just because its normal!  I see around me through things I have the power and freedom to change.  Again the power is not within me, it’s the mercy of Jesus, his grace, his patience in my slow and often resistant learning, but he can do so much with just a little yes, even if it’s a whimper.  He will only move in our lives where we ask and invite him to.  Yeah, Lord I want you here in my life too.

 

Whoa!  That was a long first category.  These are things going on in my life that are important to me.  Now that I’ve written the above, it reminds me of my mother who often says your health is a very important thing, if that goes, what else matters?  I believe we can eat in a way that doesn’t reap sickness and disease. It’s worth it to me and I believe it’s honoring to Him.  And honestly I fall on my face and fail repeatedly but there’s a proverb that says the righteous man falls but gets back up again. And in his steadfast love towards me and his constant goodness I do. Don’t listen to condemnation, don’t listen to guilt.  Get back up again.  You will succeed and no lie of discouragement will steal from you the freedom that’s rightfully yours.  I’m not just talking about food anymore either.  That truth applies to so much more.  If you’re up for more…let’s move on.

 

 

 

Disaster

 

The word says do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.  Another area the Lord has renewed my mind in the last few years is HIS overwhelming love for people.  Not just for people serving him or following his ways, but for everybody.  Everybody.  The word says he desires no one to perish.  Not one.  But we do perish; we parish apart from his ways.  We parish in our selfishness, pride, arrogance, stubbornness, rebellion, bitterness, offense, in our unforgiveness, and our despair.  We perish apart from Him.  Apart from Life.  Apart from His encouragement.  Apart from His Word.  Apart from the man Christ Jesus who delivered us from all things that cause us to parish. 

 

It’s not just something to cash-in on after we die, its my deliverance from the sin of my heart now that as long as it dwells within me is bringing death even to my mortal body.  God is continually trying to wake up his bride.  Wake up his love.  Wake us up.  In his mercy he is relentless to show us his kindness and his goodness.  And apart from he we are left to die in our sin; our woundedness, our selfishness, our hurts and our pain.  God, in your mercy, wake me up.  Shake me from my slumber.  Awaken my spirit to the reality of your goodness and your gifts towards men. 

 

In your mercy wake up America.  Wake up a nation lost in our busi-ness and our labor to reap that which does not satisfy; numbed by our comforts and lulled to sleep in our American dream.  Wake up a church that’s lost a vision of the beauty of Your face.  And has become distracted by her own image in the mirror.  In your mercy God, do whatever you need to do to allow the highest number of people to humble themselves and come into fellowship with you.  Whatever you need to do Lord, interrupt what which we’ve settled for as life on this earth.  Don’t let us miss out on the fullness of what you’ve offered us.

The Lord is gentle, it’s true.  The Lord is long suffering, it’s true.  And in his mercy I pray he shakes us awake.  In his mercy I pray he would roar so loud we no longer hit the snooze button again and roll over back to our old ways.  I agree with the Lord; that things that wake us up from spiritual slumber are his mercy to a nation when we have strayed from him.  His heart is to wake up a slumbering church into her destiny so that love, life, freedom, humility, and a fear of the Lord are restored to their rightful place within her.  That we might no longer slander his name by the way we live our lives with self-focus and lack of love; in bondage as slaves to sin, despite the complete work of the cross.

 

We are his people and yet because we have not fellowship with him—mere allegiance—we don’t look like him anymore, we don’t freely give what we’ve received from him.  I say ‘we’ because the church of this nation is my family.  Whether they honor the Lord or not, whether I agree with them or not.  Whether they stand on the word or not, those who have given their to Jesus Christ are my brothers and sisters no matter how well we’ve all surrendered our lives to obedience to Him and whether or not they want it, they have a praying sister and I know a God that’s all about redemption, restoration, and taking our weakness and showing himself strong. 

 

And so I pray even for the region in which I live that God would take away all the props.  Take away all the things we trust and lean upon and place our hope in apart from him.  It’s in His mercy that he would do it something now rather than allow us continue in our ways and stand before him on the day when the books are opened and our actions and words have been recorded and taken to account with such regret of what we chose in this life in comparison to all that he had freely offered us. 

