Sunday Morning, Part 2

If you're going to bother to read this, you might as well start with part 1...(the last post)

So, after Sunday School, where I became very excited about how God is going to show us things we haven't encountered before (in my case, I'm thinking of His glory in the church, His people) we went into the sanctuary for the worship service. That was when we sang the song about the mountains trembling...and I loved it!

"We can see that God You're moving a mighty river through the nations..."

"For I will pour out water on the thirsty land,
and streams on dry ground;
I will pour out my Spirit on your offspring,
and my blessing on your descendants.
They will spring up like grass in a meadow,
like poplar trees by flowing streams.
One will say 'I belong to the Lord;'
another will call himself by the name of Jacob;
still another will write on his hand, 'The Lord's,'
and will take the name Israel. " Isaiah 44:3-4

We have brothers and sisters all over the world...and God's Spirit connects us, even when we can't speak the same language. Just like when I look at the pictures of Compassion International, I have to adjust when I think of the church in other nations. In so many places, she is suffering...and yet it's that suffering that brings them close to God, to each other. It's hard to accept, and maybe that's part of the huge struggle for me and so many others in America's churches...we have such comfortable lives...sometimes if we are going to suffer, we have to actually choose it- choose to get outside of the comfort. This is the place I am: a place of longing to be like Christ and share with His people, but struggling to lay down my life and my comfort to come and die. Hearing about the three believers who were martyred in Turkey last week and praying for them as a church body just brought this in a lot closer. It's not just Turkey...it's India, where people I know and love and have fellowshipped with are in danger every day for the sake of the gospel. It's in Pakistan, its in Afghanistan, in Niger, Indonesia, Egypt, China. So many places.

There's such beauty in store for His precious saints! When I think of the people who die for His sake, I feel so ashamed of my own small struggles. My giving up my life is giving smiles to children, is giving mere minutes to do someone a favor, is battling over whether I should give ten dollars to this or that. But I am not ashamed, because Colossians 1:12 says that the Father has "qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of light." I'm qualified! His grace qualifies me. I share with those who overcome, and I will overcome these things because of His great strength.