Teacher, Will You Be My Brother?...

Before we got to Cambodia we spent some time praying as a team asking God what to be expecting during our time here.  One thing that I felt strongly was that we were going to have the opportunity to pour into and disciple future leaders of Cambodia.  At first I felt like that was kind of a lofty expectation but I decided I would pray more into it and ask God to open those doors.

We have been able to get to know a lot of amazing men that are involved at the Battambang YWAM base (where we stay).  Each of these guys has the potential to be amazing leaders in the church in Cambodia.  Last week I was reminded of that prayer I prayed in Kona before we got here and I was really encouraged that we actually got to do what I felt like God told me we would get to do. 

Earlier this week God blessed me even more with another opportunity that I did not expect.  I got to spend time with and disciple a young man in my math class named Thumith who I strongly believe is going to be a very influential leader in Cambodia.  He is a senior at Dewey (the school I teach at) and he is going to graduate at the top of his class in August.  On Monday he stopped me as I was leaving to go home and he asked me if we could meet to talk after school on Tuesday. 

When Tuesday came I didn’t know what to expect but our time together was better than I could have asked for.  He told me about his dreams to go to college in the US and to eventually get involved in Business/Government in Cambodia and to end the corruption in this nation. Pretty big dreams for a senior in high school… We talked about what he needs to do to achieve those dreams and it was a good conversation.  But then he told me that he constantly worries about the future and about providing for his parents who are divorced.  I got the chance to share with him that no matter whether you are rich or poor you will always worry unless you trust in God to take care of you.  Long story short he was really open to the Gospel and I got to pray for him.  He didn’t accept Christ but he is definitely interested in learning more.

The icing on the cake was the ride back to his house.  Out of nowhere He said “I am happy and I feel so much better since talking to you teacher.”  I was so honored and humbled because I didn’t feel like I had done much. But I knew that my simple prayer brought him peace that he had never experienced before.  And then when he got off my bike and I was about to leave he said, “Teacher, can I ask you one more question?  I feel so happy and I feel like I just met a brother from my dreams… Teacher, will you be my brother?”

My heart may have melted a little as I said “Yeah man!  Of course! We can definitely be brothers!” 

God is sooo good and sooo faithful.  Thumith and I plan on staying in touch and I am going to give him a “Jesus Film” as a present before I leave.  I really believe God has big plans for my brother and I am so honored that I got to get to know him during my time here.

“Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.” –Ephesians 3:20-21

Friendship with God

I got a chance to preach in a small village church on Sunday about some things God has been teaching me in my own life.  This is a spark notes version of what I taught.  I hope you find it encouraging and not too heretical… I’m still new at this.  But as Don Stubbs once told me as Christians we are supposed to “Teach what you know, and grow as you go.”

John 15:15 reads “I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.”

When we read the word of God it’s essential to understand the context in which things are written.  I know when I first learned that everything in the bible was for me it got me really excited.  But it wasn’t until later that I realized that not everything is for us today, BUT, everything is available for us as we grow closer to God. 

This quote from John 15 is Jesus speaking to the disciples who he had been with for three and a half years.

The whole chapter is helpful to understand the qualifiers for this great statement in verse 15 but the most important parts come from verses 12-14:

¹² My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. ¹³ Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. ¹⁴ You are my friends if you do what I command.

Verse 12 explains his command, to love as He loved us.  Verse 13 explains what that love looks like, laying down your life.  Then verse 14 tells us what the requirement for friendship, obedience to his commands, one of which is stated in verse 12.  And because of Jesus’ audience, the disciples, he goes on to say that they have obeyed his commands and now he had promoted them to the status of friends.

Everyone starts as servants, and we move to friendship by being faithful as servants.  But the important thing to remember is that we never graduate from being servants.  One day when Christ returns we will be his bride and enter into marriage with Him. In marriage your spouse should be your best friend and you should be his or her biggest servant.  Even though you have been promoted to a marriage relationship you have not graduated from friendship or from being a servant.  This is the same with our relationship with Christ.  We never graduate from serving Him.  Moving to friendship means that we actually move into co-laboring and dreaming with God.  God begins to share His heart and His dreams with us and we work with Him to see them come to pass.

But we must be ok with doing what we are told and being faithful with what we know we are supposed to be doing from reading the written word before we expect to know all His plans and dreams for us.  This faithfulness gives us access to God’s heart.

In Matthew 25, the parable of the talents, the Master first gives the servants a little and he waits to see what they do with it.  When he returns and finds that some of them gained more talents he says “Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share in your master’s happiness!”

