Taking the Land

It has been more than a month since I last blogged. About the time of the last post, one of the girls in the home (the one who can read English and use a computer) went to an internet cafe', found our website and felt angry that I posted about the Home. So I decided to just stop posting for a time. This week I felt it time to start again.

This week all the woman and children of the home and a few workers are at a family camp sponsored by the church our Social Worker's church. Pray for God to speak to each of them in a special way this week.

Since I last wrote Leah* decided to give up her baby. A wonderful Christian family has taken the baby, and are moving toward adoption. Please pray for that process. It is not something people want to touch here--something I don't understand. It seems easier to leave a child at an orphanage than to legally adopt a baby. But we know God's hand is in this. I could not be more happy with the home the baby has gone to.

Leah* also decided to leave the home. Please pray that the truth of God would continue to speak into her life.

Our Social Worker did lose her pregnancy. Please pray for her at this time. I know it is a huge loss. She is going on, but she needs God's peace and grace for this time.

This week I am reading from the book of Joshua. The Israelites crossed the Jordan and began to take the land God had promised them. Why didn't God just give it to them? What was the deal with that? Couldn't He just have wiped out the nations before them?

Instead of making it easy, God starts by telling them to circumcise all the males who had not been circumcised in the time they wandered the dessert. Oh the pain and agony that went on those days!

Then they go to take Jericho and have to walk around the city day after day. Finally after seven days they shout and the walls come down and they go in and conquer the city. Then they go to battle Ai and are soundly defeated because one person sinned. The story goes on like this. Every new town, every city, every nation is a fight. Nothing is easy.

The same is true in our lives. I always want God to make things easy for once. I get tired of the struggles, tired of the battles of life. But somehow it is precisely those things that make me become the person that God wants me to be. I have to face the struggles, the battles, and God makes me into the person He can use.

Since the Home of Hope opened, it seems we fight one battle after another. I just want things to get easy. I want it to soar. I want everything in place. I want to see results and have fun. I want to see women who are victoriously delivered and radically changed, but it just doesn't happen that way.

The work continues to be a struggle. Something within me wants to believe that obedience in starting the work and opening the home is "taking the land". But that is only the beginning. In the process of taking this land, I see God making me into the person He wants me to be. I see him working in the lives of the staff, healing their wounds from the past, giving them joy and unconditional love, teaching them about forgiveness. None of it is easy. We have to commit ourselves to pressing on. And in that process of change God also begins to heal the women.

And it is all for His glory.

Thanks for continuing to pray.