Desperation

"I want to now, start reading the bible out loud in English with you," said my Chinese friend during our Sunday morning English tutoring session. "Right now?" said my clueless 21 year old self. "Yes, and I want to start at the beginning and read all the way through," my Chinese friend replied.

We began that morning in Genesis. By the third chapter of Genesis I was sweating and panicking inside. She was asking some difficult questions that I could not answer. Over and over I told her what I knew and then said I would get back to her. At the end of that meeting I, who grew up in Sunday school, had a page full of deep questions about God and His plan that I simply could not answer. I thought I knew the story of creation, but by the end of the morning I was thoroughly humbled.

Immediately after our tutoring session I went to the leaders of the Chinese ministry and begged for help. They gave me a Chinese Bible and then responded with, "It might be a good idea to go over the covenants of the Bible with her before you begin the next session." As I stared at the leaders blankly they took pity. "How about I come over with a visual aide and go through it with you so you can teach her?" said the wise leader.

The next night he came over to my tiny apartment and got on his knees with my roommate and me with a beautifully illustrated poster and explained the covenant heart of God to us. I was enthralled and humbled. Before he left he said, "How about I pray that God will give you wisdom." He proceeded to pray a prayer that I had never heard prayed for me. He prayed that God would use me to to plant seeds and grow a deeper passion for Him in my heart.

That year of tutoring was the most humbling and exciting time for me. I think I might have taught my Chinese friend some little things about God, but she taught me so much more. God used her to humble my spirit enough to search and call out to God. I realized that the bits of knowledge I knew were not enough to fully walk with God the rest of my life. The desperation I felt before each tutoring session motivated me to seek out how I could study God's Word in a way that would draw me deeper into relationship with Him than I was at that point in my life.

I searched for a study and found that our church was doing a precept study on Romans 6-8. I had started to memorize Romans 8 the year before so I thought this was a great opportunity to study it more deeply. This study fed the hunger in my soul and at the same time gave me a greater desire to study God's Word.

I thought this was exactly what I needed to prepare myself to go overseas, but God had other plans.

Motivation- Burdens of the Heart 1

As I was walking through and slowly starting to come out of post-partum depression I kept feeling an un-named urgency in my heart. A need to get back into a study where I can delve into God's Word. A need to go a next step further where I could study something and know the Word well enough that I could explain it to another. Not just to explain the gospel, but to explain what I have learned in a way that others could understand.

I turn around and I can smell the depression and breathe it, but I am just beyond it. Yet, this urgency keeps returning. I was thinking about this urgent cry of my heart and realized that I get this after certain events in my life. So, I am going to go back to the beginning and blog about it and perhaps learn a few new things along the way.

I am a very Type A, motivated, organized person. While I was in college God really used many godly women, people from all over the world, and circumstances to help direct this motivation.

When I was a junior in college I was invited by 5 other women to pray on a weekly basis in a group. Our emphasis was praying for the world and that others would have God's world on their hearts. We took the list of names of people that had been involved in our campus ministry and prayed for each person by name. We specifically prayed that God would either: a. send these people overseas even if for only a summer and/or b. put the world on their hearts to pray for God's world. Also, each girl prayed specifically for one man to go overseas that summer, by name.

I was skeptical, but watching God answer that prayer was the most exciting thing I had seen to that date. Here is what happened:
1. Every person that we prayed to go overseas that summer went. Not only that, but a lot of them (I'm not really sure how many) went overseas through the Journeyman program for 2-3 years.
2. We noticed an influx of people joining summer missions
3. More and more people started to meet to pray for unreached people groups.
4. Our prayer group grew until about 10 of us were meeting at 6:30am to pray for the world.
5. My heart was changed and softened towards God's world and His Word.

This prayer group set a desire for God's Word aflame in my heart. Many of the girls' prayers centered around God's Word. They simply prayed God's Word back to Him. The beautiful prayers amazed me and taught me so much about God. Through this prayer group God taught me so much about Him. He taught me that He indeed does answer prayer and more fully than I could ever imagine. He also taught me that He sees the desire of my heart and will take the small seed of wanting to know Him and nurture and grow it so that the desire is even deeper and more centered on Him. This was the first step in my hunger and search for more of God's Word.

The next step, well. That is another story now isn't it?