Back to the waiting game

Well we are nearly two weeks removed from the last time we were with Wiktoria.  We left Poland dark and early on September 1, with no return date.  It is such an odd feeling to leave your child behind and say, I hope to come back and get you one day, but I don’t know when, or how, or where the money will come from, but I’ll be back.  We really did not say this because she would not have understood a single word of it and it is a scary reality.  However, we left her in good hands.  The ladies at the orphanage take good care of her and she enjoys being there, it is all she has ever known.

Wiktoria has only known orphanage life.  She does not have any idea if there is something better out there waiting for her.  She is comfortable where she is, ignorant to the fact that life is about to change for her.  Not that the orphanage does not have its good points for her, but there is so much more out there that she has never experienced.  This is so true in our lives today.  We Christians are going about our lives, calling ourselves Christians, going to church, praying, and so on.  It is what we do.  It is what we grew up doing and we believe that we are doing the right thing.  But there is so much more out there.  Jesus never commanded us to go to segregated churches for 1 hour a week, robotically sing, sit and listen to a guy preach, say man that was good for me, and go home, only to do it all over again next week.  This type of Christianity gets our foot in the Heavenly door, but there is so much more out there that most of us have never experienced or imagined.  What if we all were so broken that we had to pray so fervently and passionately because we really and truly believed that the only way our situation was going to improve was due to our prayers?  How would my life change if my father, who is on dialysis and battling diabetes, would only get better if I prayed?  No medicine, no doctors, no technology, no money.  Only prayer.  Just imagine we believe that what we are praying is really going to happen or really could happen, depending on the depth, or the sincerity of our prayers and belief. 

What if we received the word of God from our pastors Sunday and believed that they were giving the word to us so that we could then give it to someone else.  What if we thought that Sunday mornings were not a time for us to be fed by our pastor but a time for us to gather the spiritual food needed to go and feed others?  (Thank you David Platt.)  Are we just receivers or reproducers of the word of God?  I don’t know about your church, but the ones I have been in are not being flooded by lost people.  So maybe we should do something different than hide behind the walls hoping that the enemy’s troops will come to our side and join our army.

So here we are, waiting once again for a phone call to tell us it is time to go get our girl and take her from what she knows, what she is comfortable with, what she thinks is good, and into a whole new lifestyle, a new outlook, new beginnings and a new future.  We don’t know when we will be called, who will get the call, who will support our calling and who will pray for us while we wait and while we are gone.  Not the, “Oh, I’m praying for you” prayer, but the “I am in this with you”, “I get it” kind of prayer. 

I am looking in the mirror as I write this, not as “look at us and what we are doing”, but as a “this is what we are doing, come join us”!  My prayer life is broken and my daily walk but a limp, but I am hungry for more, ready to go deeper, with humble obedience, striving for a life of pure worship.