Moseleb died.  I don't even know how else to put it.  He died the day after I saw him and I don't know why.  I don't get it and my heart hurts...a lot.

I went to the leper colony on Monday to see how his arm was doing.  I prayed all weekend for it and I believed it would be healed.  I remember distinctly driving to the colony telling the other people in the car how excited I was to see him. 

When we got there, we were greeted by Janapai, his wife, with tears streaming down her face.  At first I didn't understand what was going on.  She kept pointing upwards, but without being able to communicate, I didn't want to read too much into it.  So I pointed towards her room and motioned for her to take me there.  We walked slowly, tears streaming from her face and a huge gut feeling within me that things were not right.  When we got to her door, she pushed it open and there I saw it.

Emptiness.

Where just days before laid Moseleb with his infected wound and multiple rags, now was simply a concrete floor.  The room was bare with an eerie feeling to the place.  

I turned, threw my arms around her, and just began weeping with her.  I wept as she wept because my own heart so deeply hurt.  Here, days before, had been Moseleb.  Now..... no one.... except a hurting woman without the hope of Jesus before her to carry her through this.

We went inside and I sat on the ground with Janapai.  I cried as I rubbed her back.  The more she cried, the more I did.   Every once and a while she would look up, staring out into the empty space of the room, clearly lost somewhere else. 

After the silence and tears became too much, we decided we would sing to her.  And so there, sitting in the middle of the empty room where death had just taken place, we invited the spirit of the Living God to come invade every inch of it.  All of us in her room began to worship Him through song as Janapai sat listening.

Send you rain O Lord.
Send your rain, O Lord.
Send you rain, O Lord.... to your people.

Soften our hearts. 
Pour out your spirit. 
Fill us anew.
Let your rain come. 

May your kingdom come. 
May your will be done. 
Here on earth.
As it is in Heaven.

After some more worship, tears, and silence, we finally left.  I hugged her, smiled at her, and looked into her eye, doing my best to tell her I love her.  And then I walked away from her room, eyes still red from the tears and a heart that was broken.

I still feel broken by this.  I still wonder why the Lord didn't heal him.  Why He allowed Moseleb to pass away.  But then I think of the glory from His timing, that He brought me to him just days before His death.  Oh how I pray in those two days, in the midst of all his pain and suffering, Moseleb experienced the unspoken, true love of Christ. 

We still have no translator to help us speak with Janapai, but I know that our God is so much bigger than a language barrier.  I still go see Janapai every time I'm at the colony and when silence becomes too much to sit in, we sing to her, worshipping the Lord and inviting more of His Spirit into that place.

Even with the reality of loss and death freshly lingering in my heart, I still can't wipe a smile from my face.  When you enter a country like this where there are more gods worshipped than people in most countries. you realize just how amazing our God is.  We worship THE true God.  A God who personally loves his children and longs to sit in that mud with them and brush flies from their bodies.  A God who weeps at the loss and brokenness of this world, and yet has the power to bring redemption and hope into the bleakest places.  The God who is Father, Warrior, AND Comforter all in one.  The God who carries all power and authority in Heaven and on earth.  You can't help but cry some tears of joy when you realize the surpassing beauty of faith in the true God. 

All I can say is that we are blessed.  We are empowered.  We are loved.  And we are redeemed.  It gives me hope to walk into more and more places of hurt and death, knowing He brings the light of Heaven down each place we go.  I certainly don't claim to understand why Moseleb didn't make it, but I see the Lord's hand all over the timing.  So I will continue to love and hug Janapai and brush away flies and rewrap arms with dishrags knowing how the love of Chris transcends all boundaries to invade the heart of each person we meet.

GLORY....

 May you keep FALLING.

We rounded the corner to where his small space is located and I recognized his wife, Janapai, standing outside their place. She had tears running down her face and a look of total desperation. I ran up to her and hugged her. I looked into her eyes, trying to understand what could be the problem. She motioned her head to the right 

As I turned, I saw him.

Moseleb was hunched over, head to the concrete ground, on the floor. His left arm, the one that I kept rewrapping in the dishrag to cover his wounds the other day, was huge. In two days it had blown up to probably four times its size. The wounds were horribly infected and there were patches of purple and bright red skin down his arm. 

I immediately ran indoors and fell to the ground hugging his side so as not to cause more pain. He looked up with tears in his eyes and with the same silent cries of shear pain. He kept rocking back and forth, his right hand clutching his left shoulder. Every so often he would cry out in utter desperation.

I just cried. I sat there, clutching his side, rubbing his back gently, and cried. Tears fell down my face to the concrete floor as I prayed for the Lord to intervene with His healing power and bring complete relief of pain. There, on that floor in the middle of the leper colony, the only hope was Jesus. 

So I sat there rocking with him and cried out for Jesus to come. To heal. To bring his peace.

And Moseleb, not understanding a word I was praying, continued to rock back and forth, tears of pain running down his face. He continued to cry out with his voiceless shout of utter pain that makes you want to curl up into your own ball out of total inadequacy. 

