Rooted and Established. In LOVE.

  This is Chico Bango.

Back at the Zou.  We debunked the beds last night (thanks friends for all of your help, and not help).

When I woke up this morning, I realized I had absolutely nothing I had to do today.  This is rare in my life.  So I took a shower and read, for a long time.  I am still in the middle of Crazy Love, but even with my tendency to start 4 books at a time and finish none, I think I might actually get to the end of this one.  I then wrote a letter to a friend that I really needed to write a letter to.  And God blessed it, and my time with Him, and I sat back and thought, “Wow.”
God is so… good.  That word is one of the adjectives my English teachers hated us to use to describe anything.  It was too large a cliché.  But God is good.  He is every derivation of it.  He is every synonym of it.  He is more of it than everything we use it to describe anyway.  I am overwhelmed by how good He is. 

I finished my application to Africa last night (now I’m waiting to come up with the fee, and it will be on it’s way).  I’ve had a lot go through my head concerning Africa… concerning everything really.  It seems I don’t know how to trust our God that is so GOOD properly.    I’ve taken everything I learned at DCC, all the truths that were uncovered and revealed to me by God, and warped it all into less honorable and glorifying tasks given by God.  I’ve viewed them as burdens as opposed to opportunities to serve the God of the Universe, blessings in which I will be able to run toward Jesus and away from who I’ve ever been without Him.  Opportunities to love deeply, and share genuinely, and serve selflessly, thus making me richer than I’ve ever been.  And I still won’t have any money.

I’ve had to remind myself what I have learned, but also that there is much still to be learned. 

I want to go to Africa.  For all of the reasons I stated in the post before this one.  I want to serve where He’ll have me.

I’m at Mizzou not to get my degree, but to live in the dorms, and to eat in the dining halls, and to thrust myself into the dysfunctional Body He’s set in front of me.  I am here to Love on everyone I come into contact with.  There is no part of my so-called faith that means anything if I haven’t love.  I don’t trust God if I don’t surrender to it.  Even if it’s scary, even if I don’t know the outcome.  That’s why it’s surrender based on trust.  It’d be real easy if I knew how everything would turn out, if I could see the bottom. 

Over the past week, I’ve read Ephesians 3 a few times.  I really like Paul’s prayer to the Ephesians for their spiritual strength, and I pray the same one for any part of the Body I’ve found myself in, and for me as well.

For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom His whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name.  I pray that out of His glorious riches He may strengthen you with power through His Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.  And I pray that you being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

Amen.