Random Thoughts
today i was looking online at kids needing sponsors through Compassion Int'l. i'm sponsoring a boy named heiner right now but i really would like a girl i can develop a closer relationship with through letters. but as i was looking through the pages and pages of children's pictures, it made me want to cry seeing how many children there were whose profiles were labeled with a red "High Priority" because they had been waiting so long for sponsors. but not just that, it struck me how tiny the girl to boy ratio was. and even the girls looked so tough, they didn't look like girls. i wondered, and realized that because these are kids in poverty, their families are probably so poor that they can't afford to raise girls who can't work. and so, i'm assuming, they just abort. sigh, it seems poverty is the root of so many other tragedies like abortion and prostitution.
then tonight i was sitting on the bleachers of the track field with my Bible, reading Isaiah 60. in that chapter God tells us He'll give His righteous ones the nations, and make us kings and all that. i think i've believed and wanted this for myself with a selfish slant, this goal of being great in the kingdom, and used by God to influence a bazillion people. but if motives aren't pure and God-centered, it's not godly to have this desire just to be great, cause that's still selfish ambition and that's still being self-centered with seemingly godly desires. i realized the only way to have a pure motive and be truly great in the Kingdom is to ask for the nations with the pure dream, hope, and wish to see those billions touched by the love of God and give their whole lives to Him and the gospel. no self in that. just others-minded. mindful of the pure brokenness of the world and the fact that so many people are suffering in ways unimaginable right now.
an awesome lady taught me recently that sometimes the best way to evangelize is just asking thought-provoking things about God and about love, whatever comes to mind while you're talking with someone. the night before my grandpa's funeral, my sister and I got in an argument with my mom because the funeral was going to be buddhist but i had written the eulogy and shared at the end that God had saved my grandpa. my mom didn't want to deal with us anymore so she sent my brother, who is also buddhist and very philosophical. it was the first time we ever talked about religion with him, but we got into a conversation in which he told us he believed there were many gods, because the world's too big for there to be just one. i guess something i'd like to ask my brother sometime: Don't you ever feel really small..and something in you knows, or needs to know, that there's something so much bigger than you?
also, it was just around this time last year i was bawling to God in prayer over my grandparents' salvation, but woke up the next morning with the song "Salvation belongs to our God" in my head. i like to think there's beautiful significance that He's taking them away almost exactly a year later.
then tonight i was sitting on the bleachers of the track field with my Bible, reading Isaiah 60. in that chapter God tells us He'll give His righteous ones the nations, and make us kings and all that. i think i've believed and wanted this for myself with a selfish slant, this goal of being great in the kingdom, and used by God to influence a bazillion people. but if motives aren't pure and God-centered, it's not godly to have this desire just to be great, cause that's still selfish ambition and that's still being self-centered with seemingly godly desires. i realized the only way to have a pure motive and be truly great in the Kingdom is to ask for the nations with the pure dream, hope, and wish to see those billions touched by the love of God and give their whole lives to Him and the gospel. no self in that. just others-minded. mindful of the pure brokenness of the world and the fact that so many people are suffering in ways unimaginable right now.
an awesome lady taught me recently that sometimes the best way to evangelize is just asking thought-provoking things about God and about love, whatever comes to mind while you're talking with someone. the night before my grandpa's funeral, my sister and I got in an argument with my mom because the funeral was going to be buddhist but i had written the eulogy and shared at the end that God had saved my grandpa. my mom didn't want to deal with us anymore so she sent my brother, who is also buddhist and very philosophical. it was the first time we ever talked about religion with him, but we got into a conversation in which he told us he believed there were many gods, because the world's too big for there to be just one. i guess something i'd like to ask my brother sometime: Don't you ever feel really small..and something in you knows, or needs to know, that there's something so much bigger than you?
also, it was just around this time last year i was bawling to God in prayer over my grandparents' salvation, but woke up the next morning with the song "Salvation belongs to our God" in my head. i like to think there's beautiful significance that He's taking them away almost exactly a year later.
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