Naked Undercover

When I was 7 years old, I expressed a dream to be a writer. Now, at nearly 25, I have succeeded. June 13th marked the official release of my first book, Naked Undercover.

This book is a collection of poems, written over the course of my life from many continents, seasons and situations. It is naked in its expression, exposing the depth of my struggles and heights of my passions.

Check out Amazon.com for your own copy!

My Faith and His

In recent discussions, I have learned a lot about faith. I've been reminded of the revelation, the moment or process of acknowledgement, where we finally find ourselves saying, "I believe". I'm reminded of the first statement of faith I ever made. The power of the moment, so strong, yet passed and gone. There is, to me, a greater statement of faith, however.

In meeting many new friends lately, I've had a chance to recount the events of my life, or my "walk". As I share my story, my "testimony", I'm reminded of the greater revelation that I seem to have more often than not. I'm reminded of its importance, its significant nature. It is not the statement that says, "I believe in you, God" but the statement that says, "God, you believe in me!"

I see now what has shaped so much of my life is not the revelation that God is so big, but that I am so big to Him. His love shapes me, daily. His belief in my abilities, my talents, my strengths, my potential fuels me. I am nothing without Him, but with Him, He reminds me of everything I was made to be.

Ask God what He thinks of you.

The Way is Hard

Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few. -Matt. 7:14

I must say, the way used to be harder than it is now. I'm learning, slowly, to give in to His way. I've always had plans, all kinds of plans to do all kinds of things and they never quite end up following the same logical path I had set out for them. The result is usually far better, but the path much harder. I used to get bothered more by changes in plans than I do now. Now, I'm learning. I'm learning to see Him in it. Recently, I've encountered another change in plans and at first I was bothered but today, just today, I finally saw it. I finally felt it. He has never taken me where I wasn't meant to be. The road may be harder, less desirable even, but the result far better, although maybe different than what I had dreamed.

I'm learning silence, peace, stillness in Him.

Our communication has changed. I don't read as much, or even at all anymore. I don't pray as often. Yet, I feel Him, I am aware of Him and I try to move in Him. I know Him. I have always known Him, both from study and from relationship, but now I feel Him more than know Him, which is the depth of the knowledge in experience. Peace is being restored.

Preoccupation with Right and Wrong

Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and Learn what this means, 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice.' For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners. - Matthew 9:12-13

Have you ever noticed that we, as Christians, have a preoccupation with right and wrong? We word it many different ways, but in truth, there are acceptable behaviors and unacceptable behaviors. There are places Christians can go, and places they can't. They are words they can say, and should say, "God Bless!", and words they shouldn't say. We speak of "Good Christians" and say little of the rest. I fall into the "rest" category. Most of us do.

I've struggled for the last 3 years to find my place with God again. My relationship with Him feels empty, silent, distant and pointless. I love God no less than I did as I burned with the fire of my new faith when I first met Him. The difference is now perhaps that I know Him more deeply, more intimately and desire to serve Him more than anything. In my desire for service, somehow, I have took a very different direction. I stopped reading, teaching, sharing and even enjoying "fellowship". Why?

It took some self discovery, some significant time, and a few of the exact same epiphanies to get an answer. I have no doubt it's an answer I'll forget and need to hear again. In fact, it's an answer I've heard a thousand times and never taken to heart. Why did I walk away?

I, like many Christians, knew the Bible well. I knew what was acceptable and unacceptable, what was honorable and dishonorable. I knew intimately the call on our lives to be "Christ Ians", representatives of Him in this world. I looked at my life, and my roles in leadership, my desire also to lead and direct and saw my fail points. Being in the spotlight can outline your darkness. It's not fear of humiliation or judgement, (though I've many times blamed the judgement). No, more accurately, it's the fear of tarnishing his image. I don't love God too little to serve Him, I love Him too much.

Yes, I realize how silly this is. God can use anyone, and did, all throughout the Bible, like Moses the murderer and David the adulterer. Despite this knowledge, still I know, inside of myself, that I don't want to screw this up for Him.

Before I was a believer, I looked at Christians and saw their hypocrisy. In fact, I had never been hurt more than I was by self-professed Christians. My greatest fear was, and still is, to become one of those. Despite trying my hardest to be open and honest about my faults, it seems the more I got to know God the more faults I found. Also, the more I got to know Him, the more I got thrust into a spotlight of service, just because I have the passion, and the personality for it. I wanted so deeply to serve Him, but in so many ways, it makes you more noticeable, and your "sins" so clear. I couldn't tarnish His name. One accusation too many and I fell.

I didn't fall far, by His grace, but far enough to remain distant for too long.

