The Government is Upon His Shoulder (Part IV)

Check out the bottom of the blog for some fun pictures!

Great is the LORD and greatly to be praised:

Misty and Amy have had an encouraging time in the community of Taramarca, where they are particularly focusing on teaching their stories to three young women. One of the women has already learned the most recent story and is planning to teach it to her family this week! (Here is a shot of Amy with a young family from Taramarca.)
Additionally, Misty and Amy made a short trip to Ayuma and began teaching the stories to Isadora, who kept asking for more. She then happily proclaimed, "I can't read or write, but I now have the Word of God in my heart!" Wow, that is what we have been hoping for all along, so please thank the Lord for His answers!

Prayer Necessities:

1. Please continue to keep the women in Taramarca and Ayuma in your prayers. Pray that they will continue to learn the stories and that they would grasp the importance of sharing them with others and would obey in doing so.

2. Misty's overseas term is complete in October, and she will be leaving to return to the US in about a month. Pray that we would be comforted as we lose such a vital member of our team, and pray that she would continue to use the things the Lord has taught her here when she returns home.

3. Leah and I are conducting a weekend preview of our missionary training for the women who have expressed interest. On September 18 and 19, we will spend the weekend on the land that we will use for training. We plan to teach them the story of creation in Spanish, along with allowing them to get a good feel for what their living conditions will be like. Please be in prayer that the Lord will use this time to draw us closer to one another and that He will make it clear who is to participate in the upcoming training.

Inquiring Minds Wanna Know:

The drive from Cochabamba to Sucre is a long one, roughly eight hours. The four of us were pretty quiet as we drove out, and I was consumed with my own thoughts. The major concern I had was about mishearing the Lord's voice. I have often wondered whether I'm confusing His voice with my own thoughts, something I'm sure most of you can relate to. But I was just distraught with this situation. I kept wondering how I could ever obey the Lord if I couldn't hear Him correctly.

We always listen to music when we drive long distances, and I had put in a CD of Christian music that I had burned. One of my favorite songs, Avalon's "You Were There," came on, and I began to pay more attention, especially when it came to this part:

"You were there when obedience, Seemed to not make sense."

Those particular lyrics are referring to Abraham and how God was right there with him even as he raised the knife to kill Isaac, the child of promise. And I began to think about how Abraham surely must have wondered if he had discerned the Lord's voice correctly. Really, how could he not have wondered? God had just said this:

"Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about." (Gen. 22:2)

But Abraham obeyed anyway, and Scripture says he did so for this reason:

"By faith Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice. He who had received the promises was about to sacrifice his one and only son, even though God had said to him, 'It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.' Abraham reasoned that God could raise the dead, and figuratively speaking, he did receive Isaac back from death." (Heb. 11:17-19)

He obeyed because he knew that God could raise his son from the dead, and he believed God would do that. It hit home with me at that point what faith really is... and what it looks like. What it is is believing that God is able to fulfill what He has promised to do, even when it looks impossible, and what it looks like is obedience even in the face of insurmountable odds.

I meditated on that passage of Scripture and on the life of Abraham as a whole for the rest of the long journey to Sucre, and I wish I could say that, from that point on, I had great faith in my all-powerful God. But the truth is that I felt almost betrayed by what had happened in Cochabamba. I still didn't understand what I had done wrong there, and I was scared to get my hopes up again. But the LORD was beginning to show me great things about my faith - or lack of it - and about how to pray according to His direction.

What I learned was that putting a timetable on God is putting a limit on my faith. When we prayed that He would grant us the visas before we left Cochabamba, we were essentially saying, "We will only believe You until we leave Cochabamba but not a minute more." But who are we to tell Him such a thing? Once again, Hebrews shows what real faith looks like:

"All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance." (Heb. 11:13)

These great warriors of faith died without ever receiving what God had promised, yet they still believed Him. But I had the audacity to try to control how He would accomplish what He had told us to pray for. That, my friends, is pride, and God has promised never to bless that:

"God opposes the proud but grace to the humble." (Jas. 4:6)

Thankfully, though, my Father is ever forgiving. I began to ask for His forgiveness and to seek how to trust Him more, and He answered that prayer in an amazing way.

Stay tuned for the exciting conclusion in part V. Coming soon! :)

And let me explain the pictures below. In our cultural learning, we have noticed some things about the way the Quechua take pictures. They never smile (they're supposed to look more sexy when they don't smile), and they love to hold up random objects in their pictures. As you can see from the photo to the left, they especially like holding up the Bible or musical instruments. So, one afternoon, Amy, Misty, and I decided to have a little fun taking pictures Quechua-style. Let me know what you think of our impersonation of our people group? Have we got them down or not? :)