June 27, 2012
Friends & Family,
I am so excited to see what the Lord is going to be doing in the next few weeks as I explore his mission field in Rwanda, loving on his precious sons and daughters of Africa! I told many of you that I would be able to post on this blog about once a week, but I have now been told that I may not have that much access to it. In that case, I will have to record everything in a journal and maybe post the updates on here when I come home. Either way, brief highlights will be posted on here at some point:)
First of all, thank you thank you THANK YOU to everyone who is supporting me on this journey. Words cannot describe how much this opportunity means to me, and I can't wait to share it with you as well.
Second, I want to share with you some of my thoughts behind this blog. I came up with the web address "by grace through faith" from the verse in Galatians 2:8-9 which says
First of all, thank you thank you THANK YOU to everyone who is supporting me on this journey. Words cannot describe how much this opportunity means to me, and I can't wait to share it with you as well.
Second, I want to share with you some of my thoughts behind this blog. I came up with the web address "by grace through faith" from the verse in Galatians 2:8-9 which says
"For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith- and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God- not by works so that no one can boast."
It is so very important to me that those of you who read this understand that my choice to go on this trip was fueled by my passion for loving God's precious sons & daughters overseas. I am not doing it because it is "what Christians are supposed to do". If I can prove anything with my posts on here, I hope to prove to you that following Jesus Christ is different than following a religion. In contrast to what many churches teach, Jesus never wanted strict obedience, nor did he really desire proof of love and dedication by his follower's acts of service. It is for freedom, that Christ has set us free!
As I have been learning from Mike Smith, and from my own studies of scripture, Jesus was after a transformed heart. Try taking a look at the people who Jesus hung out with. He was constantly with the ostracized of society, loving the ones who everyone else rejected. And it is no wonder that he did so; the least of society are the ones most aware of their messiness, of how they have fallen short, and their need for Christ. It is BY GRACE that we are saved! How much more free can we be?! If it is by the Lord's grace and by Jesus Christ's death on the cross that we have been saved, then it doesn't really matter what we do; if I am attempting to follow in the footsteps of Jesus, and pursue having a heart transformed like his, then it doesn't matter if I hit a few bumps along the road. Our lousy attempts of doing good are nothing but dirty rags compared to Jesus, who lived a life without sin. We are already expected to sin, for ALL have fallen short (Romans 3:23), so why not begin to love others as if we believed this to be true?
Loving people the way Jesus has is my main goal on this trip and honestly, all I really want to do with my life. I want to love God's creation and his people the way that he has loved me. I have spent too much of my life for myself already, wasting the precious few days away I have on this earth to try satisfying my own needs that will never even be met!
Loving people the way Jesus has is my main goal on this trip and honestly, all I really want to do with my life. I want to love God's creation and his people the way that he has loved me. I have spent too much of my life for myself already, wasting the precious few days away I have on this earth to try satisfying my own needs that will never even be met!
So please join me on this adventure, whether you are a part of my family in Christ, or if you are interested in learning about what this family is like. Even if you have been deeply hurt and put off by some form of religion and do not understand any of this, I beg you to please try listening to someone who has been there, has given an ear to a different story, and accidentally fallen madly in love with her creator:)
