The Challenge. November 2010.

Sorry, I am running behind for November's challenge!

Last month I read Radical by David Platt. This book challenges "the norm" for many American churches and Christians, and compares our lifestyles and value system with what the Bible actually demands of us. You should definitely take the time to read this book, and read it well.

David Platt ends the book with 5 challenges, which are all crucial for us, as the church, to fulfill the purpose of the church. For this month's challenge I am going to focus on 1 of these 5 points.

Read through the entire word.

David Platt's challenges are aimed to be achieved over the course of a year. I am definitely not saying to read the entire word this month. My challenge for you and myself is to find a "Bible in a Year" plan that fits you best, and stick to it.

I find that I do well reading the Bible regularly, but I also seem to lean towards certain books, and read them often while the pages of others seem to gather dust.

It is important that when you choose a plan to read the Bible in a year, that you choose a plan that fits you. Some prefer a little of this and a little of that to break up the long reading sessions (a little Old Testament and a litte New Testament). Some prefer a plan that goes from cover to cover. Personally, I will be doing a reading plan that goes chronologically. I have never read the Bible this way, and I am excited to learn more about the time frame of all the characters and events in the Bible. And, to make it easy, all these Bible reading plans are available here.

One more important point that I want to make is this...even though the quantity you read daily may increase by taking on this challenge, please do not let the quality of your reading suffer. Take time in silence to prepare yourself to focus on God's word and any revelations He wants to show you. Set aside enough time to thoroughly read the passages and meditate on them. Journal and ask God questions that may arise. You may be amazed at the newness that He reveals through words that you have read many times before.

The Challenge. October 2010.

Last night a girl was abducted.

Her home is in the neighborhood I have volunteered in and fallen in love with over the last several years. The girls I mentor live in that neighborhood, and I have walked it and prayed over it many times. The people there have captured my heart.

So many crimes go unnoticed and unstopped in that neighborhood. Crime there is much of a way of life. But last night a crime occurred that crossed the line, even in one of the roughest areas around. Last night a little girl was in her neighborhood, playing in her own front yard, when a man forced her into his truck.

The story captured the attention of the city. Suddenly everyone who heard the news felt connected to this little girl and her family.

The news gave her a name, and the news gave her a face, and many hearts were broken for her.

Her name is Elisa, and she is 8 years old.

Today she was found alive.

A man who saw the abduction story on the news thought he spotted the truck that was decribed. He pulled up and asked the man inside if he had kidnapped Elisa. When he took a closer look he saw a young girl inside the truck. He risked his life to stop this man and save this one child, and he succeeded.

The child now sits at home with her family, and the abductor in a jail cell.

Tonight Elisa is at home with her family, the same girl that I prayed for her and cried for this morning. When I found out she had been rescued, I was saddened to hear the atrocities that were forced upon her by the man who took her, but also relieved to know that she was now safe.

When I praise God for Elisa, who tonight sits at home with her family, I can't help but think of the millions of children who lay in brothels, the streets, with strangers, who are owned like a piece of property.

Children are not property. And each child has a name; a name and a face, a personality, and a soul. Even if we don't see them, they exist, they are real.

I pray that this righteous rage that filled Elisa's community at her disappearance would fill our hearts for the abused and enslaved children all over the world. I pray that the courage which filled the man who risked his life for this one child would fill us as well, and that we would step up and take a risk to save these children.

The challenge this month is a continuation of last month's challenge. Please check it out if you have not done so already. If you participated in September's challenge, I ask that you would take the challenge to a more personal level.

I am not sure what this will mean to you, or exactly what it means to me, but I know that I am not ready to move on from this challenge just yet.

The Challenge. September 2010.

I have been procrastinating a bit about writing out this month's challenge.

The reason is that the subject rips my heart out.

At times it brings me to my knees in prayer and gasping sobs of sorrow.

At times it makes me furious, causing anger to boil inside of me.

And at times it causes me to just sit overwhelmed, glued to my seat, unable to move or do any good from the weight of helplessness.

The first two emotions I think are good. These emotions can awaken your spirit to move on the behalf of the broken and abused. But as you proceed with this month's challenge, you have to promise me that you will not do the latter; You will not let a feeling a helplessness hinder you from helping. Because you can help, and that overwhelming feeling that causes immobility is a lie from the deciever.

This month I want to bring to your attention the subject of human trafficking.

According to Unicef, over 2 million children are exploited every year through sex trade.

Over 27 million men, women, and children are victims of current day slavery.

Human trafficking effects young and old, male and female, but most often the most vulnerable are targeted. Traffickers decieve impoverished families into believing their children will be taken to a better place where they can recieve an education, but are instead forced into child labor. Widows are forced to do the unspeakable because they have no one to defend them. Young women are told they can start a new life in another country, and instead become sex slaves.

The first part of this month's challenge is awareness. We are so often sheltered from the atrocities going on in our world, and even in our own backyard. I challenge you, and myself, to dig deeper. Learn the statistics, read real people's stories, and really make a connection to these victims.

