I spent this past week with my worlds colliding. Amanda and I took our ComLife family and introduced them to our family in Cairo, IL. A place where I spent 2.5 years of my life living, serving, and growing. A place that taught me about covenant relationship, community, and being united under a common vision. Cairo is the very reason I am even attempting to try and figure this ComLife thing out. Being there equipped me with the tools I need for the place God has me right now. Somehow, I had forgotten about that in the midst of the day to day here in Gainesville. This week was a good reminder.
One word that God kept repeating to me over and over this week is faithfulness. I loved going back and bearing witness to the fruit of faithfulness in the lives of my family there. Cairo is a place where despair and hopelessness have reigned supreme for decades. Even the physical demise of the town is an outward manifestation of the spiritual death that has come over the place. The members of this community have put walls up around their hearts so they can survive daily life there, and those walls have seemed impossible to penetrate at times. There are days that the spiritual oppression is so great, you don’t even want to get out of bed. Every day that I lived there, I literally had to choose life or death (Deut 30). Some days, death was the easier thing to choose. That is where community and covenental relationship comes in. We were committed not only to fight for this town, but also for each other-to claim the victory Christ had already won, even though we had not seen it come to pass yet. And as I joined them again for a week, many of the same prayers are still being lifted up. The same cries for restoration and victory are going forth. I loved praying and worshiping with them this week because I saw a new place of maturity God has brought them to . He is teaching them about the temporal verses the eternal. He is giving them glimpses into a realm that can’t be seen with our physical eyes. This, and only this, is what can keep them pressing on in the wilderness. They can rejoice in the midst of this wilderness because they have been given the grace to see the fruit of what is to come. They speak it forth as if it were already true. They live as though it were already true. And, as they do that, it becomes true. We have the power to proclaim God’s heart over a place, a people group, a nation, and He promises us that it will come to pass.
As I spent some personal time in the prayer room this past week, my heart’s cry was “Lord, I want to be found faithful in the place you have put me.” I want to be faithful to the people He has put in front of me. I can’t see how it is all going to work out in the end. And honestly, sometimes it looks like it is never going to work. Like I had to so many times in Cairo, I have to press past what is seen into the promises I know God has for those who are faithful to Him. I have to remember that He has equipped me with every good thing to accomplish His will in the tasks He has set before me. Faithfulness and persaverance are working out maturity (James 1)
I want to thank my Cairo family for modeling faithfulness with such humility and certianity. Thanks for reminding me of what that can look like in my life.
And thanks to my ComLife family for entering into a part of my world that had such a significant impact on my life. I am grateful for the growth I have seen in us even in just the last few days. I am walking with much confidence and hope into our future.
