The Debt is Paid in Full

"And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors...." (Matthew 6:12) For weeks, the world has focused on the battle raging in the U.S. between Democrats and Republicans, "left" and "right" politicians to find some compromise that would keep the government, and our nation, from defaulting on our debts. The House voted last night to approve a measure that will go to the Senate today, and will probably be approved, that will "save" the nation one more time from closing down. So, we will simply agree to go more in debt, so we can keep paying the interest on old debts. I'm not an accountant, but it seems to me to be a never ending cycle that is simply ignoring facing the truth of our inability as a nation to pay our debts.

But as the U.S. and the world is seemingly breathing a sign of relief over what has transpired in the past 24 hours, I cannot help but think of the spiritual debt every single human being is born with.....a debt we can never pay, a debt for which we as a race seem to be content to continue to "raise the debt limit," rather than facing our spiritual bankruptcy. The Greek word for "debt" in Matthew 6:12 has the meaning of a debt for which payment is due, as well as an offense or sin for which payment must be made, and I rejoice today in knowing that my debt, and the debt of humankind, a debt which is much more than the trillions of dollars owed by the U.S., has been marked "paid in full" by the blood of Jesus Christ.

How it must grieve the heart of my Father as He watches the vast majority of the world ignore, or refuse the gift of His Son! Just as many were filled with a sense of urgency to get the debt ceiling raised in the U.S., I want to be filled with a sense of urgency for those outside my door who cling tightly to a debt of sin, a debt that will end in their destruction. I must tell them of the One who has already paid their debt, Who paid the price so that they might be free for all eternity. Father, let me not rest in the comfort of the extravagant love of Christ while the multitudes outside my door are perishing in the debt of sin.

Call to Me....

"Call to Me and I will answer you....." (Jeremiah 33:3a)

Today is Women's Day in many parts of the world. In Ukraine, it's a holiday complete with the giving of small gifts or candy or anything you might have on hand. For at least the last 3 or 4 years we have had a women's team here from the states during this time to gather Ukrainian women together for a special celebration of who they are in Christ. It's kind of strange not being with a couple of hundred women today, but the Lord is providing some fellowship through one of our Ukrainian sisters, Nina, and her granddaughter in a couple of hours.

I've lived in this region of the city (Saltavka) for the past 8 months, after living in the center of the city for 7 years. It's a bedroom community, and the block where my apartment is located probably is home to some 30,000 Ukrainians. I love it....but so far have not developed friendships with any of the women in this area. Oh, there is the "babuska brigade" that sits outside whenever the weather allows, and sometimes I sit with them, but so far the Lord has not opened the door for deeper relationships. Today, however, as I was taking Shadow for her afternoon walk, I found myself asking the Lord to give me some friends that live near me. It's not that I feel lonely. I am blessed with opportunities each week to have time with folks who are becoming friends, but they don't live in this area. But today that request just went up from my heart to the Lord.

I don't know why I still find myself surprised when He answers quickly. He's always faithful, and He always answers! But as I headed to my entry today, I heard someone calling "Linda....Linda." I turned around and there was one of the women from Grace Church that meets in the same building as New Hope. She lives in an apartment in the same building as mine, but for 8 months our paths have never crossed. She handed me a small package of cookies in celebration of Women's Day, and we both talked about needing to get together in the near future - now that we know we live so close. I told her that just a few minutes before, I had asked the Lord to give me some friends here, and then our paths crossed.

I'm just thankful today that the Lord is watching over what seem to be "the little things" in my life. Relationships here don't happen quickly.....most Ukrainians are guarded, and while they might say hello, it takes a long time (and the Lord) for things to go any deeper. But Jesus was all about relationships, and I believe that small prayer, and His answer, were reminders to me today that He is still at work in my life.

All paths lead to ?????

"Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow is the road that leads to life, and only a few find it." (Matthew 7:13-14 NIV)

How often have we heard "all paths (or roads) lead to the same place?" As I looked out my window at all the paths worn dirty in the snow I was reminded how many different paths the world offers to those things that only the One True God can give. Love, joy, peace, hope, eternal life.....we can find advertisements and philosophies that all promise to deliver these things.

