Two Sunday’s before I am about to leave to go to back to Asia and I was wrestling with the fact that to live the way God wanted me, that it would be impossible. And then I realized that was the point. God spoke so clearly to me that this is what He wanted me to see. For anyone can live by the standards of the world, find pleasure, if you want it go get it, take what’s not yours even if it does not belong to you, touch whatever you want, live for yourself. These are pretty easy concepts to live by. But NOT to conform to the world is that much harder, wait patiently for EVERYTHING, live backwards, give away what you have, give up your life for others. The list goes on and on, but what does not go on and on is my will to complete these tasks.

After I had thought about the impossibility to live as a Christian by myself, I realized that was the point God had been getting at in me the whole summer. He brought me to the verse “Without me you can do nothing”… I immediately think to myself when I read this verse that without God I can make money, live happy, be content, have a happy family. But that is not what He is talking about. Without ME you cannot live a fully filled Christian life! And that is what I was trying to do. His standards to live the way He wants us to live is impossible without Him! We always go back to ourselves to complete the task of life, but that is not what He wants from me.

“Return to your first love, do what you did at first”… I remember when I first got saved I totally and utterly relied upon God for everything. God spoke to me to do what I did at first, which was do what I did at first, relying upon Him for EVERYTHING. When I first came into this world I was totally relying upon my mom to do everything for me, I could not even use the bathroom or eat by myself. This is what He means, do what you did at first, rely upon Him for everything and know that “without Him you can do nothing”!

It’s hard to wait for the right person to come along, it’s harder while traveling to a foreign land and except that could ever happen, it’s hard to trust for finances to always come in, it’s hard to believe God will come through for you even when you can’t see anything with your physical eyes, it’s hard always believing for the impossible to happen! But that’s the point, knowing these things will bring you to the place of surrender, and that’s what God wanted in me, surrender! First realization must happen that I could not live up to the standards of the Christian life without Him, and why would I want to do the Christian life without Him? Who knows, maybe God was trying to reveal that I was trying to work my way to Him. No more, it’s no longer Romans 7 that I will live by, but rather by Romans 8. Romans 7 has so much “I” in it, Paul tried to live the Christian life by HIMSELF. It wasn’t until Romans 8 that he fixed His eyes on the one who could do it all, Jesus! And so I also fix my eyes upon the one who can do it all, Jesus!

…But wait a minute what does it mean to fix your eyes on the cross and on the one who died on the cross? I always wondered this when I heard people talk like this, I thought it was just a different language, maybe Christian-ese. Now I realize it means it’s not about me doing anything, that I literally remember what He did for me personally, depend on Him for EVERYTHING, realizing that “without him I can do nothing”…

Nameless missionaries prepare to leave for Asia while singing, “leave us poor, leave us nameless, give us you”… To be continued…….

The Christmas parties that we went to over the last week or so have changed our lives as well as our friend’s lives. It has made us so thankful for what he is doing as we watch our friends change and become hungry for Him right in front of our eyes. Let me just tell a little of the craziness that has happened over Christmas, over six people came into the family, one in our group, and four in the group from the west and one from the northern team. And to top it off this Sunday 20 people from our Sunday party got water baptized including two of our good friends!

Other than all of the excitement that has been happening I have been looking around, especially at my own life and I have been watching how God has been trying to break me of my outer man so that my Spirit can truly have freedom in Him. He has been dealing with me on all different kinds of issues in my life. And it has been crazy too because I just finally got the revelation from the Lord that he was doing these things in my life so that His plan, His purpose, and His best interest for me can come forth and flow freely from inside of me.

What he has been showing me through circumstances, experiences and through some inspirational books is that His plan and purpose for each and every single one of us is to break us of our outer man (our flesh) so that our inward man (our Spirit) can flow freely in our lives and have the greatest impact on our friends and also so that his work can be accomplished through his body. He has been showing me that the quicker that I submit to his process the more freedom that I can have in Him. Even after coming into the family, from that day forth until present day he has been showing me that everything has happened for a reason and for a purpose.

It even says in his word that every single hair on our head is numbered, revealing to us that he knows everything about us; therefore in every circumstance he tries to work these things out of us. I especially have come to the conclusion that I don’t want to delay His work in my life. The more I delay it or don’t come to submit to it, the longer the process will take and the more I hinder his work! For example my friend Garmy has just recently come into the family and he so easily access his inward man. This is all he knows how to do is to express what his Spirit, that was once tied down, but now has been broken free, wants to freely do in him. Now since his Spirit has been intertwined with God’s, he now understands what freedom he can have in his Spirit. I find this a common thing, so often a new believer so easily expresses their emotions of what God did in their life. But once time starts to set in so often we just attain knowledge that doesn’t benefit us. God’s purpose for us isn’t to speak to people we know with our thoughts or with our minds, but dad craves that we access the spirit in our lives, it so greatly wants to break free, and the only way that it can flow freely is if we allow dad to break our outward man and let him come forth freely and without limit in our lives.

