So I’ve been watching the TV show “Heroes” recently. It’s really not a bad show; I didn’t want to drink the Kool-Aid of “Lost” like the rest of my family, unlike them, I’m saying NO to Ben. But anyway, in Hero’s there’s a guy who’s Japanese who’s name is Hiro who can bend the time space continuum and travel or manipulate time. I know I know, “real convincing LB” but I feel like I just stepped out of a time warp! May happened, then June, then July and now it’s mid August! Woah. I know part of the reason I have this blog is so that people can keep up with my life, especially when it’s interesting, like when I’m in the United Kingdom. I FAILED. I apologize to those of you who do follow this. I realize that I should have kept this up better, but all I can do is start over now right? Here goes.
The last two months were devoted to Royal Servants. If you know anything about me, this is the very thing that makes my heart leap and embodies pretty much everything that is my passion for ministry. I’m not going to write a whole book (because I could) but I’m going to give you a few key glimpses of it. I got to training camp completely empty. I was SO tired after a physically whirlwind May and a dry year spiritually. But God once again made himself known on that hot sticky hay field in Illinois. Day after day I asked the Lord for the strength physically, spiritually, emotionally to finish that day strong in him. And when I woke up, after not enough sleep, feeling like I’d just walked through an atomic bomb, I’d walk towards where our team was and found that a few steps outside of my tent God provided. He met me there on my walk and filled me up. I have literally never physically experienced God in this way. Was I still tired sometimes? OF COURSE! But God gave me just what I needed to do His work and not my own.
Overseas part of my responsibilities included semi-regular teachings. I was intimately aware before each time I stood up to talk that if God did not empower my words and allow them to land, then they were just words as meaningless and powerless as a 90’s pop song. So I prayed, and I asked them to pray. I had a pastor in MN who would ask for a few people to be praying for his sermon every time he stood up to preach, I liked that idea and each talk I did, I asked two students or staff to be in prayer through my talk. God doesn’t have to show us how he’s using us, but I sure love it when he does. I had the students give me a few sentence “what I’m learning” update for our team blog, and one of the girls had that loving and forgiving in faith was some of the biggest things God was teaching her. Both How to Love by Faith, and Forgiveness were teachings I had just finished the week before. On a bus ride to our culture and heritage day, I overheard some girls in a deep conversation and so I joined. They were wrestling with a talk I had given the day before and all of them told me that God had rocked them to the core of who they were with my words. I can’t tell you how this feels, I only know that it was God himself. I am humbled and honored that God would choose to use me in the lives of these students.
My favorite part of the summer was my nightly rounds. I would walk around the room that the girls slept in and hugged and tucked each girl in before they went to sleep. I often ended up laying on the floor hearing or telling stories and laughing before moving on to the next person. I then gave them a “thought to think about” as they were falling asleep. I don’t know how God used me completely, but I hope that the Lord used me in the lives of our students and staff in profound ways. And for those of you who held me up in prayer, He used YOU just as powerfully, if not more than he used me. Like Greg Speck always says, “Prayer is not preparation for the greater work, it IS the greater work.”
Thanks.
The last two months were devoted to Royal Servants. If you know anything about me, this is the very thing that makes my heart leap and embodies pretty much everything that is my passion for ministry. I’m not going to write a whole book (because I could) but I’m going to give you a few key glimpses of it. I got to training camp completely empty. I was SO tired after a physically whirlwind May and a dry year spiritually. But God once again made himself known on that hot sticky hay field in Illinois. Day after day I asked the Lord for the strength physically, spiritually, emotionally to finish that day strong in him. And when I woke up, after not enough sleep, feeling like I’d just walked through an atomic bomb, I’d walk towards where our team was and found that a few steps outside of my tent God provided. He met me there on my walk and filled me up. I have literally never physically experienced God in this way. Was I still tired sometimes? OF COURSE! But God gave me just what I needed to do His work and not my own.
Overseas part of my responsibilities included semi-regular teachings. I was intimately aware before each time I stood up to talk that if God did not empower my words and allow them to land, then they were just words as meaningless and powerless as a 90’s pop song. So I prayed, and I asked them to pray. I had a pastor in MN who would ask for a few people to be praying for his sermon every time he stood up to preach, I liked that idea and each talk I did, I asked two students or staff to be in prayer through my talk. God doesn’t have to show us how he’s using us, but I sure love it when he does. I had the students give me a few sentence “what I’m learning” update for our team blog, and one of the girls had that loving and forgiving in faith was some of the biggest things God was teaching her. Both How to Love by Faith, and Forgiveness were teachings I had just finished the week before. On a bus ride to our culture and heritage day, I overheard some girls in a deep conversation and so I joined. They were wrestling with a talk I had given the day before and all of them told me that God had rocked them to the core of who they were with my words. I can’t tell you how this feels, I only know that it was God himself. I am humbled and honored that God would choose to use me in the lives of these students.
My favorite part of the summer was my nightly rounds. I would walk around the room that the girls slept in and hugged and tucked each girl in before they went to sleep. I often ended up laying on the floor hearing or telling stories and laughing before moving on to the next person. I then gave them a “thought to think about” as they were falling asleep. I don’t know how God used me completely, but I hope that the Lord used me in the lives of our students and staff in profound ways. And for those of you who held me up in prayer, He used YOU just as powerfully, if not more than he used me. Like Greg Speck always says, “Prayer is not preparation for the greater work, it IS the greater work.”
Thanks.
