Reaping the Father's Heart

My alarm clock ticked as I lay heavy under the warm comfort of the covers. One minute, two minutes, three minutes pass... laying lifeless. The room seems dark, despite the rising sun peeking in through the sheer curtains. Weighted with conviction, I closed my eyes, wishing the day to continue without me, when I remembered my phone going off in the middle of the night. Inching one hand out, I grabbed my phone, and reread the texts that had come in through the night that I had invariably read half asleep hours earlier. Amidst the moment, God said 'you reap what you sow into.'

     The night before I had found myself angry and frustrated, uttering the words I knew I never meant; 'I hate you.' Repeatedly. Deflected with love and love that seeps beyond circumstance or behavior, I spit back 'I hate you.' Again and again. What was just a defense against letting someone else love me in brokenness, I let myself sow into hate. And when the early morning came, I reaped in the conviction of a misplaced heart and words of death.

     Galatians 6:7-8 says "Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. Whoever sows to please their flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction; whoever sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life." Simple right? But do we always think about what we are sowing into? Words are just said, actions are just done... and we move forward with each passing moment. Often without thought.

    It's been a few days now of staring at that verse and the constant presence of those words. While it is true that if we say words of destruction, we will see destruction from them, we sometimes forget that the very creator of our hearts is on the throne and He sees our hearts through and through. Past bitter moments where words slip out and where hurtful actions sometimes come to pass. .

     If you want to reap a world of love, you must sow into that. If you want to reap in the presence of intentional people, you yourself must first be intentional. If you want to reap a heart of passion, you must sow into a life of reckless abandon to the King of all Kings. Greater than all of these- the very truth of this verse in Galatians- if you want to reap a life engulfed in the presence of God, you must sow into the gifts and promises of Him. Because whether we are in a storm or the calm, He is still on the throne.

     When I asked Him to give me revelation on this seemingly simple verse, He said to me that there is more meaning in our hearts intention. That He sees our intentions from the core, not the surface. Sitting in this boggling revelation, I realized that those brief moments when I fail to my flesh, when I say things I never meant to say, when I let my frustration overshadow my need and desire for love; He has prevailed in exposing my heart. While I laid heavy in conviction the following morning, I did not reap eternal destruction from my words, because I have spent my days sowing into the heart of the Father, not the heart of the enemy. He's quick to correct, not punish.

     I don't know about you, but I want to reap a harvest of intentional and unconditional love. I want to reap a harvest that emulates the Father's heart in every moment and every crop. Because He see's our hearts desire for Him or for this world. What is the harvest that you are sowing into?

    

Dominican Republic: An Overflow of Love

They watched as the truck bounced over the potholes in the streets, coming to a stop beside the houses. The barrios have instantaneously taken a large part of my heart, and eager to get out and see which kids were around, I hurridly got out of the car. As the door shut behind me, three Haitian girls ran and pounced on top of me. A gringa. I picked them up, hugging them tightly, my heart overflowing with love. I was made for this.

I was made for this. Not necessarily this exact location or these exact children. But this kind of love. The love that these kids show unconditionally. And the love that I get to give back, hoping that it reaches even half of what they have to give. But more than that, the love of the Father.

These kids take me by the hand, touch my feet, my legs, my arms, all in amazement. I'm white. And they are black, by color's terms. But we all come from the same God who created this universe, making us brothers and sisters by love and by supernatural creation. Something I began to dwell in today, as these girls took me as I was, where I am.

In America, we love on so many conditions. If someone doesn't answer us in our own time, if they neglect to acknowledge our presence, or if they just don't like us, we automatically withdraw our love. We don't grasp the love that God had and has for us. He gave His only begotten son so we could live, yet we ease ourselves away from living like He commands, because our own feelings matter more. How much we can gather in possessions matters more. But here, these people have nothing.

Yet they have grasped the greatest concept, to love thy neighbor as they love themselves. They have no reason to love me. Just as before with trusting me or believing in me. But yet, as I walked through the barrio, a mother holding a sleeping child stood up to offer her chair, others kissed my cheek, embracing me as I walked in what was their territory and their homes. They love me unconditionally, whether I'm sick or healthy, white or black, if I have money or if I don't.

They love to the very essence of who Jesus is.