I am discovering that God can’t make us love Him, it’s something
that we have to want. God has been speaking to me lately that it
has always been Him waiting on me. I think it’s funny that often
times we think we are waiting on Him to reveal more of His love to
us when it is really Him just waiting on us to crave a bigger intimacy with Him.
I mean, think about it, before the foundations of the world He
already knew you, all of us.  So it’s not that He must know us more
but that we will allow ourselves to want to get to know Him on a
deeper level  in a deep long-lasting relationship, just like a
marriage. If you think about it we are the bride of Christ or
at least we will be. He has been chasing us our whole lives so that
we might want to know Him more and be more captivated by Him.
There is no specific formula to love God more.  Sometimes I think about
spending time with  Him and I get fearful or burdened because I
think there is something that He will require me to do or say. This
may or may not be a fear of intimacy, I don’t know. But regardless, He has
been speaking to me that He just wants to be with me!  Just as a person
in love with another wants to be around them 24/7!  I know that most
of us have been in love at one point in our lives. You know the
feeling where it doesn’t even matter what you do, it’s not about
the doing, rather you just want to be around the person even if you
both stare at a wall together? That’s the relationship God wants
with us! (maybe not stare at a wall… but) If we want to know Him
more and long to be in His presence, then out of that will flow a
natural love for the Lost and everything He asks us to do won’t be
a burden or a task any longer.

When we first came here I had great expectations to meet new
friends and start the process of friend making all over again. But
to be honest, it has been really discouraging because as we have
been going to the old campus and not to many people have even
wanted to talk to us!  Both me and my new roommates have all been struggling with this. Through lots of Prayer
and thinking about strategy God has opened us up to the treasure
field of the new campus about an hour away.  We have each made 5-10
friends over a few days on the new campus and all of them have been
open to Him, praise God!

For me, I always look for those divine
appointments, those friends like Reggie where you like the same things and enjoy doing things together. I met a friend named Jerry,whom I have a lot in common with.
We love the same hobbies and think very much a like,
so it is so easy to talk to him. So praise God for that awesome
connection. Four specific friends of mine come to mind that I am
hoping you will pray about; Reggie (friend from
last year), Jerry, Simba (very open to God, but confused) and
Garmy(friend from last year, his parents don’t like he is now in
the family and won’t let him go to the party on Sunday). Also think
about our team.   All of us have been getting sick or are on the verge of getting sick.
Of course this is happening as a result of stepping up in our prayer
times and I think the enemy doesn’t like that.

So we just got back from the most intense 4-day trip I have ever been on this year and in my life. We went to a nearby city which is about 3 hours away by train. There we prayed about the future expansion of God’s kingdom to the universities there. God really met us in a powerful way.

We went to the top 3 campuses in CQ to do the same things we have been doing here but on that much more of an intense scale. We practically walked 30 miles total. We also prayed non-stop for hours at a time. He really spoke through some of us prophetically for the first time ever.

When you put yourself in the position of trusting the Lord to come through for you like we did these last 4 days he really meets you in a way that you can’t explain. When you put yourself on the front lines of prayer for the breaking down of strongholds and the tearing down of things in the spirit that don’t belong. Only then can you really understand the magnitude of importance of it.

There was a moment of reflection when I really realized why we were there and what God was using us to do for Him. I almost started crying because it was amazing to know that I could be part of something so grand scale. At the same time the enemy was trying to place thoughts in all of us the littleness or the unimportance of what we were doing. Practically every single person had to deal with some sort of sickness. But, regardless God’s strength carried each and every single one of us through the whole time.

Again I am reminded of the meaning of dependence and reliance that must be put upon God in every way. I was reminded what Watchman Nee said “when you are reduced to utter weakness and persuaded that you can do nothing whatsoever, then God will do everything”. This is what the Lord has been teaching us all year and this is what we got to apply on this trip to the fullest extend. He came through for us but only because we realized we could nothing on our own. If we even pretended for a moment that we could do it on our own then his grace would fall from us.

Even before this trip God has placed this city on my heart and I know that I will be there in the future. This trip only confirmed that much more of the burden the Lord has placed on my heart for this place. Pray that the Lord will use me to be part of the expansion to this city in the near future and pray for harvesters for this place.

So I moved to a park maybe 5 minutes away from the last one to try to do the same thing again. And this time a woman with a baby started asking me questions in her language that I had no idea what she was saying because she was speaking so fast to me in her local dialect. Anyways, I started moving away from her to go sit down somewhere else, and before I could even open my book up to start spending time with the Lord, she comes over to me and starts asking me more questions. At this point I am really starting to wonder why so many distractions are taking away from what I wanted to do!