Here is one to get you started: Inside the Slave Trade
Also, I would like to recommend the documentary Born Into Brothels, which you can likely check out for free at your local library.

The second part of the challenge is to pray. Pray for God to break your heart for the things that break His. Pray that He will open your eyes to the injustices going on around the world. And pray that he would show you how to move.

The third part of this challenge is to move. It may look different for each of us. Find an organization to connect with that fights the injustice of human trafficking. It may be giving or volunteering or raising awareness.

Here are a few organizations who are devoted to fighting injustice:
International Justice Mission
Conspiracy of Hope
Home of Hope


This month I will be reading Just Courage by Gary Haugen, and I encourage you to do the same. This will be my first time reading this book, but I hear it will be a motivation to step up and take a stand for justice.

I hope you will all be a part of this month's challenge. Shake off that feeling of helplessness, and become a light to expose the evil that hides in the darkness. Take a stand for those who are crying out, but whose voices we cannot hear because they have been muffled.

Defend the cause of the weak and fatherless; maintain the rights of the poor and oppressed. Rescue the weak and needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked. Psalm 82:3-4

The Challenge. August 2010.

So, how did you guys do with July's challenge?

There are two countries that really stood out to me that I have never spent much time learning about or praying for before.

The first is Afghanistan. I hear about it all the time in the news, but in reality, how much does the news really say? I didn't know much about the country past Islam, the Taliban, and death tolls. Well, maybe I knew I little bit more than that, but not much.



When learning the history of this war-torn country, the people that God really placed on my heart are the women. I won't go into much detail, but really, the way of life for the women of Afghanistan in recent history is beyond my comprehension. I am far from being a feminist, but I am so thankful for the freedom I have known my whole life.

I will leave it to you (for now) to research more if you are interested, but I will recommend a book called "A Thousand Splendid Suns" by Khaled Hosseini. The characters and story are fictional, but the setting is real life Afghanistan over a stretch of several decades. I promise, if you read this book, you will be changed.

The second country, Eritrea, is one I knew nothing about other than location.



What drew me to Eritrea is a man named Andy.

Andy works at a Photo Lab. Six years ago when I returned from my first trip to Africa, I went to his photo lab to get my pictures developed. When I went to pick them up he said he really enjoyed my pictures from Ethiopia, because they reminded him of home.

I learned that Andy was from Eritrea, and fled to Ethiopia due to political crisis in his home country, and from there he moved to the United States.

Other than what Andy had told me about Eritea, I never learned anything more. That is until I was looking over the map of persecuted countries, and saw Eritrea there in red.

I don't use that photo lab anymore (thanks to digital cameras and the internet), but every once in a while I'll stop by and say hi to Andy. He has followed my journey to Zimbabwe and back, and when I walk in he greets me with a warm smile and says, "What are you doing here? Shouldn't you be somewhere in Africa?" (He says that everytime :)

After I read more about Eritrea and the suffering its people, specifically its Christians, have under gone, it really gives me a greater respect and intrigue for my friend.

And that brings me to this month's challenge:

Learn somebody's story.

I hope to, this month, visit Andy and learn more of his story, as well as others.

We interact with dozens of people everday. I have noticed the older I get and the more of a hurry I am in, the shorter and less significant these interactions become.

It could be anyone: your barista, someone you work with, someone who goes to your church, a friend of a friend, someone you interact with online...the possibilities are endless. Challenge yourself to go a little deeper with someone outside your normal comfortable circle.

To this day I have a friend that I shook hands with at a church I was visiting three years ago during the usual 1 minute "greet someone you don't know" time, a friend who I met two years ago sitting the row in front of me at a concert, and a friend I made six years ago at a photo lab.

These monthly challenges are things, in my own life, that I see need change, or that God places on my heart to do. This month's challenge is personal to me, as it is something I miss about myself.

I want to slow down and take the time once again to really hear people, to know them, and to learn their stories. Will you join me?

The Challenge. July 2010.

Fifteen years ago at summer camp the theme was "Countries of the World". All the kids were broken up into teams, and each team represented a country. Throughout the course of the week teams learned many different aspects about their country: Politics, religions, history, economy, and missionaries who served there.

It was the summer before my freshman year of high school, and although I had grown up in the church, and I had heard about other countries and people groups, none of them had ever really stirred my heart.

That summer I was on team Bangladesh. Bangladesh at the time had the highest proportion of impoverished people in the world...80%. We learned about the lack of clean water and the diseases that resulted, and the lack of medical care. We learned so many things that really broke my heart. But more than that, Bangladesh captured my heart.

Since that summer I have prayed for Bangladesh, and I have dreamed of Bangladesh. I have an unexplainable love for a country I have never seen, and a people group I have never met.

A little over a year ago I started sponsoring a child from Bangladesh through Compassion International.

This is Elahi. Over the last year I have grown to love him deeply, and my relationship with him has caused me to feel even more burden for his country.