I've realized now the cause is not the fact that I'm so far from perfect, nor the fact that people judge, but instead, my entire perception that it matters one bit how perfect I am, or could be.

We, as Christians, talk about "sin" as something "wrong", something distasteful, something shameful. I'm beginning to see sin more as a cancer, an illness, an unhealthiness. A behaviour, a word, whatever, is never just that, it's more. It's a symptom of something else. Sin is breed from all different things, although chosen, choice is sometimes clouded by a whole history of experience. What if we spoke not of "Good Christians" but "healthy" ones? What if we spoke of not "wrong behaviours" but unhealthy? What if we spoke of sin not as something needing to fixed, but needing to be diagnosed? Maybe, we should be doctors rather than judges.

I don't know many people in perfect health. Even the healthiest person gets colds and flues. There aren't "Good Christians" but there are ones without colds.

We need to look at ourselves as Christ does and speak the words He speaks to us. Passing judgement on ourselves is the "devil's work".

Jesus' Comfort in my Skin

When the Lord brought back the

captive ones of Zion,
We were like those who dream.
Then our mouth was filled with
laughter.
And our tongue with joyful shouting;
Then they said among the nations,
"The Lord has done great things for them."
The Lord has done great things for us;
We are glad.

-Psalm 126:1-3

Last night, I was on a plane headed back home from Costa Rica and for the very first time, I smiled as I landed in the local airport. There was excitement in my heart and not a hint of dread or a feeling of displacement. It felt... like home. It felt like this is where I belong, right now. So deeply inside my heart that was a cheer, a joy, a sheer excitement at returning to the place where God has chosen for me to be. This trip has changed so much in me.

It was meant to be a simple backpacking trip, no missions, no aid, not a purposeful trip. Oddly enough, it held so much purpose in my heart. I wanted so badly to reconnect with God, to renew the intimacy, the passion and of course, the vision, which had all but died in me.

My (awesome) travel buddies, an old YWAM buddy and her friend from school, had pre-arranged a stay at a YWAM base in the capital city of San Jose. There we met amazing Christians, solid people, who in many ways revitalized and even healed my trust and faith in Christians as friends and indeed as family. (Of course, my travel buddies also served the same purpose).

There the wonderful new family arranged for us to travel across the country and again stay on a YWAM base in the south west, on a small native reserve called Bamboo. There, once again, we met the most wonderful people. We stayed there 5 days, which both felt like forever, due to the limited time we had in the country, and at the very same time, not nearly long enough! We ended up going on a church outing with the local community.

The church outing was a trip to a local beach on the Caribbean coast and a potluck lunch. There I met with a couple wonderful missionaries, one of which was instrumental in refreshing and refocusing my vision with God. Tina, a visiting missionary stationed in Nicaragua, is a passionate believer with a passion for medical missions, a true desire to heal the sick. She is zealous in her love, independent in her vision and unyielding in her devotion to the vision God has given her, despite opposition. She too has, and continues to, experience hardships and challenges from authority and the "family of God" that are both unfair and oppressive, yet she trudges on.

She, both with joy and passion, vision and purpose, willingly suffers and endures many challenges both from Christians and from just the physical challenges of her work, and still with joy, serves the Lord.

In her, I saw much of myself. I saw her persecution as an extension of my own, in the hard experiences I had faced in the not so distant past. In her, I saw that unyielding desire to serve balanced perfectly with an independent and uniquely strong spirit of individuality. Seemingly free from the impact of harsh judgment, she is simply a child before God. She doesn't play the game, she doesn't pretend and speak fluent "Christianese" as all Christians are expected to.

Walking away from our conversation, I felt as though I had truly found an answer to the question I had asked the Lord regarding my place in His family. In meeting her, I saw the purpose, and I finally accepted the challenge of being "different", the black sheep of the family.

The rest of the trip was more of the same. Not so much with people, but with God. It was a series of small encounters, and a new turn of pure honesty and unashamed passion before God. I gave up playing the game.

I must be honest in saying that many this may seem like a negative change, but it is quite the opposite. I am free in Him. I no longer want to pretend that the "F" word, as we like to call it, doesn't slip from my lips. It does, sorry. I don't feel too bad about it, anyway. Perhaps you think I should, but really, it's simply a word of emphasis. I also drink and I much enjoy my beer. On occasion, it slips into excess, but mostly I enjoy only one on a warm day. I love tattoos and plan to get more of them. I am wild and crazy, outspoken and at times, overbearing. I am independent and I challenge authority constantly. For all of this, I make no apology to man.

