Haiti Thoughts - Katie

Some devotional thoughts of reflection from one of the students on our Haiti mission trip.

The everyday mission is a concept that I've really become passionate about. Reaching out into my community of friends, family, and others with whom I already have a relationship and sharing Jesus is my definition of everyday mission. 

        The past few months I've been working to find a way to do this well. I think it's slightly funny that God has chosen to teach me how to serve at home on an international mission trip. In Haiti God has been teaching me to love him in everyday life. The issue is when I allow my everyday life to become mundane. I get caught in the routine of things and forget that I can glorify God with the "unimportant" things. God wants me to be filled with passion. I can receive this passion through a growing relationship with him. God has been teaching me to seek this.

   Lastly God has been teaching me that He is the leader. This is a simple truth, but I struggle to remember. I often get ahead of things by thinking "what if I screw up God's plan?" Or " what can I do to be more like Christ?". The issue with these thoughts are that they are about me. I lose sight of who God is. God is mighty, loving, and big. When I let God lead and place my absolute trust in him He uses that in ways I could never believe. He turns the boring things of life into opportunities to serve, glorify, and exalt His name. 

    God wants me to serve and seek Him now. Whether I'm in Haiti or Mansfield the call is the same. When we are in Christ, we are to run hard after God in his strength.  

Haiti Thoughts - Isaac

A Brief devotional thought from one of the students on our Haiti mission trip. 

I'm tired. We're all tired. That's just what happens in Haiti. You get tired. You spend your whole morning and most of your afternoon, almost 5 hours, working on either construction, which is physically taxing, or teaching, which is mentally taxing. I've done both, and they are equally difficult, in different ways. 

This year, I am on construction, and God is teaching me one of the more difficult lessons to learn: I can't do it on my own. How did he teach me this? Well, my first two days, my job was to scrape the building. It's concrete, so the paint won't go on very well unless we scrape the bumps off of the building. It was me and my Haitian friend, Leekou. He took the ladder and went up high with the scraper. I went low, but we only had one scraper. So I used a pickaxe head. 

We spent hours scraping away on the walls, and we finally finished. I was so happy to be done. But then, I realized that we hadn't done the inside. In total, we spent 10 hours scraping the walls, and when we were done, my arms were dead. But all the way through, I just kept praying "Lord, let me finish this strong. Let me work to the best of my ability." And it worked. I could've never done that on my own. And when we were done, I thought "finally, I can relax." Except for one tiny detail: VBS. We still had to run the camp. 

So I prayed again. Time and time again this week the Lord has given me energy. I've been exhausted. But through my exhaustion, the Lord has been strong. 

This reminds me of second Corinthians 12:9, where Jesus tells us "'my grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect through your weakness.'" 

So trust in him, because if you trust in yourself, it all falls apart. But if you trust in Jesus, it all falls into place.

Haiti Thoughts - Liv

 "Jesus wants all of our lives all of the time. He wants to fill every place with His presence through his people. Every person in every place doing everything to glorify God. Just as when Jesus called his first disciples to follow him, when he calls people to be his disciples today, he intends it to be an all-of-life kind of thing that affects everything." 

Saturate, Jeff Vanderstelt

I think we take these things to lightly. You somehow cheapened words like all, every, and everything and don't take them in for all that it really is. They are such powerful words! You want all of me from the moment I wake to the moment I go to sleep, EVERY SINGLE DAY. Not just on missions trips, not just on Sundays, not just what he's doing exciting things in my life, but in moment of every day. In the normal, in the mundane, in the routine and the small stuff. Jesus wants our soul, our mind, our spirit, our attitude, our entire being to be about Him!

People will say, "You still have to be rational, you have to be realistic. Don't be stupid, you still have to be smart." 

But being "smart" is being careful, being safe. They want you to have a back-up plan. But this means that there is fear that God will not work everything together. Fear is the absence of trusting God. We can't be careful, realistic, or rational. We need to be completely abandoned. Crazy in the eyes of the world.

“If we are “out of our mind,” as some say, it is for God; if we are in our right mind, it is for you.” (2 Corinthians 5:13)

Being smart is being prayerful and constantly in touch with God. When God asks us to follow him, it's gonna look crazy in the eyes of the world. It's not going to make sense, it's not going to be practical,  but when he calls us to make that step all we need to do is go. Wherever he calls, even if it seems irrational, it's where He is. And where He leads, He provides!

Haiti Thoughts - Wyatt

A Devotional thought written on our summmer D2S trip to Haiti by Wyatt. 

In the book we have been reading on this Haiti trip there is a passage that says this: 

"Are you living with regret or self-hatred for what you've done in the past? Accept Jesus's payment for sin." 

This line stopped my in my tracks. I reread it. Then read it once more. Yes. Yes, I am. This is one of my biggest struggles and a foothold that the devil uses to gain traction in my life. A lot of times I find myself thinking about where I've been and things I've done. Things I'm ashamed of and embarrassed by, choices I've made that have changed my life and altered the direction of it. I get caught in the rut of thinking that I'm not worthy or that I'm not good enough, that I don't deserve God's grace and His goodness. But the reality is that I'm forgiven. My sins have been paid for. God's grace is sufficient. To believe anything else neglects the work that was done on the cross. 

I'm not who I was. I'm not defined by where I've been. I'm more than my past mistakes. As I dwelled on these thoughts, I was reminded of Psalm 34:5, "Those who look to him are radiant; their faces are never covered with shame." 

Thank you, Jesus, that my identity is in you and not in my past shame.