What do you do in this situation? I'm not back in the states where I can pick up the nearest phone and call for help. I'm sitting in the middle of a leper colony in India. There are no doctors to see. There is no phone to call for help. There is no ointment to put on the wounds or bandages to wrap around. There is no pain medicine for him to pop into his mouth. There wasn't even a common language to understand what was going on beyond what was visible. The absolute only thing to lean on was the healing grace of Jesus. 

So I cried "JESUS", the name of healing, the name of power, the name of love, over and over again upon Moseleb's broken, outcasted, forgotten body trusting my Father hears every cry from his children.

After a long while of sitting, praying, and crying, Moseleb got tired and laid down. I did my best to explain to his wife we would be back again by hand motion. I am sure she had no idea what I was saying. I gave him one final hug.   And then I left, walking silently from their small place in the leper colony, feeling the weight of the reality of a hurting, loved-beyond-compare, family.

In a few days I'll be back again.   First thing I'm going to do when I get there is look for the beloved son of our Living God. My hope continues to be Jesus for Moseleb. I am standing on the healing power of Jesus to restore his wounded, infected arm back to health. And even more than that, to restore a wounded, hurting man to a place of surpassing peace and joy.

THE hope must be Jesus. 

Always.

The outcasted...the voiceless...the untouchables of this world. Those are His heart's love. When you find yourself in one of those moments where you are able to sit with one of them, you realize just how blessed you are. Because they are holy moments and you are sitting in the very spot your Savior would be found. Moments like these are precious, holy, and humbling. And a person should never take them lightly nor dare walk away unchanged....

I wish I could say I was exaggerating, but I'm not. It was gut-wrenching it its truest form.

As we got to him, I knew this was where I was to be. I could not walk away from him. It's in people like him where heaven meets earth and where the presence of God is found. And so without taking another moment's thought, I sat right down on his blanket with him. 

Touch My child.

I heard that small, still voice speak with power and sternness. It was not to be ignored. And in those split seconds after hearing that voice, my whole understanding of the moment changed. I began to look with Kingdom eyes to see what was really happening. 

See, the presence of Jesus was all over this man. This wasn't some ordinary moment anymore. It was a moment of holiness. The beloved son of my Father sat before me and more than anything, he needed to be touched.

And so without thought, I stretched out my hand and laid it gently on his back and began rubbing. Before me was the so called untouchable of the world who, more than words or aid, needed the soft touch of Jesus reaching out His hand.

We sat there for the next thirty minutes. I rubbed his back and swatted away the multitude of flies as best I could. I did my best to make sure the dirty dishrag remained wrapped around his open wound on his arm so the flies couldn't get at it. And he laid there. His face would scream out in voiceless cries every so often as the pain of his decaying body became too much for him to bear. 

Language was an issue. He could barely speak anymore because of how the disease had taken over and I don't know the first word of Hindi. So I just smiled. I touched. I looked into those eyes that have been ignored and did my best to let him know I cared. Because I did and I do. 

He has been scorned and left to die by his people because of their disgust for his appearance and yet when I looked into those aged eyes, I saw God's special son who has been beat up and forgotten by the world, but never by my Father. He's been unloved, abandoned, and cast out by society, but laid there as God's greatest delight and joy. 

Moments like these change a person. How can they not? They get you out of that common place we all live in of looking at ourselves and get our eyes pointed outwards on a world that is hurting and dying...and that is in desperate need of Jesus' love to bombard them in such a way that they too have no choice but become changed.

Arise church of God and BE His will to a world that is groaning in loud cries of pain for a love that far surpasses and outlasts anything the world will offer. 

Can't we see?

I am constantly blown away by just how far out of any limits of human understanding God works. We woke up morning five in Malawi and found out we were going to go out to a community to do some door-to-door evangelism. Oftentimes we cringe in the states when we hear of any type of door-to-door evangelism. It has such a negative connotation to all of us, in the church and outside of it. In fact, our team sat down over breakfast talking about how uncomfortable it made us feel. Can the gospel of the incarnational Christ really be expressed and understood to people in just minutes of meeting them? Can you show the unconditional, un-leaving love of the Father over twenty minutes of conversation? We didn't come to any major conclusions, but walked out open-hearted to the truth that God is capable of anything.

After getting to the community, I broke away with one of the translators and we started walking up to a house that was a pretty rundown place with chickens and children all over the place. And there on the porch, cooking and chatting away, is where I met them. Salome and Diana.

I loved them the minute I started talking to them. I loved they didn't care that I was there or wanted to talk. I loved that they wanted nothing to do with church or Jesus or anything christian-like. These girls were exactly the kind of girls Jesus came to love and change. And so with a silent prayer for the Holy Spirit to fall and change the atmosphere, I began to share my story of transformation.

That's when something changed. The minute I started sharing, they stopped talking and started listening. I mean really listening. Every word I said they were holding on to. The entire environment changed drastically from a simple prayer for the Holy Spirit to come.

