Day 1 in England: Responsibility
(Fern Gore flyer)
Our team has been split up with members of the ministry team here in England to work in two different difficult areas: Nelson and Fern Gore. I am personally on the Fern Gore team. The events we have planned for tomorrow and the facility we will be using are great and I cannot wait to get started. Though, today the team spent some time hanging out with the Nelson community kids to start making connections and to get them excited for the events of the week.
I connected with a few different kids. One of them, a boy who is 13, asked why I came all the way from America to be there. He talked about how much he disliked it in Nelson. He said it was because there are no skate parks and because of constant fighting. He claimed that Asians (Indians) were the problem. One of his friends told me that the fighting often happened between the "whites and browns." The 13 year old boy said he'd been beat up before, but later, while talking to his friends, I found out that he had antagonized it.
I could tell that this is what we had wanted. It is what we came for. The church we are working with (Hope Church) has a strong recovery and out of prison community. The neighborhoods we are focusing on are two of the rough ones in the area. There are broken families and broken people there. Our heart for this trip was to bring the Gospel to the ones people don't generally try to reach. Just interacting with the kids showed me that we are set up in the right place for that. The team's heart is that these people will come to know the love of God and really be transformed by it. We are hoping for powerful things to happen on a scale that will bring about community change.
During a talk with Brian Jackson. the senior pastor of the church, he revealed that early on with God He learned an important lesson. Years ago, he had been frustrated by the lack of response of the Church to many of the needs and issues around them. He prayed about it out of frustration and God put him in charge of building up a church that would be responsible. Through that experience and others, he said that he's learned this: "Never pray a prayer that you're not willing to answer."
That lesson was such a profound one for me. How often do we pray prayers that we want God to answer yet don't truly plan on doing anything about?
During the end of this last year, sex trafficking has become an issue I've become more interested in and aware of. It wasn't until last week, however, that I really came to understand how close to home it is. About 4 or 5 days ago, I began looking into the Chicago sex trafficking stats because I'd read a tweet once saying that it was a problem in this city. My heart was broken by what I found out.
It is estimated that 16,000-25,000 girls and women are trafficked in Chicago. In Cook County, girls and women can be trafficked without ever leaving the area. O'Hare Airport is an important transportation hub for victims to be transported to others cities and events to be trafficked in, and also to fly in trafficked girls or women. Honestly, I cried reading all this. I was so broken by it. This wasn't in Cambodia or Greece or some other country. This was happening here at home, in my city and my county. Who had I passed by or even seen that was a victim of trafficking without me ever realizing it? What places have I passed by without realizing that women and girls are enslaved and hurt there? I was just at O'Hare yesterday; which of the people I passed were being taken to a place where they would be devalued, stripped of dignity, and trapped?
The night I found out all these Chicago facts, I prayed for those girls and women, but I know that is not going to be the end of this story. God has given me a heart for Chicago and a passion for showing people their worth. I know that I'm not here to reach the "easy" people (the ones that don't really need moving the world for, though, by no means do I believe that they shouldn't be reached). I can't just do nothing about the things I've learned. Brian was right, God doesn't usually open our eyes to and give us a heart for issues and people just for us to put the need back into His hands. That was Him putting it into ours.
In Numbers 11:14 and 16-17 (NIV) Moses says, "I cannot carry all these people by myself; the burden is too heavy for me....The Lord said to Moses: 'Bring me seventy of Israel’s elders who are known to you as leaders and officials among the people. Have them come to the tent of meeting, that they may stand there with you. I will come down and speak with you there, and I will take some of the power of the Spirit that is on you and put it on them. They will share the burden of the people with you so that you will not have to carry it alone.'"
Moses had a heart/burden for the enslaved Israelites early on. When God put him in charge of leading them out of Egypt, he fought and whined, but he ultimately obeyed. As time went on, the responsibility over the Israelites led out of Egypt was too much for him. He couldn't handle it anymore and so He wanted to hand it over to God. Notice that God didn't take that responsibility away from Him. Instead he charged Moses with building up a team to help him carry out the responsibility.
Prayer is powerful, but we often use it to comfort ourselves. We think that we have done everything we can just by crying out to God, but that's not always all God wants us to do. That's where most of us stop, however. We think that it's God's responsibility and so we put it in His hands to handle. We reason that He's the only one that really has the power to do anything about the issue or in the person. There are times however, where God hands our prayers back to us and says, "Do something about it." He will continue to fight for and guide us, but He wants US to move as well.
By no means will it be easy, but He has a plan for it all. He will show you what He wants you to do even though it often seems daunting and impossible. God is going to do something with that obedience (whether it is in you, in others, or both) because when He calls us to something, it is never for nothing.
When you pray, be ready to move.
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