Having said all this, I would love for you to feel this passion for Bangladesh and join me in prayer for this country. But that is not this month's challenge.

You see, I think God gives people different burdens for different places and different people. One of mine is Bangladesh. But before I could have a burden for Bangladesh, I had to learn about Bangladesh. Maybe there are countries God has already placed on your heart to pray for, and maybe not. But one thing I believe is that God desires his children to seek Him on behalf of others, near or far.

Operation World is an online prayer guide...for every nation on earth. It is a great resource to learn about the needs of those anywhere and everywhere.

My challenge for the month of July is to check out their website, and to read over as many countries as possible. While you do that, pray for God to break your heart for those things that break His. You may also want to check out the Voice of the Martyrs map of restricted nations to get more detailed and up to date information on countries where Christians face persecution for their faith.

I challenge you to pray about what God would have you do with the information you read, and the tugging you feel on your heart.

You may find yourself praying for a different country everyday, or maybe praying for one country for a week....or the entire month.

If you already have specific countries you pray for regularly, continue to do so, but make the effort to learn about and pray for the needs of other countries as well.

To take it a step further, if there are places that God lays heavily on your heart, consider finding missionaries to encourage there, an organization there to support, sponsoring a child from that country, or sharing the information with others.

My hope is that this month's challenge will open up your eyes a bit wider to the people of the world, stir a compassion in your heart to pray on their behalf, and that as your love for others grows, so would your love for the Savior.

Oh, and as the month goes on, I would love to hear about the places and people you grow to love!

The Challenge. June 2010.

In Africa it is said that

Water is life.

Here, in a place where such a resource is so readily available that we literally flush it down the toilet, it is hard to fathom our every minute of waking existence revolving around obtaining enough of it just to live.

But in many places, and for many people, it does.

Often times children cannot attend school because their hours of daylight are spent hauling water. Mothers cannot help bring in income or care for their home because of the strenuous and long labor that attaining water requires. And many times this water, this life that they work so hard to obtain, is tainted with death.

Here are the facts:

~One in six people on the planet do not have access to clean water. That is over one billion people.

~Every minute three children die from unsafe drinking water.

~Right now half of the people in developing countries are suffering from water related illness.

~Access to clean water can transform an entire community by cutting child death rates in half and dramatically decreasing hours of labor.

~$1 can provide clean water for one person for an entire year.

Let me say that last one again:

~$1 can provide clean water for one person for an entire year.

That is where we come.

This month's challenge is 2 weeks of sacrifice.

The idea is quite simple, really. Choose two weeks in the month of June to commit to drinking tap water only, and donate the money you save to literally save lives.

I encourage you to not only forgo those pricey sweet drinks and your morning coffee, but if you drink bottled water to give that up also. If you live in the United States it is more than likely that the water straight from your tap is not only safe, but is exactly the same thing you buy in those fancy bottles.

As you begin your 2 weeks of sacrifice, I challenge you to encourage your spouse, children, friends, and co-workers to join in. Each drink that you sacrifice could literally be saving a life.

As you face the little temptations that you will meet along the way, remember what you have to be thankful for. Praise God for those things that you so often take for granted, and pray for those who are struggling without.

For more information on how water saves lives, and how you can help, please visit Blood:Water Mission

Confession

I know I could be doing more, but sometimes I convince myself that I do enough.

By 'do enough', I mean do enough work for the Kingdom.

It is a direct relation to what I talked about in To the Point of Sacrifice.

It is the attitude that I already commit this much time volunteering, and I do a little bit extra here and there. I do more than a lot of people, and that is good enough.

But it is not.

Recently I have been challenged by Richard Stearns, in his book The Hole in Our Gospel, to examine where and how I am investing my time, talents, and treasure.

"For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." -Matthew 6:21

I want my heart to break for the things the break the heart of God.

And I want my actions to reflect this. In every way, in every opportunity.

In response, I am committing to do more.

I have been praying about how to do this, and this is what God has placed on my heart.

Every month I am going to, with prayer and guidance, choose a challenge.

These challenges may be a personal challenge to strengthen my relationship with God. It may be a challenge to do something way beyond my comfort zone. It may be a challenge to learn, share, give, or go.

But each month it will be something new. And it will offer the opportunity to do more.

And to make things more exciting, I am inviting you to come along.

That's right. Consider it a challenge.

On Friday I will be posting the first challenge, which will be for the month of June. God's already been placing specific things on my heart, and I am excited about how we may be a blessing through these things.

Meanwhile, if you have not already done so, I would encourage you to buy, check-out, or borrow a copy of The Hole in Our Gospel by Richard Stearns. It will give you insights into God's heart for the poor, and his call for all believers. It will teach you about the different aspects of poverty, and how we can make a difference. And, prayerfully, it will encourage you to do more.

With that said, I leave you with these words from Jimmy Carter:

"My faith demands- this is not optional- my faith demands that I do whatever I can, wherever I am, whenever I can, for as long as I can with whatever I have to try to make a difference."