I can put on a good talk and ease most people through situations that are just battles with the enemy. It's just who I am and who God has called me to be. But my only true desire is to love as these people have loved me. Whether that be by talking through situations or sitting in complete silence- however that may look, that is who I want to be. Because when I came here, I thought I knew who Jesus was completely. I had the greatest friends, an amazing family, and was blessed beyond measure in possessions and being. But I lacked the notion of letting others love me exactly where I was at. I don't know that I knew what it was to overflow. 

Walking back to the car, I opened the door and felt two sticky arms wrap around my waist. I turned around to one of the girls hugging me from behind. As I bent down, she wrapped her arms around my neck and kissed my cheek. 'Adios.' I was sold.

I'm completely sold on the love of Jesus Christ. More than anything in this world, I am sold. I was bought at a price, and that was His life. He gave me the air I breathe. And He is the love that overflows from my being.

He is the love that exudes from you and I. Even when it comes from one little Haitian child.

Dominican Republic: Finding Purpose

This hasn't been a place where Jesus is in your face evident. It's been a place of seeking, of believing, of trusting- even in the unseen and the unknown. Because still, He is here.

I've spent a lot of time asking why I was here. Questions of identity and purpose- why He would put me in a place where I was alone and stripped of everything I held dear. He knows my struggles with purpose and He knows I struggle in remaining faithful even when there is no fruit to be seen. So what was I doing here?


A few months ago, I had asked God why He asked me to love the way I love. And His answer was one that I never fully grasped until this past week.

I'd had kids climbing on me, jumping on my back as I walked holding two others, falling at my feet all week. Children encompassing the true reality of the love of Christ, with humility we can only hope for. But among them, few stood out, as they sat in the background.

She stood by me as the girls played in the rain. Staring blankly. No smile. No joy. I placed my hand on her shoulder and for a brief second, made eye contact. And then her eyes were on the floor again. There was so much brokenness that I wished I could cut off of her pure heart in that moment, but all I could give was love.

When we arrived at the club on Firday afternoon, I found her in the back room painting. Another brief moment of eye contact and it was back behind the walls. A sight I know all too well. But as the afternoon progressed, so did eye contact and so I took the opportunity and sat in the back room with her to color while the other kids played sports outside. The minutes ticked in pure silence, as I watched her. When I went to get up and walk past, she wrapped her arms around my waist and held onto me. For the first time, I felt the walls break down.

He called me here to love, because I love beyond circumstance. He's called me to love, because I know the lack there of. I know the pain. And I know the confusion. But more than anything, I know His love.

When I first got to the Dominican Republic, I thought I was here to see how He is working in this country. But I've found that it has been so much more about finding my identity and purpose in Him and establishing His will for my life. Sometimes we seek to find Him in others, when we need to merely look within ourselves to see Him working.

We are merely vessels of light and hope. When the darkness is overwhelming, He is everpresent. And we are His people.

Republica Dominicana: Learning Trust

The smell was faint, but amidst the dry heat, everpresent. But there I sat, little black and sticky arms of a six year old Haitian girl wrapped around my neck, inhaling a smell I can only describe as that of old infant formula on a sweaty child- a smell that a few months ago made me naseous. Only now, I put my head against hers and just sat as minutes ticked by, and her arms tightened around my neck.

I could have put her down at that moment and told her in broken spanish to go color or play with the few children still straggling around as their mothers gathered to collect their monthly food, but my heart was open for her. After all, to her I was just a Gringa (how they refer to white females), and she had absolutely no reason to trust me. Or to find safety in my arms. Yet there she clung.

***



These children here, they find their safety in Jesus Christ. They trust in Him, because without Him, their circumstances are hopeless. It clicked as I held that little girl and her mother looked at me, more appreciative for someone loving on her daughter than quite possibly that food she was there to receive. His playground is this dirt floor, his playmates are the poor- because they trust and find safety in Him, when this place is anything but safe.

They grasp that it isn't this world that is supposed to be safe- but Him, who we find shelter and security in. How many of us can honestly say that we find safety in Jesus on a daily basis, that we seek it in Him? I know I don't. I fail daily. I've begun to realize how much of my safety comes in things of this world- in a car, in the money that keeps me from poverty, in friends who put walls up around me to keep me "safe." Yet most of the time, that safety turns into barriers that keep me from the heart of who God is, and I sink back into the "reality" of this world.

