Good Morning Church! June 12, 2016
I met a woman who told her husband “The next time you punch me remember I am a child of God.”
In other cultures / countries a husband beating his wife is not uncommon — what is uncommon is the reason this woman was beaten.
Her husband did not want her involved with the local church — he wanted all of her attention on him and the family.
She told him everything she did was for the family — especially the time she and the children spent with the local congregation of Christians.
Still if she attended church he would beat her.
It was not till the day she made him face the truth — that she was a Princess — a child of the most high God that he finally relented and the beating stopped.
I just returned from Papalote in the Baja. I was part of a mission team that spent a week ministering to the needs of the people in the community around the little church founded by Baja Missions.
Baja Missions has its base of operation in the City of Children in Ensenada, Mexico.
Many of those working with Baja Missions actually call The City of Children home.
They grew up there.
Our mission this past week was lead by the Brentwood Hills Church of Christ in Nashville Tennessee.
It was part of a medical mission / benevolence mission / construction mission.
Really a mission of needs. Whatever was needed was attempted.
We met people from all walks of life — many living in homes of concrete block or simple plywood — very few homes were much more than a simple shelter.
We saw homes with cardboard roofs and dirt floors.
Many seemed more like something we built in our backyards as kids.
Structures made from whatever can been found or salvaged.
But unlike the playhouses and forts we all created as kids these were actual homes — built to shelter growing families.
Over the last week I met people who loved deeply — worked hard and fully understood what it means to pray daily for their daily bread.
Could we do what they do — if we had to?
Would any of us have the courage to stand up and declare, “beat me and you beat a child of God?”
The biggest challenge we face as Christians is learning to truly / completely / and wholly appreciate the blessings we have been given and working to share those blessings with others.
And most of us have absolutely no clue what that means — we aren’t even close.
The stark contrast between here and there can be summed up with a sign we noticed posted in the San Diego airport as we returned home.
We argue over genderless bathrooms and they can’t begin to imagine what it would be like to live in the conveniences we take for granted.
Actively being the hands and feet of Christ changes you;
Whether it be in mission work outside the USA or the mission work surrounding us all in our own cities and communities.
Do you want a faith big enough to stand up to physical threat?
A faith big enough to truly trust that God will provide?
Then be Christ — somewhere.
Find a way to be what you know Christ would be if He were walking the steps put before you.
Finding your mission will change you — it will change you from the inside out so completely that soon you too will be the fearless child of God you were meant to be — Standing to declare the truth;
We are ROYALS and nothing forged against us will stand! Isaiah 54:17
God Bless!
Laus Deo Soli Deo Gloria!
LaVern Vivio