So I was like ok, this is it… I am just going to talk to this lady with as much of the language as I know and I started asking her questions about where she lives and if she had eaten yet today or if she had a husband. Just random questions about her life, because she looked as though she was homeless. So I asked her where she lived and she pointed to the other side of the park, and I saw a bunch of her belongings. It then dawned on me that God had put all the distractions earlier in the day to have me talk to her. I asked her if she knew God, and she said she had absolutely no clue what I was talking about. I even said God’s real name Jesus Christ. I also said his other name God. She knew nothing of either. So again I thought of what I could do, I remembered that I had my  class papers in my backpack because that day I had a language class again and so I had them with me.

I brought them out and gave her all 6 to read. She read all of them except maybe 2 and stopped and started saying something about God in her dialect, which I couldn’t fully understand. Something to the effect that she understood now what I was talking about. I then told her that He loved her, and I felt really amazing that day because God used me and placed me in her life to tell her about dad for the first time she had ever heard about him. How could someone in a huge city like C-town not know anything about God or ever have heard about him? This really made me think about my purpose here and why the Lord sent me here in the first place. There are so many people here in Asia that don’t know dad and like I learned the other day have never even heard about him even once. I am sure this tragedy is even worse in the outer- most parts of the country.

It’s easy to look at yourself in the mirror and tell yourself what you see. But to truly look at yourself and where you are really at is a challenge in itself. Thankfully we have a God that cares to show us the ugly stuff so that he can deal with it, and until we are honest about who we really are we can’t change. I know now that the Lord wants to change us, and change us some more until we can fully be useful vessels for His Kingdom. This is not an easy task, often times you think everything is going great and all of the sudden you react to something like you never have before, it’s God showing you that there is more that needs to come out.

So even though there are four full months ahead, I am so thankful for what has happened so far. It seems that I came into this hoping to change others lives with God’s help, and it has happened, we have gotten to impact so many people’s lives. But it is interesting to watch the Lord work on you while you help to work in others lives. I also realize that the more you help others the more the Father helps you. I am so thankful, grateful and honored to be part of something like this. And I am even that much more thankful that I have all of you behind me! Praying, thinking, and loving on me! I have gotten so blessed just getting emails from you guys how much my emails have changed your lives. Believe me that was not my intention, but I am glad that God has better intentions than I have.

Be thinking of my roommate and me over these next couple of months. We will hopefully starting a small church and raising up leaders to run it. We will also be working with those that have come into God’s family already, and those that are on the verge of.

What has happened over the last month? I really have no idea, story after story, experience after experience, and trial after trial. It has all been one big blur, the one thing I can say is that I am changed that much more to be used for His Kingdom. And I can also say that my friends have come that much closer to knowing Him. One of my good friends Reggie is on the brink of coming into the family. God has been closing doors, shutting off electricity to keep him away from distractions and using me nevertheless in his life to tell him how much God loves him and how much He desires to have a relationship with him.

The Lord is working in his life, and it is so apparent, so please keep him in your thoughts. Other than that God has been working in all of our friends lives…Allen is starting to understand what it means to seek God, Garmy is serving regularly at the Sunday church and already wants to tell the whole world about how awesome God is! Caleb and I had a chance to share for almost 2 hours over lunch with our good friend Haung Ji Rong. Ray’s level of friendship has grown and he is starting to ask questions. Caleb’s good friend Eric is close to coming into the family. I could not have asked for a better experience.

With everything that you lose you always gain that much more. Especially in regards to all thing’s God-ward. To truly live for Him and to truly have freedom means to deny yourself and your goals, and dreams, and surrender them all to His. To deny yourself means to realize that “You are not your own, you were bought at price”.

Through the harsh process of the Father working in my life over the last couple of months I have realized these revelations. That until we are what he wants us to be then He will not stop the breaking process of our outward self (our flesh). And until our inner self (our Spirit) can be broken free to reign in our lives then God will not stop to stop us from ourselves. I want to have freedom in Him, I want freedom from problems, and freedom to do his will, like most of us. But to truly have freedom in him means that we must deny ourselves that much more.

So in fact to lose ourselves is to gain more of Him. I remember all throughout my life I have been trying to find the answer to all of my problems, and then I found Him and not all of my problems were answered but the source to relieve my suffering had arose in my life. Since that day that I have been in His family I have been struggling to have freedom in Him, realizing that the very freedom that I sought after I myself was hindering. I want to be set free from my problems, I want freedom in Him, I want to know Him more, and I want to get rid of myself.