I am not what the church would hold up as a perfect Christian, and I don't plan to be, instead I want to be a passionate follower of Christ, with the open and honest revelation that I fall on my face straight into steaming piles of sin many times every day. I get up from that, become clean by a shower of His blood and I carry on passionately following Him. I make no apologies for being imperfect and I refuse to hide it. I will speak Christianese no longer. I plan to be authentic, truly and purely me, an honest child before Him and before the church, with all my sin and shame, if I am accepted or not.

I'm home now, both in location and in heart. I feel safe to be me. All of me. I will take the judgment and persecution on the off chance that somehow, my honesty and authenticity will shake another Christian from the captivity of our very own expectations and understanding of what makes one "holy". Christ is what makes us holy, that's it.

Thank you to the many friends on my trip who refreshed my passion and my vision, who sent me back refocused on Him and unyielding in my devotion. Thank you for your kind words, simple prayers and open and honest lives. Each and everyone of you are an inspiration in your passion for the Lord.

Thank you for showing me, Tina, Jesus' comfort in my skin.

The Lord is unashamed to call me His child and His beloved, because of my heart, not my life.

Keep your eyes fixed, my friends. Keep your love burning strong. Live openly and unashamed of your failings, desiring only to follow Him, but honest in your inability. Don't fret about what "they" may think, don't "fret" about judgment. Live freely and purely for Him. He is comfortable in your skin, even when you are not.

Indonesian Morning

Selamat Pagi.

I woke up this morning to find my plans had to be canceled and I was faced with a decision to go back to bed and get some much needed rest, or enjoy the silence of a quiet morning with a freshly risen sun.

I went outside on the porch and sat in a green plastic chair in between a bush, covered in raindrops from the nights storm and a pot of flowers. It was quiet, no cars passing, no people yelling. The occasional bird and dog spoke their hellos, but apart from that, there was what I have come to know as an Indonesian calm. Even as I write this now, the calm remains.

Back in Indonesia this was my favourite time of day. I would get up at the first of the Muslim prayers, around 4am, when the world was still covered by night and I would make a cappuccino from a powder mix. I would sit alone, with my Bible and my journal. For hours, until the world awoke, I would pray and journal, I would read and just spend time enjoying the silence. This was the strengthening time that carried me through the hardest of days.

Sitting here today has much reminded me of those days and oddly enough, it is the first time that this place has felt at all like a home. Indonesia was the first place and the only place that I ever felt as though I was indeed at home.

As I spoke with Him today, I told him how I felt, how hard it is to be here, and how confused I am over where He wants me. I told him I long to go "home". I sat quietly for a bit. Just listening, waiting, being still. I felt I should read my Bible for a bit, so I asked Him what I should read. 1 Peter jumped out at me, I could see the words in my minds eye. I turned to the pages and I knew I should read chapter 5:6-9. This is how it reads.

Therefore humble yourselves under the
mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you at
the proper time, casting all your anxiety on
Him, because He cares for you. Be of sober
spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil,
prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking
someone to devour. But resist him, firm in
your faith, knowing that the same experiences
of suffering are being accomplished by
your brethren who are in the world.
-1 Peter 5:6-9

This is the confirmation that I am where I need to be right now and that He hasn't forgotten the desires He placed in me to serve in the nations. It just simply isn't time. As ready as I may feel, only He knows when I'm truly prepared. Don't fret. His plan is better. He will not fail me because He loves me so deeply.

He is reminding me that the Satan is still very active and trying with all his might to distract me and pull me from my calling. He is trying to convince me to lose faith and act out of selfish ambition. The Lord is telling me that He sees the challenge and is standing with me.

Also, He reminds me, that when I sat out on my Indonesian mornings, even then I had feelings of doubt, of frustration and even distance from the Lord on occasion. No matter where we are, Christians everywhere struggle and that's ok. We are more than conquerers in Christ Jesus. These same sufferings are being ACCOMPLISHED by my brothers and sisters everywhere. I am not alone, no matter how it feels.

The Lord has a plan, though sometimes it seems random. He has a design, even though we can't piece it together. He is with us, even when we feel alone. He forgets only your faults, but never forgets you, nor His promises to you.

Lord, I will rest in your promises and wait on your word. I will stand with you and for you and I will not walk away.

Many troubles and Distresses

You who have shown me many troubles and distresses
Will revive me again,
And bring me up again from the depths of the earth.
-Psalm 71:20

It is hard to believe, and harder to see, but He is there, holding us as we go through our trials. No matter how hard or how far you've fallen, He can and will raise you up again. It may take time, and sacrifice, but the Lord will revive you again. Take comfort in the words of the psalmist. Let us trust in the character of our awesome God, knowing that He not only has the power, but also the love to revive us, restore us and grant us growth and blessing through our trials. He is with us always, and there to comfort us. Turn to Him in the midst of your trails, cry to Him and allow Him to comfort you. He loves you deeply.