So we see that there are two clear consequences of faithfulness; more responsibility (I will put you in charge of many things) and friendship (come and share in your master's happiness).  We are always crying out for God to reveal His will for our lives.  But before we do that we need to ask ourselves if we are being faithful in the small things we already know we are supposed to do according to the word of God.  Are we being joyful always? Are we doing everything as if we are working for the Lord?  Are we loving our neighbor as we love ourselves? Are we honoring our parents and the authority that God has placed in our lives?...

God wants to reveal his dreams over our lives.  But a premature release of these dreams could destroy us.  If we are not mature enough to pursue the great plans He has for us, He can’t reveal them to us.  He wants friendship with us and it’s available for each and every one of us.  He wants to dream with us! He wants to co-labor with us!  But it takes faithfulness to get there…

Happy Mother's Day!

This week’s blog is dedicated to the #1 mom in the world.  Ironically, the #1 mom in the world and my mom happen to be the same person.  Lucky me, right? For any of you who don’t know my mom here’s a short list of the highlights:

1) This woman is one of the most beautiful women, inside and out, that I know. Whether she’s hanging around the house in sweatpants or sending people’s jaws to the floor at Adam’s wedding because of that killer dress she was wearing, she always carries a beauty that you can’t explain until you see it.  She’s just a total babe. You can even ask my dad.  He’ll tell you.

2) She is constantly blowing the roof off of my definition of servant-hearted.  Just when I think I’m sacrificial, I hear about something my mom did for someone who just lost a loved one, who is sick, or just someone God put on her heart, and I realize I haven’t yet scratched the surface of servant-heartedness.

3) She is so teachable and so hungry for the deep things of God.  She is a modern day female Brother Lawrence. While she does the mundane jobs that are required to keep things in the Kirsch house going, you can bet that the radio is blasting worship music or the laptop is playing a podcast of one of her favorite preachers.  And if it’s early in the morning or late at night you will probably find her sitting in her chair or in bed reading the word of God or a Christian book. She is constantly asking me for more worship music and for more preachers she can get teachings from.  She is just so after the Lord’s heart!

4) She is the worst croquet player in our family.  And the worst Rack-O player.  And definitely the worst Uno player.  And I don’t know whether or not she’s the worst at the shell game at the beach, but she’s definitely bottom 50% for sure.

5) She wrote me notes while I was in college like almost every week.  I think I started to take that for granted but people would always tell me they were jealous of that.  I constantly get told how amazing my mom is and I’m thankful for that because I take it for granted that everyone’s mom is as thoughtful and constantly encouraging as mine.

6) She can beat your mom in a 5k.  Seriously.  She’s a beast.

7) She is a woman of prayer.  If you need a covering you should definitely hit her up.  I believe that a lot of the blessing and favor I have received in my life has been a direct result of my mom’s unceasing prayers.

8) She’s a killer cook/baker.  And she ALWAYS remembers what vegetables you want in your salad.

9) She hates that I wrote this for everyone to see because she never wants the attention to be on her.  But guess what mom, you’re awesomeness has flown under the radar for too long.  The people need to know how awesome you are.  But more importantly, you need to know how awesome you are and how much I wish I could be with you on Mother’s Day to tell you in person.

I could go on but I’ll end by saying, she has truly set the bar for me for what I want in a wife one day.  I love you mom!  I’m so blessed to have you in my life.  Happy Mother’s Day Mom!

Proverbs 31:10-31... Read it. It's her

Dancing in the Rain

We’re halfway home.  Time in Cambodia has flown by.  We’ve had some amazing experiences but as expected we’ve had our fair share of hard things too. Living in community with 12 people is hard enough but add heat, lack of food, and spiritual warfare to the mix and you’re bound to have a few bumps in the road.  Last week our girls found out that a few of them had lice so tensions were particularly high and people (including myself especially) were taking themselves a little to seriously. Wednesday was Kelby’s birthday, and it couldn’t have come at a better time for us.

Kelby is one of our constant sources of life and positivity and her birthday brought us just that, life and positivity.  We were able to have a team breakfast of homemade French toast which was a good time for us to all be together with “celebrate” as the only thing on the agenda.  And we were able to go out to dinner as well, which was another story.  Sandwiched in-between the two, during our afternoon prayer time, we decided to have an acapella worship session/time to pray for each other for the Holy Spirit to refresh us.  Being the extravagant God that He is, the Lord decided to bring a thunderstorm on Battambang in the middle of the hour and we all ran outside and danced and sang in the rain.

Amidst the chaos, (it was literally chaos… people running, jumping, dancing, screaming, and laying on the ground) I stopped running around and just lifted my hands to heaven and said thank you to our good Father who loves to give us good gifts.  As I stood there with my hands in the air I felt like God was saying directly to my heart “I’m so proud of you but you’ve been losing sight of why you’re here.  You’re not here to stress about how the team is spending money.  You’re not here to tell other people what they could do better.  You’re not here to “win souls.” You’re here to fall more in love with Me and to fall in love with My people and let me do the rest.  I’ve called you here because we’re friends and I just wanted to show you what I’m doing in Cambodia and let you be a part of it for a while.”

