Simple, well sorta.

The answer is simple: Dedication because of love.

The action is tough.

This week I've come face to face with my imperfection as a human.

It sucked.

Period.

It sucked to watch a dream be laid down, to watch my “perfect” little plan of how life should go come to a quick death. To realize the ending of a journey that my heart longed to continue.

This week I was faced with my failure to be dedicated. I watched as all my fancy words were defeated by cowardice acts of self pity.

I watched as my standards were washed away by waves of “logical” thinking motivated by pure laziness.

What was I left with? The reality that I'm human. That I need God in every moment and that the battle I've entered is so much harder than any I have ever faced.

I've come to realize that it is often in the times of “normal” life that we face the toughest and most fierce of battles. It's in the moment when we could easily accept the ordinary that the battle to choose the extraordinary becomes so difficult.

When we start to believe the lie that we can't be as close to God unless we are serving Him in what we see as “active” ministry. That we can't have hunger and passion for God unless we are surrounded by people that are full of passion and hunger.

It's into this horrible trap that I tumbled this week. Thankfully God hasn't given up on me and loves to draw me back when I go after my own desires. Today God did that. Today, I was reminded of the story of Daniel.

If anyone had an excuse to not be passionate and full of fire for God Daniel would be it. Taken from his home as a captive while he was still a teenager, Daniel lived in a land full of evil men that knew nothing of God's way. The Bible mentions only three other Godly men besides Daniel when he enters captivity.

What does Daniel do?

Does He cry out at the injustice of it all and decide to follow his own desires? Nope, he sets himself apart and follows after God throughout his life of captivity. From the beginning when he asks to be fed only vegetables and water so as to not defile himself with unclean food, to when he prays and fasts for 21 days before getting a response, Daniel stays dedicated to God.

What if I could live like that? A life so dedicated that even in a land full of ungodly men (of which Lancaster County PA is certainly not!) I would continue to have passion and dedication to God. It challenged me to look past this momentary time.

To be honest I don't like the phase of life I am in.

It's tough.

It's dry.

And it's horribly familiar to how I felt before I left for DTS.

But the question is not what I will do to make myself feel the way I did a couple weeks ago, the question is how I will use this new phase of life to bring God glory, grow in my relationship with Him, and love the people around me with the love God has so lavishly given to me.

The question is what is God doing

Right here.

Right now.

And how can I be apart of it.

It's time to make the main thing the main thing again, and embrace the new that God is doing in my life with the knowledge that He is working it all out for good. All I have to do is obey.

Simple.

And not so simple.  

Pure joy, its not just a nice thought.

My ears continued to pop as the plane descended into the family scenery of PA. "PA this is way to soon, I was supposed to have another month until I saw you again." The thought runs through my head as I gloomily think about how my adventure has ended. As I grab my bags and head out of the baggage claim I try to remind myself that its not about my desires or will but about God's will for me. The thought brings little comfort at this moment.

Sunday was tough. Probably one of the toughest days I've ever had. It was the day that I truly had to face the reality of coming home. Up until then I had been so busy with preparing to leave and working with the insurance company that I had had little time to think about actually leaving Egypt and everything that would mean. So As I flew home my thoughts were constantly on what I had lost. It was with a pretty heavy heart that I drove home and realized that that chapter had closed and a new one was opening.

So what do we do with situations like this. When we feel like the winds been knocked out of our lungs and we've lost the purpose that we had so gladly embraced. When life simply doesn't make sense and we feel like we've stalled out. When we go from feeling useful to useless and we have no control over the course our life has taken.

To be honest, the answer is tough. We persevere, and we do it with joy. James 1:2-4 has been a constant reminder of what my attitude should be during this time.   "Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters,  whenever you face trials of many kinds,  because you know that the testing of your faith  produces perseverance.  Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything." The answer is tough because it is one of endurance, where we endure through the trouble and not only endure but we do it with "pure joy".