Notice all of the I’s. God’s call for me is to be that much more, to realize that he is simply saying 3 words to me… “Come follow me”. In the revelation of this phrase I have found that He is simply saying just come follow me, be obedient to me, and to realize that you are not your own you were bought at a price are the products to the solution that I have been seeking. To simply realize that your life and everything in it is not your own, is the simple way to deny yourself. And to live in this truth, that you must surrender your every plan and dream into his hands is the best way to submit to him. Until you do this, you will go through trial after trial until you come to the end of yourself and realize that the Lord is trying to break you of yourself so that his Son can come forth in you, and so that His Kingdom can come forth through you, so that his work can come forth through you.

Notice it is not longer about I, but rather about Him. Until we realize that everyone and everything that ever existed and ever will exist is because of him, then we will be stuck in ourselves.

I challenge you as the Lord has challenged me in this same way, get rid of your desires, get rid of your plans, get rid of your dreams, and in losing all of these things you will gain that much more in Him. So to lose is to gain that much more, and to gain is to lose as well.

Things are happening all over the country! We hear stories from K- town and G-town about the amazing things that God is doing. Nineteen people have come into the family in G-town! Over 10 in K-Town and about 8-10 here in the Du! There are stories of people getting baptized for the first time, and filled with the Holy Spirit in the same day! Things are in motion here and cannot be stopped by anything! What an amazing opportunity that we all get to be part of this.

Me and my roommate have been trying to make a list of focus friends that we feel like we should spend every week with, leaving a couple days open for new friends or friends that we have not seen in awhile. In this process we have seen 6 of them come to the family church this last month! And the Lord is really doing something in the hearts of a couple of them. My friend Garmy is really hungry to know more about Jesus and he wants to buy a Bible soon. Our friend Allen has also been coming every week and growing pretty steadily. We have had a couple times already that we have gotten to disciple him as well, he seems to have so many questions, and it is good to be able to answer questions for people.

It is so cool to be able to watch what the Lord is doing in these people’s hearts so rapidly. I mean we have only been here for 2 ½ months and already in all 3 of the cities that we are in over 30 people are saved! This is just the beginning; so many more friends are on the verge of being saved as well.

“He is not looking for our stuff, He is looking for our heart” I am going to be honest, when I imagined coming to Asia I figured that everything left that I struggled with would be gone and I would come to a place of perfection. I am realizing that it is not about striving for perfection but rather realizing God’s perfection and my weakness.

The second, I think I will not struggle with something ever again but that’s when I have stepped out of His grace into my own perfection. I am sure we all know this verse but it goes, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my strength is made perfect in weakness.” Jesus Christ didn’t come to die for perfect people; He died for weak people. And He realizes our struggles. Most people don’t like to be in this place of weakness, I surely don’t. But I find that when I am completely weak that He is made completely strong, not only in my life but also into the lives of the friends around me.

It is hard to balance your time wisely, especially when you have 30 friends! I never imagined that I would ever have so many friends and that I would get to spend my every waking moment hanging out with them and pouring into their lives. There is still this excitement deep within my heart knowing that my friends are getting to know Jesus more and more. I could not have asked for a better life. My life back home couldn’t even compare with the excitement and purpose that I feel when I am here.

I feel like the domino effect has already begun and is starting here on such a grand scale that I can’t even begin to comprehend it. All over the city, from the south side to the north side, all the way over to the west side things are starting to happen. There is a stirring up in our friend’s hearts for our Father. Questions are starting to rise up and they need to know what we know! They need to know why they are here, what their purpose is here, and what we have that they don’t have YET.

There is a vision and a purpose and a plan that I can see for my Asian friends and I know that I am just at the beginning stages of seeing the fruit. It is so awesome that I get to be apart of this grand scale plan that God has. I get this sense that strongholds are beginning to break away. Hearts are being stirred up not only in us but also in our friends. There are already a couple testimonies from our friends here that 3 people have already accepted Jesus!

When I signed up for this trip I had no idea the scale of what I was getting into. I knew it was what I was supposed to do, but it was not revealed to me what was really going to happen. I made myself available for Him, and He is absolutely using me and all of us here in such a way that none of us have ever been used before. I have never been part of something like this! And I have never had such amazing people behind me before. I can tell that all of you are pressing in for me here, especially since my last couple weeks have been rough, but also because you can see the grander scale of things that I was blind to when I was in that storm.

Your thoughts are greatly appreciated. Think about 3 friends specifically for me. Pray that Allen would stop running from God. Pray that Ben will accept the truth and that Jesus will reveal Himself to him in a new way. Pray also that the Lord will fill the loneliness that Ben feels, with His presence! Pray that Garmy will be hungry for the things of God and less for the things of the world. Lastly pray that each and every single one of them will be stirred up in their hearts to trust me enough to ask more questions about Jesus.