ABIDE

I'm hoping the whole purpose of this trip was not just so that God could teach me more about Himself (and consequently more about my self) but I seem to ask God a lot "why am I here?". My hands are so tied at the clinic and it is doing so many things medically wrong. The kids seem to have been hurt so many times by work teams coming in and building relationships then leaving over and over again that I'm having a really hard time getting them to open up to me at all. Considering at this moment all I've got is about 30 4th graders who know how to play uno to show for my time here I'm having a hard time seeing a purpose. But I've got lots of time to listen to God and I've got little else to do. As it seem to happen to all of us I had become complacent at home- I was striving daily to follow Christ but it was time to go to the next step. I'm learning here to do more than follow- to abide. Initially God called his disciples to follow but as they were with him day in and day out he began to tell them to abide in him. (John 15, James 1, I John 2) Abide- this is so much more than merely doing my day to day routine. It is entrusting my whole self to him all the time. Initially, I would have said I am too weak to experience an unbroken fellowship with the God of this universe, yet I'm quickly learning that abiding is for the most weak and feeble! II Corinthians 12:9-10 But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.