When my plane landed in Philly on Sunday pure joy was the last thing I was feeling. Confusion, frustration, and disappointment were high on the list of emotions. While my mouth claimed to trust God and want his plan, my spirit cried out at the injustice of being sent home. Of working so hard to get to DTS only to end a month early and be sent home from an outreach I given myself fully to.

In many ways I am still asking those questions. Why I am here, and why I had to leave the ministry I loved doing. But I have to constantly remind myself that when I committed myself to Christ I picked up a cross. A cross that meant suffering and pain, as well as joy and peace. A cross that would resemble that of Jesus who went willingly to suffer because He knew the Father had a plan. One of the verses I've been thinking about a lot lately is Matthew 26:42, where it talks about Jesus praying in Gethsemane and He tells the Father, if this cup cannot pass without me drinking it, your will be done. Jesus was completely summited to God's will. Even though He didn't want to do it, He had put the Fathers will over His own.

Now in my small situation am I willing to put the will of God over my own. Am I willing to drink the cup that God has placed in my hands and do it with an attitude of joy knowing that God has a plan and is working through my life. That this time of hardship is not in vain and that God is molding me into someone that can follow Him even more. Do I realize that this time of brief trial is nothing compared to the wonderful works that God can do in my life through this time.

I have a long way to go, but I've seen God do so much in these last few weeks. While I still don't understand fully why I am where I am, I am excited to see how God chooses to use me in this new chapter of my life.  I have to constantly remind myself its not about me, its about the one who give me life.  Anything short of complete love and devotion falls so short of what He deserves. He deserves everything, to give Him anything less is the greatest injustice. He deserves my absolute worship, my absolute devotion, my absolute trust, and my absolute love. Thank goodness for grace for the many times I fall so short of those absolutes.  Grace that sustains, and keeps me seeking Him even when I have nothing left. So heres to this new adventure. To a new chapter of watching God work and seeing his faithfulness play out in my life. I know its going to be a wild ride.

When a chapter closes, a new one begins

My shoes echo off the tile floor as I walk through the empty terminal. I've never felt this miserable and at peace all at once. Thoughts continue to stream through my head as I try to remind myself that this isn't a dream, “I am actually leaving”. I can't stop asking the question why? Why send me here just to take me home again? Why allow me to go through all this struggle only to force me to throw in the towel and go home? I'm passed any feelings of anger and am just purely confused.

After spending a month in Cairo Egypt I'm flying home.

After a month of watching God move and of experiencing the wonders of learning a new culture I'm going home.

After finally starting to feel like I was beginning to make a difference I'm going home.

Why?

But the question of why goes so much deeper than simply asking. It asks how much am I willing to trust God? Enough to be satisfied without needing an answer to the question why? Do I truly believe that God will work this situation out for my good since I love Him.

Am I willing to go through the pain and loneliness of leaving my team and my vision to seek out God's true plan for my life.

Isaiah 8-9 talks about God's ways being higher than our ways and his thoughts higher than our thoughts. In some ways it may seem a little pathetic, getting so dramatic over something as simple as leaving a DTS outreach early, but for me it was a loss of vision. The vision of God using me to bring hope and life to the nation of Egypt. Of God allowing me to live in a community of amazing people and laugh, live, and grow with them.

For me leaving outreach wasn't simply about going home, it was about losing my direction, about not knowing where I am supposed to put the next step.

But sometimes I think it is this place that God can truly use us as He desires. Its in the times when we don't have any clue what He is doing or how to follow Him that He can give us the direction that we need. Because its in that moment of confusion that we drop all our false visions and directions, when we are forced to lay down our future is when God hands us a better one. When we are forced to give up our dreams that God awakens new ones.

Personally, I'm still in the middle stage, the stage where I'm still desperately clinging onto the vision I had for this time in my life and watching God slowly began to point me in a new direction. I'm watching as my hands are emptied of my hopes for this DTS and God fills them with new hopes and dreams.

