Choosing to Fight

“God it’s not my fight. You did NOT call me to this”

“Oh really?... Just wait and see”

            I, in all my ignorance, told God one night that I was not called to Turkey. I wasn’t called to work with Muslims. I was called to Africa. I was called to orphan care and I was comfortably settled on pursuing the image of my life that I had dreamt since I was 16.

            Then one night at a late night conference during worship I fell to my knees as the weight of the Lord’s heart for the Muslim people hit me like a train. I found myself weeping “God YOUR heart if for them. YOU want them. And I want what YOU want.” I don’t know how long I laid there, but when I got up I sent a text that will undoubtedly have lastly effects far beyond what I can see right now. It read “I’m taking a team to Turkey. Don’t let me try to back out again.”

            So here I am. I prayed for a team and God gave me four of the most incredible team members. I prayed for provision and the Lord has been pouring out resources from the most unlikely of places. We prayed for the Lord to open and close doors to get us right where we were supposed to be, and He has been doing just that.

            We are two months out. I don’t know what this trip holds for me, but I do know that the Lord is ordaining our steps and wreaking my heart for these people I have yet to meet.  As I watch the news and hear stories of what is unfolding in this area of the world, I get excited because God’s heart is beating for these people.

 I have this running picture in my head as I pray. It’s of a man on his face crying out to his god begging for his attention, weeping over the happenings around him. Every time I hear so clearly the Lord say, “Oh that he would just say MY name!” The Lord is longing for these people and He so desires that they would know Him. He has not given up on these lands. He has not forsaken those He formed. He is desperately seeking them out, waiting for the moment that they would say “Abba Father”.

            So it has become my fight. It has become my heart’s burden. I still have dreams for other places and what the Lord will do through our journey together. I’m not upset or discouraged that the Lord is shifting my direction for a season. Instead I am honored that the God of the Universe, the only God who hears, has trusted me enough to reveal His heart.  To uncover a vulnerability, He is desiring something that He refuses to force, intimacy. The only true God desires intimacy with a people so far from Him and He is allowing me to somehow go and show them His heart. I am deeply honored.

            Two Months. Will you pray with me for two months? Will you take two minutes every day for two months and pray? Pray for a people who the Lord desires to say His name. Pray for opportunities to share the Lord’s heart in eye opening ways. Pray for God’s desire to come true. He longs for them! Pray that we would be obedient even when it’s hard. Pray for my team by name (Ray, Ren, Justin, Kyle, and myself).

Pray for a revelation of God’s heart in your own life. Know that He desires you in the same way that He desires those utterly lost. He is longing for intimacy with you. When you find intimacy with the King, oh the joy!

You might be saying the same thing I did, “it’s not my fight”. But I am challenging you to pray for two months and take up the Lord’s fight. He is fighting for the lost to be found, and if we love Him then that is our fight as well! So join me, and let’s watch as God pushes back darkness with immaculate light!