For those of you who don’t know, I spent three months earlier this year living on a homestead in Swaziland, Africa. My team and I had the pleasure of taking bucket showers, sleeping 11 girls in one hut, using “jumbos” (read Truths of the Jumbo blog at my calieflynn.myadventures.org if you need more explanation), and living without any pure or running water.
Coming into this trip I had similar expectations for our living environment and mentally prepared myself for these expectations. When we arrived here in Bolivia, I learned that I couldn’t have been more wrong. (I actually cried when we pulled into our new home on the Helping Hands Campus.)
None of these things are needed and a lot can be learned from surrendering physical comforts but I can’t stop thinking about the way that God provides for His children. We don’t deserve personal space, real toilets, or a fully stacked kitchen but God gave us these things anyway.
Matthew 7:7-11
Ask, and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, in heaven give good things to those to who ask him!
God is good and He loves us. God gives good gifts to those who love Him; not because they have earned it or deserve it but because He is and He loves.
Isaiah 30:15
Therefore the LORD waits to be gracious to you, And therefore he exalts himself to show mercy to you. For the LORD is a God of justice; Blessed are those who wait for him.
Isn’t that humbling? God waits to be gracious to us sinners. The idea blows my mind.
Two nights ago I was baptized in the Spirit and God gave me the gift of a prayer language tongues and I couldn’t be more grateful or humbled knowing that I only receive because God is good.