 

Yes, my friends, my family and my loved ones, this subject heading is called disaster.  There is a time coming when all created things will be

shaken and only the Rock that is Christ Jesus will remain.  I honestly feel like I am being prepared more and more for that day.  God is progressively raising the trust and faith in the midst of our team down here as we continue to say yes to him.  Mental and physical preparation are good but honestly it’s our ability to hear the voice of the Lord, to follow his leading, to know the voice of the shepherd and to walk nearer and nearer to him that is the true preparation needed for the days to come. 

 

Seek the Lord while he may be found.  In His word, in prayer, in obedience to what he’s asking of you, knowing you’ll lose nothing and be blessed by it.  Our fellowship with the Father is real. He isn’t kidding when he says he’s our Refuge, our Strong Tower, our Deliverer, our Strength, our Shield, our Fortress, our Bread, our Living Water, and our Good Father.  Trust in the Lord with ALL your heart and lean not on your own understanding.  God looked death in the face and took the keys from its hands and he wills that even death would not cause our hearts to tremble.  He is good all the time.

 

Our team has been moved to act in additional ways to be prepared for things we believe will happen to our region and nation.  We are going through the Disaster Preparedness Training through the Red Cross.  There is one volunteer for all three of the Southernmost counties of Illinois.  You cannot volunteer with Red Cross in a disaster if you have not received their training before hand.  If you have, you have access to the disaster.  Access to the shaken, the hurting, the broken, and even the helping.  Lord I pray the church would be useful not only in truth but also in deed.  We’re setting up training and getting the word out to others in our region and area that they too might be equipped to respond and to give unto others, not just wait to receive.  The rep that came to our site says 96% of Red Cross volunteers in America are church affiliated.  Loose Your compassion through Your Church Lord, loose your mercy, and your nearness and your comfort. 

 

You’ve heard my heart on disaster.  That’s been a growing and unfolding understanding for me and more and more I see mercy and judgment as synonyms.  Just like it was mercy for to me have consequences to my eating habits so that I don’t destroy myself by them, it’s mercy when there’s consequences to our spiritual apathy and stubbornness that our separation from him too might not destroy us.

 

Gardening

 

Over the past three years a number of my teammates have had a longing for or a desire for a plot of land to tend their own gardens.  There was a community garden in town switching hands but our leadership didn’t feel up to task of any one of us organizing or maintaining it. 

 

In the meantime a young man started to hang out with our staff and invited out to his place 40 minutes north of Cairo and his father is an organic farmer.  I spent a number of days interacting with the earth, lots of new things, and a land that produced life.  It was through this relationship that I was first exposed to seasonal eating.  As the harvest would be brought in, it also would end up on our kitchen table. 

 

Time passed, then it happened.  The community garden overgrew.  There is a 78-year old pastor that was overseeing it and this year it was just too much.  With the garden three feet tall but bearing no fruit, one of my teammates stepped up to the plate.  She had already been growing things on her porch and in a new bed in the front yard. She was enjoying it so much that she was entirely prepared when the need for the community garden arose. 

 

The keys to the community garden were officially handed over on the 16^th of June, 2008.  For those of you that don’t know, this is the sixth summer that an organization called YouthWorks has been sending

volunteers to Cairo.  There is usually about 60 to 70 high-schoolers and their adult leaders every week and they run a kid’s program, paint houses, go on prayer walks and volunteer at a couple different places in town.  A couple times a week one crew would work at this community garden and help to quickly restore it.

 

 The week that I’m writing this has been a week of harvest.  The tomatoes aren’t quite done but we have peppers, greens, cucumbers, eggplant, squash, herbs, and more.  These will be handed out to the community as they continue to come in. 

 

My roommates little plot of land out front has been the same; zucchini the size of your forearm, squash, peppers, cantaloupe and more.  I also joined this planting and gardening extravaganza.  I have two rows of sweet potatoes growing beautifully and two rows of corn fighting against bugs right now.  I just repotted a dying strawberry vine today and am preparing pots to start a number of new seeds.  We have begun to recycle all natural kitchen scrap into compost as well.