I almost started to cry as I started asking God to forgive me for getting hung up on pointless things and things that I can’t control and for forgetting to just love Him.  I believe that Tuesday was a turning point for our whole team and especially for me.  We have two different one-hour prayer/worship sets every day, Monday through Friday, and without any real worship leaders those times are like pulling teeth from time to time.  We have taken ourselves so seriously and been stressing about the quality of the worship and getting too focused on each other instead of keeping our eyes fixed on the Lord.  But since God revealed to us that what He is calling us to is just simple friendship and raw worship, everything has been different.  No one is looking around the prayer room in comparison.  People who like to dance, dance.  People who sit down and sing, sit down to sing.  There is freedom and it’s so beautiful.  And all it took to get us there was God showing up with rain for a birthday worship dance party. 

"The Chief goal of man is to glorify God and fully ENJOY him forever" -Westminster Catechism

A Table Changes EVERYTHING

On Tuesday night we decided to throw a dance party for the café Eden staff.   The café is closed on Tuesdays and it’s really their only day they have to do anything fun at all.  We’ve learned that the majority of young adults in Cambodia are the primary providers for their entire family (most of their parents don’t work anymore).  And on top of that most of the café workers are trying to go to University full time.  So you can imagine sleep and fun get put on the back-burner.  They are totally servant-hearted and sacrifice so much for their families.

So basically the pressure was on to make this dance party a huge success because they gave up their one free night to come, AND they rarely get to do things like this.  So a few of us spent the day moving around furniture, decorating, baking cookies and banana bread, cutting up mangoes, making a playlist and getting fired up for the party. 

Only two of the people on our team know many of the workers very well (me and a girl named Ariel, because we help there in the mornings) so the beginning of the party was a little awkward trying to introduce everyone to each other.  As people were trickling in and getting introduced we tried to put on music and start dancing but as I looked around I saw white people dancing and Cambodians sitting and watching… Not the look of a successful party! 

It was time to pull out plan B.  We needed to save this party cuz it was dying fast! At Cambodian weddings they bring out a little table and put it in the middle of the dance floor and basically walk/dance in a circle around the table.  Here’s a taste: (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFlmkOd2tGs).  So we got the manager’s phone and put on some traditional Khmer dance music and boom, we had ourselves a party!  About 30 seconds into the song almost every Cambodian worker was dance-walking and doing weird stuff with their hands around the table (seriously check out that youtube clip... it's just like that). 

After a couple of songs of that we took a chance and put on some other dance music, held our breath, and excitedly watched as one of the Cambodian girls literally picked up the table and moved it off the dance floor so we could all dance… And the rest is history.  We danced the night away to American group dance songs, Christian Hip-Hop songs, and Khmer dance music.  All the workers left with smiles on their faces and they all said they had a great time! 

It was such a privilege to get to bless these amazing people in this way.  Since the party I’ve seen an obvious change in how the workers who I didn’t know as well have interacted with me at the café.   They could tell that our hearts were pure and we didn’t have an agenda.  All we wanted to do was have a party with them and get to know them.  And because we took the time to do that the opportunities for discipleship and relationship are opening up! I was invited to spend the day next Tuesday with one of the servers named Pak and he’s going to take me around Battambang on his moto to see the sights… SO STOKED!

Moral of the story… A table changes EVERYTHING!!

“David, wearing a linen ephod, danced before the LORD with all his might,” -2 Samuel 6:14

WORDS

I think I’ve written before about how in the Cambodian culture it’s not normal for someone’s parents to tell him or her they love them.  In fact they consider it inappropriate for the word love to be used to describe any relationship besides a husband and wife.  I think I realized, at least to some degree, how that could have some negative implications on the people in this nation.  But lately I’ve been thinking about the other side of the coin and I’m just recently realizing how powerful words can be if you DO use them well.

I left Cambodia for 7 days to go home for my brother’s wedding (Which was so awesome by the way!  I’m so honored to welcome Ginny into our family! I couldn’t ask for more in a sister-in-law!).  And when I got back I didn’t expect the kind of reception I received.  The Cambodians I work with and have gotten to know from Café Eden (the café I work at in the mornings) were way too excited to see me.  They talked about how much they missed me and I heard from one of the girls on my team that they asked every day when I was getting back. 

I was really humbled by this and spent some time thinking about what I could have done in the 12 short days I was here in Cambodia with them before the wedding to warrant this kind of greeting. I didn’t crack some crazy awesome jokes, I didn’t buy them sweet presents, all I really did was ask them about their lives and encourage them in who I was realizing they were and in the things I saw them doing well.  It’s amazing what speaking life into people who rarely experience encouragement can do to knit your hearts together in such a short time.

