Traveling the "Road of Humility."

Today I was reading in “Compelled by Love” by Heidi Baker. Wow, what an amazing woman of God! She began to tell of a vision Jesus had showed her, saying, “I want to take you up to the mountain to a low place because the river flows to the low places.”
Being here in the Amazon I have seen the poorest of the poor, eaten their “delicacies”, and sat in the dirt with them. Through this entire trip, God has been calling me to a greater level of humility. I have begun to realize just how selfish I am, how self-absorbed I have become. After hiking miles into the jungle and spending the entire day with a family that lives completely off the land, my heart’s been broken. How could I possibly ever want again? How can I ever complain again? God is continuously telling me throughout this journey, “Go lower, and lower, and lower.”
Heidi continues in her book with this, “If you are in a low place and not concerned about your position, whatever trickling presence of God is in the room, you will be low enough to receive it.” I remember times of prayer in the House of Prayer at CFNI, where I just didn’t want to leave. The presence of God is so beautiful, so sweet, that leaving was just horrible. In Ezekiel 47, it talks about the healing waters and trees. Verse 12 says, “Along the bank of the river on this side and that, will grow all kinds of trees used for food; their leaves will not wither, and their fruit will not fail. They will bear fruit every month, because their water flows from the sanctuary. Their fruit will be for food, and their leaves for medicine.”
I came here to the Amazon to give something to these people, but what good am I if I can only give them something five or six months out of the year? The trees in Ezekiel 47 bore fruit every single month of the year, why? Because they were soaked in His presence, daily drawing water from His waters. Heidi goes on to say, “You should want to be immersed in, and live inside, the very heart of God. From there, all fruitfulness flows…true apostolic ministry only flows from being immersed in the presence of God. This creates continuous supernatural fruitfulness.”
I must get lower, and lower; that I might be soaked continuously in His presence; that I may bear fruit daily; that the people I came to show Jesus’ love and to love would receive just that.

This week the team and I are headed to Islandia, Peru to do another purity conference as well as a VBS. We’ve been informed that the youth we will be dealing with this time are being influenced greatly by homosexuality. The spiritual darkness there is attacking the youth big time, and this will the be the hardest group by far we’ve had to deal with. In other words, I think God is really warning and telling me, “This is not the time, if ever, to be spiritually dry and fruitless.” Everyone of us has really been praying, and soaking in His Word. So please keep us in your prayers.
Right after spending a night and two days there, we’ll headed back out onto the river for Brazil. We’ll be there from Wednesday to Saturday, doing vacation bible schools with over 200 kids! It’s going to be an absolute blast!

This past week we went to Peru ministering to the youth and children. The first night we planned for the youth purity conference, however when the majority of the group was children we quickly had to change the service. When Paul spoke to Timothy in 2 Tim. 4:2 saying, “Be ready in season and out of season” he sure knew what he was talking about! Hahaha, we as a team have had to learn to be ready at any moment to switch things up, to preach, to do worship, or to do a VBS. I was asked to do the teaching at the purity conference, but when it was canceled that night I was so bummed! Hahahaha, I had prepared so much for that, and now nothing. But, soon the next day at the drop of a pin, we were asked to be prepared for the youth. I was already ready to roll! At the end I did a quick survey of how many of those youth had ever heard anything like that before, none of them raised their hands. Wow, that’s why we were doing this. This is why we were getting chewed alive by bugs and sweating our brains out. Because no one ever had, no one had reached out to them. I think Mother Teresa said it best, “When a poor person dies of hunger, it has not happened because God did not take care of him or her. It has happened because neither you nor I wanted to give that person what he or she needed. We have refused to be instruments of love in the hands of God to give the poor a piece of bread, to offer them a dress with which to ward off the cold. It has happened because we did not recognize Christ when, once more, He appeared under the guise of pain, identified with a man numb from the cold, dying of hunger, when He came in a lonely human being, in a lost child in search of a home.”