Hey y’all!
I wanted to get y’all some pics of our new house 🙂
We’ve had an awesome time here so far and can’t wait to see what else the Lord wants us to do.
I have a HUGE praise report… But it’s a surprise 😉 I’ll plan to post a pic on here of the surprise once it’s ready. (Yay!)
Also, please keep in prayer for the right time to go to the nearby nutrition center – where orphans, abused children, or children of people who really don’t have the time and resources to pay for children – go. It’s a government program, and the parents are required to give up their child for an amount of time until they are better taken care of. After a child is nourished and restored back to health, which is restricted by a time limit, they are returned home, wherever that is. When the situation happens again, they are admitted back into the center. And so the cycle continues until they have completed their third stay in the center. If the government deems the parent once again unable to care for their child, the child is put into the Nicaraguan foster system in hopes they will eventually be adopted.
It’s a sad system, but it means that many precious children filter in and out of the center. Many of them deal with rejection and not too many know that Jesus loves them. It’s a perfect set-up for Jesus to work. When we go, there’s always an opportunity for ministry, but it never looks like religion. We hold the sick and dying babies, love the rejected children, and play catch with the hopeless youth.
One of my favorite things about the nutrition center is we can’t take glory from what happened. It allows us to humbly step in, love the hurting, and look like Jesus. And that can look like a lot of things. One of those trips, a ten-year-old boy received Jesus into his heart.
There IS hope for the hopeless – and we, as Christians, have it. It’s not about going to a third-world orphanage. It’s about being radical – like Jesus- and being the hands and feet of Jesus in every place. Hugging for the woman on the street that has been abused and needs to know Jesus loves her. Praying for the man in the wheelchair who isn’t too sure that Jesus would die for his sins – and seeing him accept Jesus into his heart.
We’re being selfish when we don’t proclaim freedom to the captives.
We’re being selfish when we don’t bring hope to the hopeless.
We’re being selfish when we care about what we look like when we share the Gospel.
We’re being selfish when we don’t want to hug the teen girl that’s on glue.
We’re being selfish when we say that it’s too dangerous to go to the place the Lord has called us.
Because it’s saying that only we are worthy of Jesus dying. It’s saying that it’s not our responsibility to tell people that Jesus died for them. Because “only we” are important enough to hear about it. We were loved enough to have been told about Jesus, and for some reason, we don’t want to tell others.
YOU have the responsibility to love and look like Jesus – not because it’s the right thing to do.
Because you, as a Spirit-filled Christian, should have a natural desire to spread the Gospel.
We love because we were loved first. And now we can look like Jesus in our communities.
What greater honor is there – to be a representative of a King in our everyday lives.
Not because the people you love are stats, but because they are people. God loves them. We should, too.
I’m not just ranting at you. I’m talking right back to myself. I fail a lot when it comes to that – but it’s always this that motivates me back into what I am doing.
I have one note to end on.
When you aren’t pushing back the darkness in the Kingdom of God, the darkness is pushing back on you.
Elle's Everyday 