Proverbs 18:21 says “The tongue has the power of life and death, and those who love it will eat its fruit.”  It’s so true, there is so much power in what we say.  While words can be used (or not used) to tear people down they also have the power to lift people up into the greatness God is calling them too.  As I’ve been asking God to give me His eyes and His heart for people I’m starting to see even more of the greatness in people than I ever have before.  Speaking life to someone and encouraging them isn’t, and shouldn’t ever be, fake.  Everyone has greatness in them because they were created in the image of God.  As we ask for God’s heart for people He will reveal it to us and will enable us to speak it out to them. 

This interaction with the Cambodian workers at Café Eden has made me even more aware of how powerful words are.  I hope and pray that I can become someone who people love to be around because they feel known and loved by their heavenly father through me.  Love and missions has never felt so easy.  Giving someone a straightforward compliment about WHO THEY ARE not something they have done is so counter cultural for some of us and although it feels awkward it was what we were made to do.  And the fruit of this kind of living is so much greater than we realize.

“Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing.” -1 Thessalonians 5:11

Changing Destinies

A group of people from our team has been going to a village church to help with a kid’s camp, construction, and praying for the sick people in the area.  I went there the first two days we were here because my morning job at the Christian Café hadn’t started yet.  What I experienced when I went there is hard to explain with words but I’ll try.

Immediately as we pulled up on our bikes the kids are yelling “Hello!... Hello!” (They love to show off the English they know).  After we yelled “Hello!” back, we got off our bikes and I could tell they were sizing us up, wondering what we were going to do.  After I gave the first kid a hug and picked him up they realized what were there to do and I watched as the floodgates opened.  I was a hug machine/jungle gym for the next three hours.  This started out as the fulfillment of everything I was hoping to experience on outreach; I was getting to show love to these kids who so desperately needed it (and who doesn’t love to be the center of attention for a bunch of little kids).  But to be honest I began to get really annoyed and frustrated after about fifteen minutes to a half hour of this.  Some of the kids became really territorial and would grab, pull, or even hit or kick the other kids I was holding or playing with (And I took my fair share of blows as well).  I wanted them to chill out and stop jumping on me because there was times when I had up to 5 or 6 kids hanging on my legs, arms, and neck and they were fighting and yelling at each other.  When I caught myself feeling this way my heart broke and I had to repent.  I went from annoyed to feeling deep sadness.  I couldn’t even speak their language yet they were so jealous for a simple hug and for my attention that they would fight over it.

I began to feel powerless knowing the statistics about how many of these kids are most likely not only being neglected, but probably physically and sexually abused on top of that.  They were so hungry for real genuine love and all I could do was hug them and smile…  I felt like I needed to do so much more but I couldn’t think of what to do.  So, I began to pray over the kids as I was holding them.  I began to pray protection over them and blessing and favor over their lives.  I prayed for God to bring people who would call out the greatness in them and help them walk out the great plan He has for them.  People who would tell the girls they were beautiful and valuable, and the boys they were strong and smart. 

From everything we have heard about human trafficking in Cambodia, it’s villages just like this one where people come and buy, or sometimes just take, children from poor families because the families don’t feel like they can provide for all their kids.  It was so surreal to think that it’s possible that next week some of these kids might not be at the Bible school because they've been taken and they could be on the streets being raped 5-10 times a night.  This is a reality I have a hard time dealing with, especially after I see their innocent faces smiling and watch them dance to bible songs.

I’ve been thinking about all this a lot and been wondering how much good we are even doing with these kids and yesterday I had a conversation with Kelby, one of our staff, that left me feeling really encouraged.  She shared how she also felt powerless at times and all she could do was pray, hug, and smile.  But she encouraged me that God is faithful and He answers the prayers of His children that are according to His will.  She talked about knowing that our prayers literally shift things in the spirit as we come into agreement with what God wants for these little ones and that we are literally changing the eternal destinies of not only these few, but the ones they will impact down the line as well.  We have to trust that God is faithful to hear the cries of His people on the behalf of those who can’t speak for themselves. When we see injustice we have to be moved to prayer and we must believe that it is changing things.  This is our inheritance and this is what we were made to do, change destinies! 

So take a moment and pray for the millions of little boys and girls who are being trafficked all over the world, and believe that your prayers are changing the lives of real people with real emotions and real smiles… It’s such an honor to partner with God in setting the captives free in this way.  Let’s never take it for granted!

“I looked for a man among them who would build up the wall and stand before me in the gap on behalf of the land so I would not have to destroy it, but I found none.” - Ezekiel 22:30