Its tough, I don't understand, but I can either be miserabal, angry, and confused, or be full of joy knowing that God is working something beautiful and fulfilling into my life. That while I may never understand why, He will guide me and be my comfort and hope. So I choose to praise Him. Maybe as much as I should but I know that even in my feebal attempts of praising Him He will take joy in the attempt. Even in the times when I fail and put my desires over my obedience to Him He will love me and continue to work things out for my good. So good bye Egypt, I have had the most extraordinary month of my life, and I will be back. It's been incredible, and I'm ready to see God use me in a new way in a familiar place. Home. See you soon PA.

Trust.

Trust. Sometimes we wonder about how much we trust God. Or how much trust we are willing to put in God. It is easy to say, I trust God, when everything is going well in life, the challenge is when things seem out of control. When you can doing nothing but wait, waiting with a desperate hope that this God you pledged your life to is as faithful as He says He is. Sometimes its in those moments of intense desperation that we get to really see how much we actually trust God. Its in the moments of tense pressure and the opportunity to worry that we see if we have really invested in our relationship with God. The past few days have been a time of stress for me, climaxing with finding out today that what I had thought was a minor eye infection on Sunday turned out to be an extreme infection in one of my eyes. The infection has the potential to permanently damage my eye. (even to the point of blindness.)  So the question is swirling in my mind, am I going to trust God and rest in the peace of knowing he is in control, or do go into self-pity and worry.

I was crying out to God last night, asking Him to move, to intervene, and make the pain stop. It was in that moment of intense prayer, when I felt so helpless that God spoke, in a quiet voice. "I'm right here. and I've got you." It was then that God began to just tell me gently "I'm here, David, and I've been here the entire time. I'm gonna walk through this with you." From that moment on God has given me peace and trust, trust that is struggling to be like Jesus's trust when He said:   "My Father, if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away unless I drink it, may your will be done." Matthew 26:42. Trusting God goes beyond simple saying "I believe you can heal me." it goes to saying even if I don't get healed I will praise God and trust that he has a plan through everything. I could lose my vision, but if my heart trusts God in a way I couldn't possibly do with vision in my eye, than I think it would be worth it. Its that trusting in God that Jesus showed in the climax of all possible human suffering. If I could have but a fraction of that trust I know that I could see God move in impossible ways in my life. I know God can completely heal me. And I want Him to, but there is a strange peace in knowing that God will be moving whether He heals it or not. 

     So prayer would be appreciated in these next 24 hours. I am going to the eye doctor again tomorrow which could be the deciding moment of whether the damage is permanent or not. So I'd love as much prayer as I can get, not just that God would heal me but that I would trust in Him no matter what the outcome 

Consecration

How much do we desire God? Enough to hunger after him day and night? To search with all our heart until we find just a glimpse of Him?

So often I feel like we as Christians down play desiring God. We are all about spending time with Him, reading the Bible, and praying, but do we really desire God? Do we constantly seek after Him with a passion that goes beyond any feeling or emotion? Do we love Him enough to sacrifice anything simply so we can dwell in His presence?

God has been speaking to me a lot over the past few months about having a hunger for Him. A hunger that will drive me past the times when I don't feel like seeking Him. A hunger that will drive me to do impossible things simply because I desire God and His presence that much.

So how do we get that hunger? How do we desire God with a passion that surpasses our feelings and will? For me, it came down to getting rid of the distractions. I think that everyone secretly has this desire to know God. Because we were created in the image of God and God designed us to be in a relationship with Him.

Consecration.

To set ourselves apart.

I think hunger for God increases when we set aside the distractions and empty pleasures of this world. It comes when we lay everything aside and say “God all I want is You”. The words carry a weight when they are followed by the action. God honors those who lay everything down to follow Him.

This past week God has really been speaking to me about consecration in my life. I think a lot of times its the small ways of consecrating ourselves that make the biggest impact. Its when we say “God, I'm not going to listen to that music, not because it is bad in itself but because it doesn't do anything to draw me closer to you.”

It's sounds crazy.

Over religious and probably a little legalistic.

But think about it, what if we decided to really try and fill ourselves up with only good things. Not “ok” things or “not that bad” of things but strictly what brings: life, joy, peace, love, and ultimately draws us closer to Fathers presence.