 

I volunteer with a psychosocial rehabilitation program that is a day care facility for mentally ill adults or those who just got out of prison or post/current addicts.  There is greenhouse run by them as well.  They do mostly plants but they also have a string of vegetables and edible foods.  This afternoon came the first tomato, purple pepper, and yellow peppers.

 

It feels like something ancient has been tapped into within me as I think, feel, and enjoy reaping things from the earth, natural, healthy, nutrient-filled and great tasting.  We rarely know food that exists free of chemicals, pesticides, exhausted, hormones, dyes, and other things that damage our bodies rather than help them.  This has been and interesting development in relation to my personal lessons about diet and food. It’s like I’ve been presented with this complete cycle that’s been a part of us are since the first garden was created.  It’s something I honestly desire to equip this town with.  Many ideas have passed through my mind and with the Lord going before me there’s a possibility of expanding what the Lord’s already investing in us right now.

 

It not just a nice little idea of eating healthy but when you live a community that’s largely an island with no major grocer for 45 mins and a majority without licenses or cars and literally without money to buy food, it moves beyond a cute idea to feasible sustainability for families.  The ideas are endless but I don’t want to open a door until the time is ripe, that the timing is the Lord’s.  I could honestly exhaust myself in a lot of good ideas but I can assure you my greatest investment is in listening to the Lord and his direction.  He knows what coming, what’s best, and will set you up to be in the center of what His business in this hour.

 

The two last little addendums I’ll add to this section is one—that we also have chickens.  Yes chickens—in town.  This is also new for us this year, my same gardening roommate stepped out in this area.  They lay eggs on a regular basis and are providing for our household.  She built them a coup from scrap material.  We will probably get more to provide not only for our staff but also to barter with locally.  We’ve joked about goats…

 

And lastly self-sufficiency has been stirring on some of our team’s hearts. Rain collection, alternative sources of energy, foods, grains, earth-based construction, it’s been eye-opening and exhilarating all at the time.  It’s crazy how much our society has been manipulated to be reproduction-less.  There’s also a form of construction called cob houses and I was already thinking of the artistic and engineering possibilities of that material.  I hear they also are unaffected by earthquakes, because they move with the earth…maybe this belongs in the previous section…moving on…

 

Discipleship

 

The longer and longer I stay in Cairo, the more and more I realize God’s looking for a people to invest our lifetime into His kingdom.  The more and more my eyes adjust to this, the more and more I see that His kingdom lives in dwells in the hearts of men and our love for Him.  It’s not about buildings, programs, or denominations.  It’s about coming alongside the Holy Spirit in His loving men into wholeness, healing, freedom, and the fullness of life.  This is the blood of Jesus at work.  God desires to heal our wounds and reconcile us complete to Him. 

 

There are a lot of wounded people walking around with pain and are wounding others because they either can’t see it, don’t want address it, or don’t know that it can be healed.  There are a lot of people bound by fears, anxieties, insecurities, worries, offense, pride, doubts, and discouragements.  Jesus Christ died so people don’t have to be bound by the chains darkness has managed to establish around their hearts.  And I’m not talking about unbelievers!

 

God intends for His people to use word as a guide and a foundation for this in our own lives and the lives of others.  In a recent newspaper article wrote I God has not saved me from hell, like a ticket I’m cashing in when I die or others for that matter, but God has liberated me from the hell that dwells in my heart in mind now that I might walk in freedom, in liberty, in peace and joy in this life now.  God has been faithful to continue to show me areas in my life that he is gently and kindly teaching me a better way; bringing light into the dark places of my thought patterns, my choices, my heart, and my perception of Him. There is a better way, a way of love, of worship, and power through Christ.

 

I get to simply be transparent with some individuals in Cairo.  How God’s been faithful to me, how I used to live or act, what he’s teaching me and showing me, who he’s revealing himself to be to me.  This is partnered with me pointing them to the word and prayer—my  sources of life—and we get to do those things together. 

