sin sin.

(I looked up the Chinese word for faith, and literally, "sin sin" means "faith, trust, confidence, reliance".)




God thought it would be cool to surprise me last night... through, "like, 15 different things all together", as my host home sister Abigail said.

I could say I have developed a burden for evangelism this past year. But it is nothing like a chore or a checklist duty. There are times I feel like it is, when I let the reality of my choices to shirk away from this enormous privilege out of fear fester into guilt and doubt. I've had a growing desire to tell people about God. Every time I pray and worship Him, I want to tell others about Him and His word and Jesus and what He's done! But I haven't...I haven't approached strangers or asked people about their faith, because....well, we already know all the "logical" reasoning behind it. But I've been praying for confidence and assurance of faith for months now. And last night, the Lord convicted me during one of our praise times at the church here, that I have been prideful in not surrendering to the Holy Spirit's leading. I haven't consciously said "yes, Lord, wherever you specifically lead me, I will go, when you call". My reasoning was fear that I can't discern the Lord's voice. I was afraid of misinterpreting something and acting outside His will, maybe acting on temptation even, or doing or saying something that wouldn't really benefit the hearer or bring them closer to God.  My loving Father told me plain and clear last night that He is the One who controls, He is the One who will determine, He is the One who calls, leads and empowers. And He told me to just trust Him. So I surrendered that part of me to Him. Handing over my fears and worry and logic, I said "I trust You, and I will believe You are good".
Last night, my team sister Olivia and I went out to eat at Forbidden City Buffet, a Chinese restaurant. And much like our first time out to eat with them upon arriving in Chattanooga, our conversation consisted of eternal matters, the end times, why Jesus had to come, and the universe. Some of the stickest questions in my heart came out as we were talking, and though they weren't answered on human terms, I was assured that God can still be trusted and is still worthy of praise, and when I get to heaven, I might ask what His purpose was; even then, I may never know, and I have to be ok with that.
As we were getting up to leave, God made that desire in my heart to witness grow even stronger and brighter, and I sought what it was He wanted me to do.
 I heard a sweet: "Thank you fo coming!"
Our kind Chinese waitress was in the booth behind us sorting silverware. My brain immediately captured the image of her sitting there, alone. I've always worried about surrendering to the Spirits' leading because I never want to interrupt someone's schedule or impose on them, especially if they are with somebody else. There she was, quietly working, by herself in the booth. God told me to talk to her. I start walking out with our family. Suddenly, I have to use the restroom. (Classy, right? Just bear with me. ;) )
In the ladies' room, I'm asking "What should I even say? How do I start?"  God said, "Say you know Me, I know you, and ask her what you can pray for her about."  So I'm like, "She doesn't speak much English, what if I start talking and she doesn't know what I'm saying at all? God, will you make me speak Mandarin or something? Speak in tongues?"  God said, "Maybe I will. What difference does it make if I do? I'm asking you to go."   Then it hit me. All I'd read that morning was 1 Corinthians 14 & 15. While I'd been reading it I didn't know why I was. The majority of it had to do with speaking in tongues vs. prophesying.  The heading for chapter 15 was what had first grabbed my attention when I thumbed through looking for a portion to read: "Mystery and Victory". I had underlined, in verse 55, "'Death is swallowed up in victory.' O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?"   The song we'd sung in church the night before echoed in my mind,
"The ground began to shake
The stone was rolled away
His perfect love could not be overcome
Now death where is your sting?
Our resurrected King has rendered you defeated!
Forever, He is glorified
Forever, He is lifted high
Forever, He is risen
He is alive, He is alive!"
That was incredible in itself. :)  God is so good.
So here I am, I've washed and dried my hands and I'm standing in the ladies' room trying to discern what to do, and my host sister Abigail comes in. (I probably looked like a deer in the headlights to her.)  She was afraid of how dark in was in that bathroom, and as she walks down to the other end of the room she asks me, "Did you see that lady behind us? Our waitress? She was listening to our conversation the whole time."
"Was she really?"
"Yeah. I don't know how much she like, understood, but she was watching us the entire time."
Abigail couldn't see me, but as I told her later, I was laughing and looking up at the ceiling, mouthing, "Really? Really?"
She keeps talking (for the purpose of stalling me so she wouldn't be in there alone, she later tells me), and says that she thinks God would want someone to talk to her, like maybe this lady doesn't know about God. "I mean, maybe she isn't going to heaven, you know?"
"You know what, Abigail?" And I told her all of what I was experiencing and what God was telling me then.
"Really?!?"
I was laughing in such a mixture of terror and delight as I'd never known before. "Yeah. I'm going to go talk to her, because... yeah, I'm just going!"
Let's go, God.

The last thing I heard of before the door closed was "Go Angie!"