I have conversations often in the English club I help lead and in other venues with folks I know who cannot yet believe there is only one way! Surely the Lord has a way for those who are "good" people, but choose not to believe and follow Christ to enter into heaven! "Those gods of all the other religions surely will end up being the same God as Yahweh of the Bible! They are so sincere in their belief....they try so hard!" Yet His Word tells us there is only ONE path that will lead us to the fulfillment of all these promises - and to so much more - the path of Christ!

Who will stand at the crossroads and help each one who walks these paths find the right, true way? How often do I continue on in what I know through His Word to be the Way, yet never stop long enough to tell those who intersect my path that they are going the wrong way? Am I entering each day actively seeking those the Lord is going to bring across my path, hearts already prepared by the Holy Spirit to hear how loved they are by God? Lord, grant me the joy, the privilege, the opportunity to help someone this day find that narrow road that leads to You, and to life!

What If He Returned Today.....

As I sat at my kitchen table this morning, rather than sitting in my "usual" place facing the kitchen cabinets I found myself sitting in a chair facing the window that looks out upon the playground below. Almost immediately, the view that I had seen many times before in the past 2 months since I moved here overwhelmed my heart and mind.

Above the apartments were small wisps of clouds and the Lord pierced my heart with question after question: "What if Jesus were to come this very moment? Would the sound of the trumpet reverberate throughout this circle of concrete buildings as the thunder of a storm always does? How many of those behind the windows would be alongside me as we rose to meet Him in the air? Would the sounds of the wailing of parents whose children simply vanished before their eyes echo off those same walls?"

I have prayed daily for the people around me, but today, rather than reciting the same words of petition to see people saved, the words, and my heart, were different. The playground outside my window was the first place the Kharkov missionary team, then led by Mick Stockwell, held a backyard Bible club and outreach for the new church start that is today New Hope. Today, I prayed that the seeds planted in the hearts of the people so many years ago, those seeds that have lain dormant in their hearts and minds, would begin to come to life.....to take root.....to bear the fruit of repentance. Today, I prayed not out of habit, but out of a heart burdened for the 98% to 99% of the people around me who have perhaps never had a prayer of faith spoken for them to the One who has loved them before the foundation of the world.

It was no "accident" that I then turned to read in "Heart's Cry" by Jennifer Kennedy Dean and found myself confronted with a chapter titled "Stand in the Gap", followed by the scripture: "'I looked for a man among them who would build up the wall and stand before me in the gap on behalf of the land...'" (Ezek. 22:30). May my heart continually be "listening" for the words of my Lord to pray for the people outside my window! May I never grow weary in coming before His throne for those who do not yet "see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, (that they might) turn and be healed" (Isaiah 6:10) and receive the free gift of His grace, mercy, and eternal life!

"Experiencing God"

"How can I know when it's Him speaking to me?" That was the question posed by my friend N...... We've now met 3 times in my home to discuss the Bible, faith, and now "Experiencing God." She's a Ukrainian middle-aged mother of 4 married to a Middle Eastern man who is a member of a muslim sect, and while she believes in God, she has not yet understood that it is only through Jesus that we can have the intimacy with God the Father that we desire.

As we began the first day's lesson of "Experiencing God", and talked about Abraham's response to God's command to "go," the above question arose from her heart. Over the next hour we discussed what that means, and also the necessity of having Christ abiding in us through the Holy Spirit.

In the midst of this, she told me of a problem one of her older son is having in trying to get a visa to go to a European country to study. While he has supplied all the required paperwork, the door seems to continue to be "closed." She asked me if I thought she should go and fight for her son with the officials. (N..... is a pretty "self-sufficient" woman who doesn't have a problem expressing herself when she feels something is not right.) I asked her whose hands she wanted "holding" her son's life.....her's or the Lord's, and at that moment my doorbell rang and I opened the door for my landlady who had arrived.