What could God do with a people completely free of the ties and hooks of this world and devoted only to Himself. A people who were willing to say no to the pleasures of this life so they can enjoy the crazy pleasure of God's great presence.

It's hard, but there is a strange satisfaction in knowing that we are no longer a slave to something but free to seek God completely.

Just something to think about.  

Soccer and Sacrifice

Sweat streams down my face as I try once again to steal the ball. “this is hopeless...” the thought streams through my head as I watch the ball go flying into the goal. 

Soccer is not my sport. 

Unfortunately for me, it's the common sport of most of the world, including Egypt. 

On Tuesday we had the privilege to play soccer with some teens and men at a boys orphanage. 

The field was about a third of the size of a real soccer field and all the boys play everyday, so for someone who never plays soccer it was a bit of a challenge. But a total reminder of why I am here. 

I'm not here to look good or even make a good impression; I'm here to love the people. Sometimes loving someone means doing the thing that they love, even if you don't like it.

 For me playing soccer is like that. Don't get me wrong, I like playing sports, but being a tad competitive, its tough to be totally outplayed and miserably outmatched. 

So the question always comes down to, am I willing to lay down my rights? Am I willing to sacrifice a small part of my reputation, image, and dignity in order to really take the time to love people? 

The fact is, this world isn't about me. Shocking I know, but how often do I really make it about me. I don't feel like looking like a fool so I won't do it. I don't want to spend the energy so I'll just sit back a let someone else do it. Its comfortable and totally selfish. 

Love=Sacrifice

Until we take the time to sacrifice and serve we will never be able to truly love people. God, who is love, came to earth as a sacrifice for us and as a servant (Mark 10:45), not because he needed to do it to love but because we needed it to know how to love, to know what love really is.

From the rock to the desert

The constant beeping of horns and persistent heat added to the dreamy feeling as I looked at the city pass by.  "What am I doing here?" the question pounded through my mind as I struggled to keep something resembling a good attitude. Day one of outreach and already I felt burned out.

      Our traveling begun on Sunday, July 1, when my team left Kona HI and started the three day journey to Cairo Egypt. It was one of the longest trips I've been on, over thirty hours of traveling. On the positive side we got to spend eleven hours in Munich Germany, which was such an amazing blessing! (Got to have some of that awesome German Coffee!) That helped to break the trip up a little but by early Wednesday morning  when we finally arrived in Cairo, we were exhausted. I had slept for about three hours on the whole trip. So after collapsing into bed and thanking God for AC in the bedrooms, I slept for twelve hours straight.

      So lets just say that waking up in an extremely hot foreign country does not help with the confusion of a groggy mind. I woke up on Wednesday more confused then I think I ever had been. I knew where I was but had no idea what time it was. Having no clock meant that I spent about fifteen minutes stumbling around our apartment trying to find the time (which when I did find I assumed had to be wrong because there was no way I had just slept an entire day away.) The clock said 5:15, whether that was am or pm I couldn't tell and since I was the only one up I had no one to ask. Finally after about 20 minutes of trying to figure it out (including getting on google to google the time in Cairo Egypt) I finally came to the conclusion that I had been asleep for twelve hours. and it was in fact 5:15pm.

     Now to top off the jet lagged, sleep deprived state I was in, I had also been getting a cold the last few days of traveling. This cold decided to rear its nasty head as soon as I woke up after having been asleep for twelve hours. All together it is safe to say I was not exactly in the best mental/physical state. After about an hour, once everyone was up, we met with one of our translators to go over a few things. Once we had talked a few minutes we all went for a walk to see some of the city.

     Cairo is probably one of the most bland cities when it come to architecture, almost all the building are plain concrete and look almost exactly alike. The streets are littered with trash and full of cars. Now all this being said the people here are amazing and extremely hospitable. One of the things our team has to get used to is the constant staring, for me this isn't a huge deal but I feel for the girls on our team who have to deal with the stare down of every guy we pass.

