Loch Ness’s trustworthy cousin…
Faithful Ness, will never have articles in the National Enquirer or on websites hosted at Geocities and Angelfire. He will never be featured in an exclusive on Dateline, and no deep sea diver will return with a picture of his vague silhouette surrounding the faint glow of his watchful eye.
If people did search for faithfulness with the same veracity that they search for scandal and violence, they would not be able to arrive at any other example than God Himself.
(After reading to this point aloud to Ben, he thought it was a forwarded email. If it’s that bad, let me know. Not to exclude forwarded emails from being awesome at times.)
But seriously, God is faithful to us in unimaginable ways, and has disclosed this to us in the Scriptures as well as through His provision and teaching/leading by the Holy Spirit. Despite having His example, faithfulness seems to be the big question of the last three weeks of my undergraduate ‘career’. Taking three of my classes as pass/fail, there is the temptation to stop taking my education seriously to give time to what seem to be more important issues, such as what’s happening next year (the possibilities are exciting to say the least), furthering relationships, lyrical ideas, graduation announcements (opportunity to be really fun but still kind of a chore) and many other wonderful things. How do I remain faithful with what He has put before me? How do I honor Him today while doing my best to follow Him for the future? There doesn’t seem to be enough time to do everything (as I write this post) with the excellence I want to, and the judgment calls appear more difficult with each passing day.
God gives us the time each day to do what he asks of us. I’m not stressed, just desiring to learn what the last 5/14 of the previous sentence means – knowing that whether I learn it or not, all matters in question will have passed in no more than three weeks (kapow!).
Grace and peace,
Steven
A day for the books! Even if they are mental books.
To begin, it should be noted that I started this blog with a substantial history of disliking blogs on even a conceptual level. I would say more, but friend Natalie Wofford has aptly expounded upon the perspective we share of blogs in general in a post found here, at her blog. If you read, then you’ll know, and like Schoolhouse Rock reminded us on a weekly basis in younger times, knowledge is power.
So, WHOA TODAY WAS A GOOD DAY. I mean, holy shkamoley good day. First off, this week I finished three large assignments that were due this morning and went the whole of today on less than three hours of sleep. Did God sustain me through all that? Bada-bing, bada-boom.
Might I introduce you to Chris Chown, a childhood friend from my Los Altos Christian School (near San Francisco) days. This weekend he is playing volleyball at nationals in Dallas with UCLA, and as a result I was able to see him for the first time in ten years! And praise God, because he is a bible-believing Christian who is truly seeking after God’s heart for the lost and His church. We share many of the same passions and convictions, and God is doing a mighty work in him. Those five and a half hours of talking this afternoon were so refreshing. It’s incredible how the love of Christ has transformed him and kept him, and that, though we were both Christians back in our earlier school days (I may not entirely know what’s going on now, but I REALLY didn’t know then), we can reunite after almost a decade and rejoice in how the Lord has shaped each one of us individually to be able to learn from and sharpen one another together. Chris, if you ever read this (and even if not), thank you for spending an extended afternoon catching up with me. You’re an awesome dude, and I hope I was able to encourage you as much as you encouraged me. His parents later paid for us all to share dinner together. Oh the time was good! No doubt.
The theme of the day in many conversations with the wonderful people God has placed in my life (case in point, bam!) has been God’s faithfulness and goodness toward us. He leads, instructs, provides, directs, reshapes, and renews in ways that a) we never deserved and b) we can’t even fathom! Our lives are the prose of The Master Author, our sovereign Lord. My focus is so often on the hard lessons and the things I don’t know, all the while forgetting to rejoice in the work of His hands. I don’t want to ramble, but yo, I gotta get it out James Brown style! Yea! God is good all the time! There are hard times, but we can rejoice in our sufferings because of our hope in Christ (1 Peter 1:3-9). We serve a majestic God who loves us and graciously changes us by the power of the Spirit to make us better carriers of the beautiful gospel of Jesus Christ.
Oh man oh man! I say this more to myself than anyone else. Please make it a habit to rejoice and to celebrate. God is too good not to.
Obedience
Steven Wilbur
Hast Thou bread to fill my want
When despairing, meagre and gaunt?
Yea, Ye spare me from my state
Mercy mine, and stilled to wait
Quicken Thy words to my tongue
Souls be won and praise be sung
I hunger not by Thy decree
my bread to obey and trust Thee
vision
For the approaching traveler, Seattle offers its lush green hills, chillingly deep blue waters, and its audience of mountains as an extended hand of welcome. Dinner conversation of foghorns and wind gusts scampering across Puget Sound surround the steps of barges and sailboats into a wide, open, and darkening sea. The city revels in creation, and in return goes to great lengths to preserve its sweet and inherent beauty. And thus, the scene, though insufficient, is set.