Help me, Father, help me. 
Our waitress was no longer in the booth but was standing by the little room where the dish carts and brooms were, between the eating area and the buffet.  Her face lit up as I approached her and started talking to her.  I asked her what her name was, and she replied (I won't share their names on here for safety purposes, but I'll call her Caty*.)  I introduced myself.  From there, it went something like this:
"Well, I'm a Christian. I believe in God. I talk with God and God talks to me, and He told me to pray for you. I wanted to ask you if there's anything I can be praying for you about?"
She asked, "Who?"
"God." I pointed up.
"Oh, okay." She repeated it in Chinese. I am almost certain she said "Shen", but I couldn't clearly understand her.  (I looked up Chinese names of God, and Shen is a generic term for God, spirit, or soul.)
I asked her again how I could pray for her, and she told me she doesn't understand English too good. In case you're curious at this point, no, I didn't start speaking in Chinese. But she waved over her manager to help translate because she wanted to know exactly what I was saying. Yay, two people! I thought for a brief second.
I repeated all of what I said to her manager, Audrey*, and as she replied politely it was evident she didn't know English much better than Caty did.  Trying again to simplify, I said everyone has difficulties and problems and family, and I asked if there were any problems or family that I could pray for. Audrey replied that no, they (she answered for Caty without translating) didn't really have any problems, but just to pray that everyone at work there would have a good day each day and that everyone who comes into the restaurant would have good days. I promised to pray for that and for them; seeing that Audrey was wanting to get back to work and that she wanted Caty to as well, I thanked them for talking and said goodbye.
Walking back to where Olivia, our host dad and Abigail sat near the waiting room, I suddenly realized my face was probably bright red. I've never felt my face get that hot before. "Chief" Aaron, our host dad, was smirking at me, and as I walked toward them I passed the fishpool that held their 3-foot long fancy goldfish-looking-fish, and I randomly remarked, "That is one big fish!" to them and laughed.
(And wow. I just realized another puzzle piece in this whole story! More on that towards the end!)
Abigail says, "Yeah, I told them! That is just so cool!" During our car ride home, she shared with me that after our conversation at dinner, after talking about eternity and salvation, she was feeling pretty worried and questioned whether she was saved. She's been worried about having it all wrong for a while now, and had been asking God to give her a sign that she was saved. And after our dinnertime discussion, she asked God to assure her. When she told me what she did in the restroom, about feeling like somebody should tell our waitress behind us about God, she had done it to stall me so she wouldn't be freaked out all alone in the dark bathroom. God used even her dislike of anything black and her fear of the dark in the night's series of events. And as we talked the whole ride home and realized how many little pieces had added up, it was overwhelmingly evident that only God had orchestrated each one to take place. We both got giddy.  The waitresses' response was not long or profound... I still found myself wondering today if I should have said or asked something else... neither of the ladies got saved, which does break my heart whenever I think about it. But the happenings of last night were nothing short of a divine intervention in my life and in Abigails', simutaneously, for the glory of God. He filled our hearts with such joy, just in knowing that He is so powerful, He deserves all the glory, and He cares enough to do such a thing to assure us of that. One comment Abigail made in the car ride stuck with me.
"I don't think God would've chosen to use me and you and speak to both of us like that and arrange all that  if we weren't His own, like saved."
I am His.
Have I grasped that before?
"My dad once explained it to me like this," she continued. "It's like the DNA I have in me. Like, my blood. Like, if I were to commit murder and steal and be a horrible person, I'd still have his DNA. No matter what.  I could die and you could drain all the blood out of me... but I would still be his daughter. That wouldn't change. And that's what it's like to be saved."
I was so taken aback. I'm still in a state of shock over it. I thought I'd come to really grasp this, when I finally grasped the concept of Jesus paying for it all for me, this past Easter, of believing that nothing I can do can at all save me, that it is
ALL
on
Him.
But here I am. I believe Jesus when He says, "And no one can snatch them out of my hand." I know that neither death, nor life, nor angels nor demons, nor rulers nor principalities, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation can separate us from the love of God.  I know that, and I believe it. Believing that is a choice. It's true whether I believe it or not. But my Master desires me to believe it, and now I do.

Yesterday was a day. I realized after I talked with Caty and Audrey... the world was still here. The world looked the same to me. I felt like the same person. I was still Angie. You see, somewhere, I got trapped in that same box of "the world is going to end if" mentality that I subconsciously get into with something I really care about. Nothing had changed. Yet everything had. I'd made this such an issue- a dealbreaker, almost- and now that God had taken me over that hurdle of fear, so swiftly and gently I hardly knew what was happening and yet vividly terrifying at the same time, I had a fiery joy inside me that I couldn't explain.
I'm still so amazed. I feel like I don't know what to do now. But I know what God can do, and what He will do in me. He proved it. He didn't have to. He didn't have to pay attention to my doubting soul. He didn't have to assure Abigail or I by speaking to our hearts clearly and strongly.
Not by human terms did He have to, anyways.
But it's His nature.
That is Who He is.
I have nothing else to say, really.
(The other amazing puzzle piece is this...I was going to write a blog post on it while we were in Pennsylvania... so, back at Winfield Baptist about two weeks ago, God directed me to Luke 5...
"On one occasion, while the crowd was pressing in on him to hear the word of God, he was standing by the lake of Gennesaret, and he saw two boats by the lake, but the fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets. Getting into one of the boats, which was Simon's, he asked him to put out a little from the land. And he sat down and taught the people from the boat.  And when he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.”  And Simon answered, “Master, we toiled all night and took nothing! But at your word I will let down the nets.”  And when they had done this, they enclosed a large number of fish, and their nets were breaking.  They signaled to their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both the boats, so that they began to sink.  But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus' knees, saying, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.”  For he and all who were with him were astonished at the catch of fish that they had taken,  and so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon. And Jesus said to Simon, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching men." And when they had brought their boats to land, they left everything and followed him."
Revealed insight:  The fish are the people we minister to. Our team is like the fishermen. Like Peter, I often think that what I'm doing has no evidence, so is it really worth it? Jesus tells us what is good and best and right to do, and requires a heart of obedient surrender.
Just do it, He whispers.
"At your word, I will let down the nets."  Every word spoken, every action, every moment is a moment of letting down the nets.  And though they'd been doing it all throughout the day and the during the time of darkness, they obeyed and did it again at Jesus' command. What they were doing was the right thing. And when they continued in obedience- not perfection, but obedience, for these fishermen were far from perfect- then, Jesus amazed them with a fulfillment of His word in His timing.

I just remembered my dramatic over-enthusiastic random comment about the big fish last night, while I was typing this. And God reminded me of Luke 5 and my prayer for obedience for me and every team member this year, back in Pennsylvania.
All the time, God is good.


*not their real names. ;)