Honor My Parents?

In todays world I see so often that kids, especially teenagers are disrespectful towards their parents. I see it out of kids of all ages. My two year old nephew often disrespects his mom by telling her no (a typical toddler word). Elementary kids stomp their feet and throw temper tantrums out of disobedience. Teenagers yell and scream at their parents. I can't imagine telling my parents to shut up, but I've seen it happen with other kids all the time. This doesn't go to say that I am a perfect child, I'm far from it. But over the past couple of months God has really been working with me to give repsect to my parents.
I started this reading plan where I will be reading through the Bible in 90 days, and today I was reading in the book of Exodus. In chapter 20 it refers to the ten commandments, listing them all out. As many of us know, the fifth commandment is to honor your father and your mother, but God adds a promise on with that commandment. God promised this, "Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you."  I continued to read into chapter 21. I came to a section entitled in my Bible as Personal Injuries. In this section it lists punishments that must be suffered in the event that someone kills or injures another person. In verse 17, it says "Anyone who curses his father or mother must be put to death." Wow! When I read that I wondered, what does it mean to curse someone? According to the dictionary to curse someone means to express a wish that misfortune would fall upon someone. Is that honoring your parents? NO! I was amazed at how serious this issue was treated in the Old Testament.
 I found it very interesting that this particular example was put under person injuries. I know you have heard the saying "Sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me." The truth is, words can be one of the most painful things int he world. Being cursed at, or yelled at, or belittled hurts worst than many physical pains. The Bible even talks about the power of the tongue Our words have the capability to make a huge impact and it can either be a positive or a negative impact. That, I think, is why this example was put under personal injuries, because words can emotionally injure a person.
This is not a light subject. Honoring our parents is a serious thing. I can gurantee you that you will see a change in your life by honoring your parents. I am still in the process of learning how to fully respect my parents, it's a process that takes time, but it's worth it. The best part is, you don't have to do it alone. God is here to help you! He wants to see you succeed in this, he wants to see that relationship with your mom or dad or maybe even both be mended together. Your Heavenly Father loves you and wants things between you and your earthly parents to be right.

The Love of Africa

I would like to share with you my journal entry from tonight.

...I was on my way home after putting in about 7 hours at church today and I just started praying over different people and things. I was just talking to God. I started praying for divine appointments and I can't rememver how but it led to me wishing I would have told Josslyn Kenner that I love her at Reality last night. Reality is the youth event we do every Wednesday night. When she was leaving, she said bye to me and I heard in my head to tell her I loved her, but before it could register I had already said the plain word bye and she was gone. I got to thinking about that while I was praying today and I wondered why I don't tell these kids at Reality how much I love them. In Africa we would tell kids all the time that we loved them, we'd also tell them God loves them. Why don't I say it now? I got to thinking about it. In Naynja, the Zambian language, the phrases "I Love you" and God Loves you" were about all I knew how to say. I barely knew any phrases or words other than those two. That's when it clicked, that's all God want from us. He wants us to share our love and His love like it's all we know how to do. It was so easy to share the love of God with the children in Africa because it was the only thing we knew how to do in their culture. We were created to love, the Bible says in Mark 12:30-31
"Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is like this: Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these."
Those were the words of Jesus, we are to do two things with our lives. Love the Lord our God, and love those around us. It's what we were made for! I need to get in a mindset of Africa where the only way I know how to communicate to people around me is through acts of love and kindness. I may be back in America, but I am still in a foreign land. I do not belong to this world, my eyes are set on things above.

Meet Kennedy. I had the honor of having this young man of God in my group when we did a week long camp with the orphans in Zambia. Kennedy is a double orphan and is battling sickness, yet he has faith that would put many American "Christians" to shame. There are so many kids in Zambia, like Kennedy, who have a deep passion for the gospel and for Jesus Christ. There was one night in particular where God showed His power and how he can use anyone of any age to bring Him glory. We had several of our missionaries who had gotten seriously sick, we had been praying over them for a while and we started to hear singing and crying coming from the other side of the orphanage. We were so touched by what we thought the cries were. We thought the "mamma's" (the women who take care of the children in the orphanage) had been praying for us. After our sick had been healed through both our prayers and theirs, we went to join the mamma's in praising the Lord. When we got over to them, we suddenly realized, it wasn't just the mamma's it was the children too. There were kids five years old on their face crying out to God. We were all so moved by the passion that the children have for the Lord.

What is Normal?

Tonight I was at home watching the olympics with my mom and sister when a television commercial came up. It was a sneak peek at a new show that was coming soon called "The New Normal." I recognized from the picture an actor that I had found to be funny in past films so I watched the trailer. I soon found myself disgusted by the story line of the show.
Two men are in a relationship together and want to have a child, they find this woman who is willing to conceive a child for them and they develop a family of their own.
The title of this show reflects exactly where American society is heading. The New Normal. What does that mean? In our society it is becoming normal and acceptable to have families like this. Two dad's. This is becoming the norm of America. It has become so normal that people are willing to make a show about it and consider it comedy! Is it so normal that we can laugh about it?

Hakka of China

At the end of my trip, we stayed in Texas for a day to debreif. While we were there, we were shown different unreached and least reached people groups. An unreached or least reached people group is a group of people among which there is no indigenous community of believing Christians with adequate numbers and resources to evangelize this people group. We had the opportunity to commit to praying for one of these people groups for the next year. I would like to introduce you to the Hakka people of China. This is a least reached people group where their main religion is considered non-religion. Pray that these people will be reached and that God's word will spread through this nation. There is a complete Bible in this language so praise God for that! If you want more information on the Hakka, there is a link at the bottom of this post.
http://www.joshuaproject.net/people-profile.php?peo3=12054&rog3=CH

                                                         Picture taken by Chelsea Koelzer
This is Holly. During our trip she tore a muscle in her foot, the doctors said she would have to be in a cast for at least 6 months before it would fully heal. Holly had no choice but to sit around the camp sight while the rest of us went out to do our ministry. She sat in constant pain and torture all day every day. One day, we had several sick people and our project director felt that we needed to pray for them. We prayed for about an hour over the sick and by the time we were done, most of them were sitting up feeling much better. After that, our project director told us to pray over Holly. We prayed our hearts out, we prayed as hard as we knew how. Holly had the faith to be healed and we had the faith to heal her. When we eventually finished, she had no pain! She had had constant pain in her ankle before that. The rest of the day she walked without her crutches everywhere she went making coments like "this cast is in my way I want it off." It was either the very next day or the day after and she demanded that the cast be cut off; So we cut it off with a pocket knife. Here she stands in vicotry, fully healed by God's miraculous power.

God broke my heart for the children of Zambia, especially this little girl. Her name is Monde. God showed me through this precious girl how important and powerful His love is. God wants us, as believers, to show His love to everyone. I poured out every bit of love that I could to this girl every time I saw her. And when it was time to say goodbye, my eyes were opened to how important that love was to her. I held Monde as she lay in my lap sobbing, but God had a better plan for both of us. We didn't part ways forever with only that painful memory of goodbye burning in our minds. I was blessed to see her again before I left Zambia, and was blessed to continue to pour out God's love to her.