Our residence for the week was the educational space and sanctuary of Emerald City Bible Fellowship in Kent. They graciously allowed us to use the facilities in their building as a place of rest so we would have the energy to sustain us each day. Here’s Life introduced us to the city through a scavenger hunt which gave us a glimpse of things we may experience as someone who is homeless. In this time, three of my friends and I were able to pray with and buy a meal for a man named Mo as well as give a needed blanket to a shivering African woman spectator to the sparse pedestrian traffic of a Sunday afternoon. We also met a man saved by Jesus named Evan as he graced Pioneer Square with his acoustic guitar and voice, singing songs that sounded like Seattle. That night, pastor Harvey shared ECBF’s vision for the city of Kent with us and a group from the Navigators. This is where God started showing me His vision for Seattle.
The next three days had a rough pattern to them. In the morning, we assembled ‘bundles of love’ (a term not endorsed by anyone else, but it seems fitting) for homeless men and women which included a blanket, scarf, hygiene products, gloves, and a hat. We also painted over the graffiti on a building which has in days past been a gas station, a strip club, and used by other businesses, but stands on the grounds of a future center of hope for the homeless population of Kent. The building will be torn down, but must be maintained to respect the city’s demands before the new building projects can go underway. In a few years on that very ground there will be a church attended by homeless people, surrounded by shops whose employees will be formerly homeless, and when the day is over they will walk up the stairs to their new apartment over the place where they work. Not handouts, no food stamps, but a new life as a productive member of society. Vision. In the afternoons we spent time at after-school programs. I served at the only program (put on by Harambee Church, Harambee meaning “moving together forward” in Swahili) that focused on high schoolers. Here I met 16-year old christians who were starting a club to build relationships with the goal of sharing the gospel. I met men and women who were trying to learn how they can be a part of change in their community by spending their afternoons with rebellious adolescents, building into their lives, and providing a consistency that they may not know anywhere else. I got ’shown up’ on the drums by guys six years younger than me who have been playing almost twice as long as I have. I learned that I need to listen and observe before I speak out about how ministry needs to be done in a culture and place that is foreign to me. I was blessed to serve alongside my brothers and sisters here during the week.
Each night held a different activity for our team. On Monday night, we drove around downtown Seattle in a converted school bus called The Prison Bus (referencing Jesus’ words in Matthew 25:36, “…I was in prison and you came to me.”), with the aforementioned ‘bundles of love’ handing them out to any homeless person we saw. My brothers, sisters, and I had the opportunity to give away what little food we had and share the gospel, praying with some of the men and women we met that God would help them out of their condition and that they would know Him personally as their Lord and Savior. It was beautiful. Tuesday night, we rested with our dear friends and sisters Natalie and Maggie from Denton. Natalie moved to Seattle this year and we were deeply encouraged to hear how God has been providing for her and working through her already. We sang songs, laughed, ate hummus, and were refreshed by the company and fellowship of one another. ‘Twas certainly a beautiful night. Wednesday night we visited a church whose pastor was homeless not even ten years ago. There were testimonies about a man’s responsible handling of his first paycheck in over a decade, a man seeing his children for the first time in two years, and a woman who was five months clean of heroin and praising God for every one of those days. We sang worship to God, encouraged one another, and cried alongside men and women who have known more thorough physical and emotional pain than most of us have or will in our lives. They pray for one another weekly and sing at the top of their lungs to the God who saved them from their sin and their former selves, who gives them what they need with every new day. It was amazing to see the fruits of ministry to the homeless and destitute, the life that He brings them into. This is the God that we serve! He is the God of second, third, and eightieth chances. He brings us to our knees to show us how awesome He is, how He deserves our very lives, and the unsurpassed joy that comes with abandoning our sin to follow Him and be used by Him. The world gives up on ‘lost causes’. The Lord takes them and uses them to shame the proud for His glory. Vision.
Two-thirds of the year, Seattle dons its ocean like a shawl as if to mask the problems that lay embedded within from onlookers. However, inside this city – where roughly 1% of the population is homeless and there are more dogs than children (and also more dogs than christians) – God is pursuing the lost through His church. Certainly there are problems within the church regarding doctrine, discipleship, and other more complicated issues; and yes, with time I pray that those will be addressed, just as I pray that the error within me is properly confronted and purged. Despite these things, we are still brothers and sisters saved by the same God and there is much to learn from their example. They are showing the love of Christ through serving the poor, giving shelter to those who have none, and inspiring youth to ask questions about their culture and their future. They are building housing and creating jobs for the homeless. They are committed to drug rehabilitation for the vast numbers of citizens who suffer from substance abuse. There is belief in the power of Christ to redeem lives NOW, and in this life. Repentance. Rebirth. Regeneration.
It was a privilege to serve alongside Here’s Life Inner City and the various churches and organizations laboring for the sake of the gospel message in Seattle. The Lord taught me so much about the unity that He provides within the church, beyond the more minor issues of doctrine and the way that we “do church” at DBC. Ministry will take on new forms in different cultures, and needs to be contextualized for the resident culture. God repairs what is broken and gives life to what is dead. He is patient. He is love. If we are to show the world their need for Him, we must do so in love. To my supporters, both in prayer and in finances, I give you my deepest thanks. God changed my heart and the way I see Him on this trip, and I pray that you will find joy in His service and rest in His goodness with each new morning. Our God is good, our God is love.