     So as we walked through the streets of Cairo our first night I struggled to take it all in, the crazy traffic, the beautiful yet very strange language, and the constant staring of everyone we passed by. After walking for about a half hour we got some awesome fruit drinks at one of the local shops. Our leader, Paul, then went into one of the other local shops to buy a cell phone for our team. While the rest of our team waited outside, I stood silently a few feet away, thankful for a moment to rest and let my mind process all the strange sites. Suddenly I see an Egyptian man walk up and offer a high five, I, not knowing a bit of arabic or the culture return the high five. What follows is a series of high fives and fist pumps followed by the man simply walking away without saying a word. I must have looked quite confused and bewildered since a pair of young egyptian men standing near by laughed and said in broken english "egyptian fun", that is all the explanation I got.

     On Thursday we spent the day getting some much needed rest and going over what we would be doing while we are here. I'm so thankful for the apartment we have here, the bedrooms and living room have AC and the kitchen is super nice. It is such a blessing to be able to come home to a restful place like this. My team was able to just spend some quality time with each other on Thursday and just get our bearings on our new life here.

    The following is a small glimpse into what Friday morning looked like.

    The van jostled through the busy streets as my congested head continued to pound and tired eyes stared out the window. "So this is Cairo." I thought as the buildings swarmed passed and the cars drove madly down the streets. Honna, our driver, drove the van care freely through "light" Friday traffic on our way to Garbage City. My first impression of Garbage city was simply that it was exactly what I heard and expected it to be. A city trash dump thrown on top of part of the city. It was literally a city full of garbage; garbage on the streets, garbage on the buildings, garbage everywhere. As I looked out the window I watched trucks caring sacks full of garbage weave down the crowded narrow streets. One of the first sites I see is a decapitated dog rotting by the road on top of a pile of garbage. "people live here, and walk these streets every day." I think as I watch children running down the streets. A cart with donkeys rests beside the road as men collect garbage in large sacks. For the first time since getting to Egypt I was thankful for a cold so that at least my plugged up nose blocked out some of the smell. Still the smell of garbage was ever present and I was thankful when our van made its way higher up in the city.

     At the top of a hill sat one of (if not the) largest Coptic churches in Cairo. It is in fact a cave church, basically a church built inside a massive cave. This particular cave church could seat fifteen thousand people. It was interesting to see the massive structure and the orthodox feeling of the church. Paintings and carvings cut into the walls depicted Christ, the virgin Mary, and other significant figures of the Bible and coptic Church. Having never seen eastern orthodox churches before the closest thing I could relate it to would be a Catholic Cathedral.

      After getting a tour of the Cathedral we spent time talking with the different Coptic Christians outside of
the church. While Coptic Christians would call themselves Christians most of them believe in salvation by works and their religion is very much based on doing good deeds to get to heaven. It was interesting to hear their different beliefs. After talking for a couple hours with some of them we then hopped back into the van and headed home.

     It was on this ride home that the discouragement really set in. During our time of talking with the Coptics we had split into two groups. My group ended up talking mostly about politics with a few Egyptians there, which was interesting but didn't really result in anything meaningful or significant. Thankfully the other group had more success and were able to encourage the people they talked to and share some of their thoughts on Christianity. So it was on this drive back, where I felt the discouragement set in. My cold had zapped all my strength and the heat had dealt an equal blow of weariness. It was in this moment that I began to wonder what my purpose for being here was. It was then that the taunt came. "Did you really expect to just walk in and change this city? Did you really expect there to be no fight, for there to be no hardship? Did you think that a few hours of prayer could tackle centuries of darkness? That a small group of people could change a city full of strongholds? Do you really think you are strong enough for this?

     It was a challenge, a question of how resolved I was to stick it through and continue to seek the Father's face. Living here won't be easy, I don't want it to be easy; I need to continue to rely on the Father for the strength to continue and pour out His love on the people here. And nothing that Satan does can withstand the love the father has lavished upon His people.

     So here is a small taste of my first few days here. I'm so honoured to by in this amazing city. It is cool to see God move in amazing ways. Thank you all for your prayer and support. It means the world to me! I love you all and will try to keep you updated on what is happening here!
Blessings,
David