All these barriers and walls that have been put in place as a "safety" measure in my life have left me with little old me and nobody else. Because what I consider trust is to more often pour my heart out in bits and pieces, and then pull the gates back up and lock the door. But in nothing more than a couple of hours, I had children climbing up my back, while two clung to each of my sides, arms wrapped around my neck. When is the last time you even hugged someone you knew for more than five minutes? The outpouring of love here is not conditional, and is a pure reflection of the trust that I've mistaken my own definition for. Trust in Jesus Christ, and through that, trusting in those who are led by Him. They grasp something I have seemed to miss the mark on.

I don't say any of this lightly. I've been one to make excuses for why I lack trust and why my heart stays on guard even around my closest friends and Jesus Himself. Years of pain and confusion. Hurt and destruction. Yet these children here- they still pour out the grace and love that only comes from trusting in God. And they live lives of poverty; drugs and prostitution, abuse and neglect. Every day. And still they trust.

What if we chose to live with our hearts on our sleeves, with the trust and security in Jesus that nothing can be against us if He is for us. These kids have something that we can't grasp. And that is that they have nothing to lose. And it is those who Jesus comes for, and those who He promises eternity and abundant life.

So really, trust Him. What do you have to lose?



Taking Back, and Laying It Down.

Dozens of faces and a monotone room. I count. One dozen, two dozen, three dozen, four... over 100 faces. Over 100 of God's children. Hurt. Broken. All looking to be redeemed.
The shirt staring me in the face says "Out of the darkness He has redeemed us." Those are the words of one survivor who has begun healing and found the promised love that only the Father provides. And that is the very love that embraced a room of stiff college students who stared anxiously about as they wondered who would be the first to stand up and share their story.
One breaks the ice. And a floodgate opens. As each individual walks cautiously to the mic, the Lord plays heavily on my already tender heart. Words. Emotions. Connection.

They each walk to the microphone as if there is a red flag on their back. Their burdens going up are like a newborn infant, desperate for care and nurturing, and in need of gentle hands. Burdens of guilt and shame, hurt and rejection. Some to the extreme. One girl who gave up her childhood at five. And carries the secret to this day. "I know her heart and her past. And when I see her at my feet, I will embrace her for her passion to live." One boy who let his best friend go alone, trusting another man. He later learned his best friend was nearly raped. "He isn't to blame, and his guilt is the reason I took up the cross." The teenager whose parents rejected her claim that her cousin had been raping her. She had an abortion at thirteen. "My child, who I believe. Her brokenness in Me is made whole. And that child is in My arms."

I know their pain because I have been there. I know the lowest of the low. But I also know that same redeeming love of a Father that one survivor claimed on a piece of cloth hanging behind the podium. It is the love that takes us from the lowest of the low to the highest of the high.

I, myself, stood before those faces, microphone inches from my lips, and hands clasped at my waist. Not fear, but rather the utmost desire for them to see the love of Jesus and the redeeming power of a Father who takes us from the pits of hell, no matter how far we've dug, "Six years of a lost childhood, and almost two years of a numb recovery. When I went away to college, the one person who shed a tear was my stepfather. And I just wanted to be angry for all that he stole. But I can honestly say that I come home to visit now, and I love the man my stepfather is. I can say thank you and truly walk in forgiveness. Because he broke the little girl that I once was. But my Father put the woman that I am back together."

Sitting unsettled back in my seat, I felt the Spirit drop around me. Freedom that allowed numerous others with no intentions of sharing a story that they had withheld until that moment, to literally jump from their seats and approach the microphone. Tears were shed and many reclaimed what was truly theirs. Testimonies of drugs, alcohol, eating disorders, and self harm... all left at the foot of the stage. As they stepped away, burdens put down, I saw the altar, and all of the symbolic pieces of our brokenness laid before the Lord's feet. White sheets covered it all. Dead as the past, He welcomes us to come alive anew.
All I could feel was that God wanted to move in that room. His love was abounding, and the community that He had fostered there was one that no human could break. As many reclaimed what was theirs, I laid what I reclaimed back at the foot of the cross. Because it was not by my own strength that I put myself back together. And it was not truly my story to be telling, but His to be glorified because He is present in the darkness as much as He is in the light. And when girls hugged me outside afterwards, I could only look at the clear black sky and thank Jesus for His blood and His sacrifice. Because my pain is nowhere near the pain He endured for me.