 

I kid you not. These girls got it. They were changed. And as I watched them cry out for Jesus with tears in my own eyes, hearing the delight and rejoice of their Heavenly Father, I heard Him whipser to me, "Baptize my daughters." I had never heard Him say that before to me, but there was no mistaking His voice. So the minute they got done praying, I told them we needed some water. I told them I was going to baptize them right there as an outward symbol of the change that had happened inwardly. I explained to them what it all meant and they just became more excited. And so with a small bowl of dirty village water and with their hands raised to the sky, still on their knees, I baptized them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

It was beautiful. It was raw. It was real. It. was. simple. Sometimes I think we miss it in the states. We can over-complicate everything, over-think it all, and way over-analyze it. This was none of that. Honestly, I just felt honored to even be welcomed into such an intimate moment of these daughters walking into new life and intimacy with their Heavenly Father.

When it was all said and done, the joy of the Lord radiated from their faces. There was newness and freshness dripping down them. And they were changed – forever.

My intention was never to "convert" them to add to the list of those that have made some decision. The last thing I ever want to do is convince someone by my own human words that it would be a 'wise' or 'good' decision for them. That's not how the Kingdom of God works. The Kingdom is about life and death, not right and wrong. And so I came with the prayer they would experience the life and freedom of Christ, never the pressure or constraints of religion. When we realize it's not about us, but all about Him, it frees us to walk in fullness of His transforming power believing that by His spirit the captives will be set free and the dead brought back to life. No matter how long or short we have with someone, it is only by the Holy Spirit that change will ever happen. And so despite my doubts, I saw in the course of 45 minutes two children brought from death into everlasting life.

And so I pray we may be people who walk in the truth of who He is inside of us, that by that Spirit pulsing from every inch of us, people cannot help but cry out for the very thing that brings the abundant life every human is journeying to unlock.

 

 

 

We will never begin walking as the holy nation and chosen people proclaimed by God until we begin to depend on Him for everything.  Because when we push aside our own needs, thoughts, and agenda and lean on the Father for His plans, that's when empowerment comes.  That's when the talk becomes the walking.  And what the Kingdom needs is not believers talking the walk, but followers actually walking in the dust of their Saviors feet.  That's when things change.  People awaken.  And an invasion of Heaven on earth begins to erupt all over the world in that bone-shaking, earth-shattering noise that nothing can hold stop and no one can ignore.

I'm standing in a nice place of muddy messiness and it's about time I get real with you about it.  See, the time has inevitably come and the choice must be made.  Here I am, over halfway through this world race experience and at the point where that lovely rubber meets the road.  You might think it impossible, or you might be surprised it didn't happen earlier, but the wonderful honeymoon phase is over.  Things are hard right now.  Relationships can be challenging.  And that place of brokenness has arrived.  As I write this, I hurt.  This...hurts.

As I sit in this place of brokenness and hurt before my Father's feet, all that is left is a choice.  Will I walk through this pain?  Will I press into these relationship?  Will I choose to live here in this place?

Ultimately, it always comes down to this:  Will I choose to die or will I be killed?

 

We all have that choice to make.  And there's only two options.  Either we will allow our circumstance and situation at the moment to become the death of us.  Killing our life and freedom that was so deeply paid for us.  Or we will choose to walk in the path of the One who laid it all down out of love and die to ourselves, that we might live in the redemption of life. 

This whole place of brokenness hurts.  A lot of last month was the Lord revealing to me the things that have been buried deep under for so long.  There's pride.  And fear.  And insecurity.  The deeper I went, the more surfaced.  Lies I was believing about my Father.  False realities that I have so comfortably lived in for too long.  Chains that I have held onto even though the shackles have broken off my wrists.  At times it felt way too much to carry.  All the realizations of lies and issues were overwhelming.  I felt stuck in that muddy place where things are messy. In fact, I still feel myself there.  Resolving some of these things isn't simple or easy.  It isn't even clear how I go about some of this stuff.

And yet...

I'm loving this messiness.  As much as it hurts right now and as confusing as some things seem, I don't think I'd want to be anywhere else.  More of His glory and person is arising within and around me.  The holy One who sits on the throne of grace and receives all glory is standing in the mud, getting dirty with me.  And telling me I've got to choose.  Will I die to myself, my needs, my rights?  Or will I be killed?  My honest answer is that I have no choice.  I can say one thing for sure: I didn't give up a year of my life to come out the same on the other side.  The only reason I came on this race apart from Him was to evolve into that fierce, passionate, confident child of the Living God who has chosen to die to herself that she is fully alive in Him.

And so as I enter my final month here in Africa, I'm choosing to embrace this pain that I find myself in, praying that out of such a place will come not only a deeper passion, but also a nice limp.  Because as I'm learning, you can't trust a person who doesn't have a limp from life's obstacles.  Often times you have to hurt to learn and grow and change and become. Ultimately you have to choose to die...knowing that in exchange you receive the fullness of the kingdom come, of freedom, joy, life, power, and dominion, dwelling within you.