 

God has been faithful even in the young ones he’s brought around me.  The youth I’ve worked with Cairo are amazingly beautiful.  I love God more as I get to know them more.  He’s awesome.  There is a little band of us that meet together on a weekly basis.  We meet all over, in the park, on a porch, in the prayer room, on the levee, where ever works for that week.  Equipped with drinks and snack and the word we meet together.  God’s been teaching me how to walk alongside these ones.  Over and over again the Lord reminds me that my one desire in meeting with them is to love them.   Lord, let me love them well this week.  Let me listen, let me train them as overcomers, let me be led by you, Lord, even in my words.  I just ask him week to week what we’ll be doing.  He shows me exactly where I need to prepare or just be ready to respond to what will come up that week.  Sometimes the best meetings are when I come empty-handed.  You are a good leader when Jesus leads through you. 

 

One thing that has been created through this is a safe place.  My one rule when this bible study began a year ago was that there is a no tolerance level to name-calling, teasing, laughing at, picking-on, or putting down, or rejecting one another.  This is a rare environment among the youth’s lives in Cairo.  It’s like I can see hands pushing back darkness in the air and you create a pocket of light and these kids step in it and they don’t see or know what’s changed but they just know they can breathe better.

 

I meet with a group of about 8 youth. Schedules and transportation and getting connected with them week to week isn’t always simple.  Not all the families have cars, phones or consistent addresses.  I just found out last night that one of the girls moved again for the fourth time since I’ve started working with her. 

There are a core group that are there the most often; two guys and two sisters.  The two boys were given a great opportunity this summer.  They are too old to participate in the YouthWorks Kid’s Club program but the leading staff took the two of them under his wing and they did an amazing job being servant leaders. They walked in understanding and authority and were not only helpful but also a delight to those they worked with.  Both mothers have shared with our staff that they have seen change in their sons in the course of the past year and especially this summer. 

 

The two boys also played on a rotary baseball team this summer.  The team was made up mostly of kids that that hang around the center where we work.  The first time I checked out a practice, I introduced myself to the coach.  He said I’m doing this because the Lord told Him to.  “I’m a perfectionist and this is very challenging for me,” he said, “but I know I’m supposed to be doing it.  And not only that the Lord told me to employ one of the players for the summer.”  I got to pray with him and I walked away being totally encouraged.  I ended holding some practices in the park with some of the team and attending most of their home games.  I was delighted to attend their end of season celebration party. 

 

There’s a derivative of discipleship we’ve been doing this summer; the encouragement of churches.  It started with an invitation by a church.  A church four and a half hours away that’s over a hundred years old had never been on a missions trip.  Their youth came to Cairo.  Their adults came a year later.  Then they invited us to come and just be who we are before their church and share with them the testimony of our ministry and our walks with the Lord.  And so we went. We all stayed in different houses of members of the church. We led a Saturday night service and spoke during the morning service. 

 

One of their members drives down four hours once a month to fellowship with us.  He says we’ve become more of a family to him than his own.  We were created to love and be loved.  Love never runs out.  When you spend it, it multiplies.

 

Since then we’ve been involved with a small number of different churches in our city and region.  These look slightly different as day-long prayer journeys.  Just like people, churches have a life  to them or a lack thereof.  There are strengths and callings upon the churches and at the same time wounds and hurts.  We go and listen.  Listen to the Lord.  What does he have to say about these groups of people walking out community in the context of a church.  What needs to be addressed?  What needs to be strengthened? Leadership have prayed with us, congregants prayed, people have wept, people have been encouraged, the Lord has been worshipped and his presence shown up.  These journeys remind me of the churches the Lord addresses in the beginning of the book of Revelation.  It’s been awesome and a privilege to walk alongside churches; to pray with them, encourage them, and worship with them.

 

Over the course of a year I interact with hundreds of individuals at prayer meetings, regional gatherings, other churches, people in Cairo, hundreds of volunteers that come through during the summer, people that come visit from all over.  It’s like I’ve been able to zoom out in really connecting with so many people.  It’s like hearts were created the same, even if they have different personalities and strengths, but either the wounds or the chains are the same and the Lord’s truth is always victorious, powerful, and faithful in restoring people to fullness of life.  In some ways it has just left me hungrier and hungrier for him.  Hungry for his nearness, his fullness, his power, and his goodness to be more and more consuming.  I love his heart, his desires, his faithfulness, his plans, and his sovereignty. He really is a good king and I long for the day the nations are shown his goodness, his beauty, and the wisdom of his ways.