The message was hope. To hope in a Father who is ALWAYS present, and who had hope put in you, that you would live to fulfill His image. He's there in the best friend who calls to pray with you late at night. He's in the timely text message. He's in the child's face that you pass in the mall when you feel like sin has overcome your innocence and purity. He is every I love you.
Because if there is one thing I learned the other night it is that you don't have to be a Christian to see Him. The love, grace, mercy, and hands of God are always present, you just have to seek Him.

There's this dreamy and quaint little town. The town you see in that romantic movie. A pizza parlor across the street from an ice cream store. The soccer field rests down the street next to the firehouse and a family owned laundromat. Children are riding bicycles in the streets and others are giggling as they walk home from school. On Sundays in this picturesque town, boys are playing soccer and fishing in the river before the bridge. It is smiles and hugs. Love and laughter.
In the very center of this town, one road back from Main Street, there is a bar. An old brown building, with dirty windows and regulars stumbling in and out. If you go to the side of the building, you see a charcoal grill sitting on the ledge of the second story apartment. It's the home of two little boys who became caretakers to their father, quickly withering away to illness.

Two and a half years ago. That was then.

Two days ago, I drove back through that town. Past the apple orchard, past the barn on the right, and over the bridge, into a town that now smelled of nostalgia and six years of memories. Stopping in front of the pizza parlor, I looked at the ice cream store.
Memories flooded.
"DJ, make sure you get your dad an ice cream sundae too," mom yelled at him as he ran into the store to get soft serve butterscotch ice cream after food shopping. A treat for the week. And a taste of childhood, after not having slept, because his father required his care.
On the corner is the pharmacy, a sight that caused my eyes to fight tears.
Memories flooded.
"Go in and buy a comb and deodarant," mom yelled as we stopped along the corner of the street. Graduating from elementary school, nobody had taught him proper hygiene, and he lacked a brush and deodarant to mask the smell of a pubescent boy.
I took a quick left, and in front of me sat that old brown building. New blinds in the windows, it was vacant. I looked up to the second story, to find that the charcoal grill gone.
Memories flooded.
Two and a half years later. Finally gone.

Two and a half years ago, those two little boys said goodbye to their father over a closed casket, as their mother, who had abandoned them eight years earlier, whisked them off to a new life and a new start, without settling their past. That home and that town. That was the past. Soccer. That was the past. Butterscotch ice cream and food shopping. That was the past.
The family that cared for them as their father grew ill. That was the past.

But two days ago, the past became the present. The pizza parlor I stared at from across the street, I soon sat inside. Across from me sat a 5' 10'' fifteen year old boy with a shaved head and the voice of a man, who was once a 5' twelve year old, clinging to my neck, begging to take a bath instead of a shower. A fifteen year old who doesn't know Jesus, but knows deep down that the love he has been shown is more than flesh can give.
And next to me sat a 5' almost thirteen year old boy who giggled at everything and repeated the same sentences, still ADHD, and still the same boy who at ten, rode on my back as we caught fireflies late at night. A near thirteen year old boy who doesn't know Jesus, and is fighting a defeated battle that is tormenting his sweet spirit.


Two years ago I was praying that they would come back, not knowing Jesus myself. I was praying out of selfishness, believing that they were meant to be my brothers. Two days ago, I found myself praying the same selfish prayer. But He stopped me in my prayer as I held them both curbside, wishing to take them home with me. "I did not leave you for the 99. Nor will I leave them. I've provided, am providing, and will continue to provide, because this is my burden that I sacrificed for at the cross."

Knowing that He sweeps us in His arms, one by one, is one of the sweetest promises. He didn't discriminate because we were once dirty and unclean. As I looked at Bobby, the scars on his arms, and his dirty clothes, I saw Jesus behind the childrens glasses that set the small framed boy apart. His ears that he never quite grew into were dirty, and He said, "Yes, I love that too." He loves our dirtiness, especially that which comes from our willingness to submit to such innocence.
And so as I shed tears once made for mourning, I lay these burdens back at the cross. I lay my desire to be what they need back down, and let Him pick up the pieces. Because only He can mend the pieces of a once broken child into a whole hearted man.
Like the brown building they once called home, He will take them out of the darkness and show them the light. One layer. One touch. One embrace. One memory. One butterscotch ice cream at a time.