The Moment of "Oh No!"

I'm so glad you are here! I hope during your visit you get a glimpse of God's heart for we become what we are gazing at. I want to be a blessing to you so I've made these Resources available to you and have the Missional blog tab for practical ideas of how to live on mission right where you are. 

Currently I am writing my way through Judges sharing glimpses of God's heart and character for a weekday devotional. To check out the entire series so far head on over the the Judges Devotional. And if you are a blogger, come on over on Friday's for a blog hop. 

In 2000 I went on a 2 month long missionary training trip to Nepal. We shared the gospel with a guy named Ram(the Nepalese man in the left photo) and he wanted to take us to his village to tell his family (top picture) about Jesus. So Steve, Joel and I began the exciting and terrifying journey to his village. Our 24-hour journey started on a bus bursting with people, luggage and chickens. During the bus ride a strange Nepalese lady whom I didn’t know from Adam, apparently got tired and rested her head on my lap as if that were totally normal. We continued through the extremely windy mountain pass with a huge drop off on one side of the road, going what seemed to me 70 mph until we came to a halt for quite some time. Turns out the road had washed away and they had to rebuild it "really quick". We would then be the guinea pig bus to test the newly built road. We got off at the end of the road and our 22-mile uphill trek began. 

I thought I was somewhat in shape, ha! It was like walking up stairs wearing a backpack as big as me (It's much bigger in my memory than in this picture). I could only take a few steps without having to stop for a breath. Ram, have you noticed how big he is in comparison to me? I'm 5'4 people! Not exactly a giant but sure felt like one standing by him. Well he took my backpack from me seeing I was struggling so much. Our pace picked up and we came to a wooden bridge you would expect to see in an Indiana Jones movie, ricketedy, swinging and all. (But now that I see the size of my backpack in comparison to my memory, maybe the bridge wasn't so bad. But I remember as 150 feet in the air, with crocodiles at the bottom. ;) Well we crossed it and saw multiple men the size of Ram carrying couches and fridges on their backs. Couches! Plural! Two of the fit inside of each other. And a fridge! I was seriously in shock. I couldn't even carry my backpack and these guys, smaller than me I might remind you, were carrying heavy furniture up what had to be a 12,000 foot mountain! Need I say their muscles looked like they were going to bust out of their skin. Most of my time on the hike was spend in shock. 

At one point we talked about praying. Ram had no idea what prayer was, so we told him it was just talking to God. So he did.  He began to describe to God where we were, what we were doing, what the day was like and so on. Later I realized that Ram had no idea that God knew everything. What a huge understanding of God that I totally took for granted. But the truth is, many people in other countries have no understanding of God at all. And the more interesting thing is that though in the United States we are greatly blessed with a lot of knowledge of who God is, we can sometimes act just like Ram, thinking God knows nothing of our situation and is powerless to do anything about it.

We finally arrived and went straight to bed. When we woke up I looked around to see what I could do to help the ladies around the village. So what were the ladies doing? Shoveling manure into a basket, do able right. Except she was using her hands! How in the world could I do that? I just couldn't bring myself to join her. Later we got a tour of the village, super cute in a 12,000 foot side of the mountain with tons of terraced rice fields sort of way. On the tour, Joel commented on their goat. Their one and only goat. That night they slaughtered it for us. Talk about a moment you completely didn't expect but totally regret. They killed their goat to feed us. I felt awful! At the time Joel made the comment about the goat we had no idea they would do this. Then the moment came when we had to, out of respect and honor eat their goat with the skin still on. Gross! The taste of guilt.

I bet this is a bit what Samson felt. After the fact, realizing, "Oh! Oh no!"

"When Delilah saw that he had told her everything, she sent word to the rulers of the Philistines, "Come back once more; he has told me everything." So the rulers of the Philistines returned with the silver in their hands. Having put him to sleep on her lap, she called a man to shave off the seven braids of his hair, and so began to subdue him. And his strength left him. Then she called, "Samson, the Philistines are upon you!" He awoke from his sleep and thought, "I'll go out as before and shake myself free." But he did not know that the LORD had left him. Then the Philistines seized him, gouged out his eyes and took him down to Gaza. Binding him with bronze shackles, they set him to grinding in the prison. But the hair on his head began to grow again after it had been shaved." Judges 16:18-22

But even this instance wasn't outside of God's redemption. He truly is worthy of all our hope!

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#420 Memories of Nepal
#421 Anticipation of Austin getting home in 1 hour!
#422 Anticipation of hearing his stories of Cambodia and what God is doing there.
#423 What seems to be a break through for Asher. He stayed in control multiple times today!
#424 Asher writing the entire alphabet all by himself for the first time.

I'm linked up with the beautiful ladies at  A Holy Experience, The Beauty in His Grip, Nebraska Graceful, The Wellspring, The Better Mom, Homestead Revival, Pause on the Path, Create with Joy, Carissa Graham