 

Reading

 

I have a selective taste in reading and I won’t do it at all unless it’s something that I desire to feast on.  This is apart from the word of course.  I can literally feel my spirit dimming and my pride growing if I’m not in the word on a regular basis.  I have this fascination with factual books having to do with World War II, particularly treatment of Jews and German resistance.  People who looked organized death in the face and still did not waver, did not compromise, did not relent in love of their neighbors.

 

One book was in the form of a novel of a small town in France and their experience with German occupation.  Another was a factual compilation of direct evidence of the life of someone who joined the German SS initially to investigate the mysterious death of his sister and he climbed the ranks and at the same time partnering with people on the outside to tell the world what was happening.  People didn’t believe him or they felt helpless or didn’t care.  He lived through the war and died while being imprisoned after it ended.  The documents he published are some of the only documents that we have that share an eyewitness as to what went on inside Auschwitz. 

 

The one I’m currently in is Schindler’s list.  I watched the movie several times when I was younger but I’m not sure if it ever registered to me that it was a book.  This book too is entirely based on first hand interviews and statements of the people involved in the book.  It’s like watching the evil of men’s hearts manifest on this earth.  I think this was just a peak of what’s to come.  At the same time I know so will God’s kingdom advance in power in the days to come.  As I write this I realize I have the expectation that situations like what arose with Nazi German will come again in my day.

 

 

 

Team

 

This last section is almost like the unstated obvious in my day to day reality.  The team I operate in has become such a way of life to me that it’s like I don’t even remember what it’s like to be living life apart from them.  Well actually I do and I like it on this side much better.  I say that not because its more fun or easier with more people.  I say that because I see God’s power, strength and wisdom of us operating in communities.  I think we were supposed to be fully known by other and yet still be fully accepted.

 

I think the 10 of us are the most unique and different individuals I have ever met; how we communicate, our personalities, our strengths and weaknesses, so many things.  But with all of these, I know that each one on my team loves the Lord more than themselves.  Or we wouldn’t be here.  These relationships have been tried and tested in every way and I tell you they are not going to dissolve.  Nothing that we do or say that is hurtful or selfish will sever these relationships.  They are here to stay in all of our weakness.  For better or for worse.

 

I understand why Jesus said we are called not to forgive seven times but seventy times seven times.  Forgiveness is the basis upon which relationships stand and endure.  Without it they will only be temporary.  I have received such grace through these people.  I also am hearing loud and clear that I shouldn’t take this grace for granted and act without care.  I have been surrounded by a people that display the Lord to me on a daily basis.  It never ends.  You never get relationships down and then they are always fine.  It’s like they grow and change and shift and are tried and tested and if they survive, are stronger.  It feels like I’ve married 9 other people.  And to be honest with you I feel the Lord is establishing relationships that will equip us in ministry for a lifetime.  Not that we will always be together but that we will always be there to pick one another up and help one another stand, in whatever nation we’re doing ministry in. 

Love is always the standard.  If was doing everything I was supposed to down here but not loving my team, I would be failing.  And sometimes it feels like I am but we are called first and foremost to love those God’s placed around us.  That’s why it sometimes feels like the area most attacked and therefore a place I covet your prayers.  I can’t be okay with anything less then being watchful in my heart in this area. 

 

I think our team as a whole is also not done.  There are deeper places  in our daily love towards one another in giving and selflessness and service and joy.  I’ve already been told that our team’s interaction with one another has impacted the heart’s of people just watching us, but I think there’s more to be laid a hold of here.  God said the world would know we are Christians by our love.  The church as a whole has a long way to go.  God has not given up on his people and in his mercy and by his grace we will be transformed into his pure and spotless bride that he’s coming back for.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Today is a new day.  God’s mercy is new everyday.  He loves to make everything new.  The past never has to bind us today.  I praise the Lord that he is a God of healing and restoration power.  May his name alone be exalted among the nations.  May all people see the light of his glory that truly does fill the earth.