N...... gathered her things and prepared to leave, but not without spending the next 5 minutes telling my landlady what she had learned from the Lord during our time together. "Do you study the Bible with Linda," she asked my landlady....then went on to explain how we had come to know each other and the times we had visited over the years.

When I had time to sit and think about what had taken place, I could only thank the Lord for what He had done not by words, but by the penetrating power of His Word! Please continue to join me in praying for my friend, and my landlady, to both enter into personal, intimate relationship with the Father through salvation in Christ!

Listening to my Papa's Voice

Even after 10 years, I am continually amazed at how much "easier" it seems to be to hear my Papa (Father God) speaking to me on this side of the ocean (in the states) than on the other side (in Kharkov). I have always given the enemy the credit for this by saying that the spiritual oppression in Ukraine is so much greater than here, and that is true. Yet, even as I write this, I am reminded of what volunteers often say about how much they "experience God" when in Ukraine, perhaps even more than at home in their own cities.

All that leads me to understand - and to be convicted - that it is not only the enemy at work that keeps me from hearing the Father's still, small voice. It is also the busyness of my daily life in Kharkov and my failure to set aside more of those times of quiet in the midst of that busyness which tends to "drown out" the voice of my Father!

That is why I love driving on long road journeys when I am in the states as opposed to flying. On those journeys it becomes just me and Jesus in the front seat, sometimes singing and worshiping together,other times simply having quiet, peaceful "conversations" as we travel the road together.

I just arrived back in Arkansas after such a journey and find my spirit amazed by the love of the Father I have experienced over the past days! Every day He is speaking to me, and every day I am hearing, and I am sooooooo thankful!

I am soaking in the knowledge that today He is thinking of me, planning out good things that have purpose and that are leading to the future He has prepared for me (Jeremiah 29:11 KJV). But more than that, before I was born, before I was formed, He had the blueprint of my being and of my life perfectly "drawn out"! (Psalm 139, Jeremiah 1:5)

I have read and studied and even talked on all these verses in the past, but now He is literally bringing them before me every single day in some way - through Sunday sermons, Christian tv programs, music, etc. - so I can hardly wait to see where He is taking me! Just this morning I turned on James Robison for "Wednesdays with Beth", and simply laughed when Beth Moore began a series of teaching out of Psalm 139!

Join me on this journey if you want! I'm looking forward to listening to my Papa's voice every single day in every single way. I pray you are, too!

Home in Kharkov

After over ten days of travel to Kiev, then all around Israel, I landed back home in Kharkov last night.....more tired than I've been in a long time, but glad to sleep in my own bed. It was a VERY fast-paced tour, with little time to be still in one place long enough to allow the Holy Spirit to speak to my heart what I saw with my eyes. We often said to one another that we were desperate for more time in those significant places like the Mount of Olives, the Garden of Gethsemane, and the Wailing Wall to "soak" in the Lord! But I would not have wanted to miss one place we saw!

This morning, as I write this, I am listening to believers who have gathered in the indoor pool behind my building to worship. I'm not certain what denomination rents the pool every few months on a Saturday morning for special services, but I feel like today is a gift from the Lord! Their voices are lifting up to my 12th floor windows, above all the noises of everyday life in Ukraine!

In my mind, I am transported back to some of the stone churches and synagogues we visited in our travels around Israel. Whenever possible, we would read a Scripture pertaining to the place, pray, then sing together, the sound reverberating off the stone walls! Occasionally, if there were other groups there, we would hear them join us in whatever their native language might be - Korean, Chinese, Russian, German (and others I didn't know!) - and we were transported briefly to the Throne of the King!

As I've begun looking at some of the multitudes of pictures I took, my heart finally has time to spiritually experience what I am seeing....the garden, Via Delarosa, the Mount of Olives, the dungeon they believe Christ may have been kept in the night before His crucifixion, and I realize that I am going to be "experiencing Israel" for a very long time!

I pray this is only the beginning of the Lord bringing to my heart what my eyes have seen and my ears have heard! And I hope to be able to put that experience into words that you might walk alongside me on the rocky paths of Israel!