The Valley of Achor?

Tonight is another one of those hot and sweaty nights that make me feel like crying.  This is just so bad.  I'm sweating all along my forehead and my back is drenched.  This makes me look at my calendar where I count down the days til I will be off on the plane to Korea then back home.  Home.  Just 92 more days and I will not be where I am right now, sweaty humid bed.  

I love Cambodia so much, but I dislike Cambodia so much too.

Right now I dislike it so much, I just want to leave and go anywhere that isn't humid.  It's so bad, I can't even do anything about it.  I want to cry but that would be so lame.  Crying over this.  But I want to leave.  I don't want to go on outreach.  I want to be home with family and friends and wear cute clothes again (instead of the same dri fit shirt and capris everyday.  I feel like a frump.  And my hair...seeing as how I sweat the entire day, all I can do is tie it up and away from my face in a bun, and my bangs too...my once quirky cool bangs that I loved are forced to be pinned back.  I do all this to protect my face from too much dirt and sweat and oil.  I want to have a soy latte.  I want a really good turkey burger that hasn't been laying out in the heat all day swarmed by hundreds of flies.  I want air conditioning.  I want my feet to stay clean all day without having to scrub dirt off of them at the end of the night.  I want to go for a cool crisp morning run along the mountains in my backyard.  I would really like to not be bitten and itchy from bugs for an entire week.  I want to not sleep in a room with 7 girls with one bathroom that feels like a sauna.  I want to cuddle my dog Linus.  I want to wear shoes that are not flip flops.  I want to see grass!  I want to be somewhere really clean!  

I know... It's this humidity and heat that is making me so irritable.  So it's a huge refining moment for me to throw aside all of my wants and my desires and just press into Jesus.  I know He brought me here, and I have been learning the most fundamental truths about who He is and also about who I am or have been.  I just ...

I'm really thankful for Gods grace.  

He cradles me.  Calms me down.  I have to fight this, this groaning attitude in me.  I am broken in this.  He is good, He is always good to me.  

Help me Lord, to see You in this moment of so much discomfort.  Help me to embrace the heat because I see that You are with me.  It's not just the heat, but the underlying foundation of my rights.  My time.  My schedule.  My time.  My sleeping hours, my mealtimes, my bathroom time, my routine (that I often have hated so much before), I want routine that I know I will hate!  I am such a wreck, and my only hope is my Jesus.

....the next day...

I was asking myself and God a lot of questions this morning.

God seems to love questions, because He always encourages me to ask more by showing me the answers to other ones so that I feel comfortable to get more curious.  

I was sitting on the balcony outside my bedroom, watching the stillness before me, the many different trees standing in their places, the ground looking up, and it was as if they and I were, together, looking at God.   

I was drawn to the book of Hosea.  This book is all about God demonstrating His love for the Israelites through the prophet Hosea.  He had Hosea marry a prostitute, then when she would leave Him to go after other men, God told Hosea to not just get her back, but to woo her in love.  To pursue her despite how she implicitly hurt and wronged him. This was a direct representation of how God would keep loving the Israelites even though they would keep turning away from God and going after other things.  That God would always be wooing us...

"And there I will give her her vineyards

    and make the Valley of Achor (Achor means "trouble") a door of hope.

And there she shall answer as in the days of her youth,

    as at the time when she came out of the land of Egypt."

-Hosea 2:15

I have hurt God with some of the decisions I have made, and for wanting other things (career, admiration, accolades, accomplishments) or other people more than I wanted my truest first love.  Actually I continue to hurt God, everyday.  Yet, He pursues me, woos me, and that is so tremendously loving, I am left shaking in tears for having ever turned away.  I want His love.  I am speechlessly overwhelmed and thankful for His love for me and how through Jesus I am made clean again.

Never once have I felt like God had had enough of me when I turned to Him in my desperation and broken spirit.

A plethora of things throughout today have led me to the simple fact that I need Jesus.  Real Jesus.  Not a man from way back who has a beard, wore a robe, and picked up sheep.  I need the Jesus who was nailed to a cross because there is no greater love than that!  He died an innocent death, and then significantly rose again from being dead so as to show me that death was not the end for me.  My sin: my lying, my cheating, my stealing, my lusting, my jealousy, my pride, my greed, my envy, my arrogance, my selfishness, my idols, all of my sin completely separates me from being able to be with God because He is holy; set apart from sin (like water and oil but immeasurably farther from one another).  But the sacrifice necessary to clean up the mess of sin in my life, the very thing making it impossible for me to be with God, was made by the real Jesus.  He had to die because death is the only just punishment for sin.  So Jesus died.  He took my punishment, and being God He was the only One who could and would and did take all sin and offered Himself as a sacrifice that only had to be done once because He is God.  The truth in this lies not in that Jesus was the only sacrifice capable of taking sin down, but that Jesus chose to take sin down...how big is His love that He would even do such a thing?!  

It's kind of like....ok, let's say you need a doctor because you got into a car accident, and you're just all busted up!  You've got a broken rib, broken leg, punctured lung, and so many cuts and bruises you're almost unrecognizabke.  You need a really good doctor and a hospital, but you're in Cambodia and they don't have the right equipment or meds to treat you.  You're incapable of flying out anywhere, but if you don't get adaquate help soon you will die.  A well-known physician in Vermont hears about your condition through an email and decides to take the red eye flight that very night to you in Cambodia, dropping his schedule, leaving his awesome family behind, and making phone call after phone call to have all the proper equipment sterilized and shipped piece by piece to get there through priority shipments.  At the airport they say he will have to pay extra because his luggage (with medical supplies) is too heavy.  Then at the security checkpoint they make him take everything out of his bag, they question him because he looks middle eastern and his eyes are red from not getting enough sleep (again, all because he was packing and trying to have everything done to get to you as soon as he could).  Finally he gets on the plane, a 16 hour flight, he has the middle seat between a crying child and a chatterbox woman who won't stop talking about her cats, and he is also by the lavatory that reeks of piss.  When the flight lands he then has to wait in the customs line in the sticky heat for 7 hours  without access to food or a toilet.  After he exits the airport he has to ask someone to help him get a bus ticket to the location you are at, which is another 8 hours.  He gets on the bus, some kid steals his bag with his passport and wallet inside, but somehow he manages to find his way to you.  He arrives, the medical supplies arrive, and you look up at this disheveled face, and he just gets right to it.  Cleaning your wounds carefully, reassuring you that you are in good hands and that everything is going to be alright soon.  You heard vaguely about how someone was coming to help you, and you waited impatiently for him because you were in so much pain, at times you even got annoyed at how agonizing the wait was, but you have no idea what this guy went through to get to you.  You have no idea until you start to ask questions.  You find out little by little, detail by detail, and then you start to also get to know this doctor personally.  You find out that he decided to come to you because he wanted you to live, because he had seen a photo of you and felt compassion and cared about the fact that you were in pain and would likely die if he didn't come.  He dropped everything, and the more you get to know Him, the more you trust Him because of what you discover about his character.  

Your life is saved because of Him.  He didn't have to come, but he put in a lot of effort and intentionality in getting to you.  He suffered to get to you.  Would that not amaze you?  Would that not make you forever indebted to Him?  It wouldn't if you never found out and really knew what He had left behind and what He had to go through to save you.  

Jesus went through much much more to get to you.  To make a way for you to not fade into death.

 Sometimes I forget that Jesus became a man out of an intense love for mankind, I forget that what Jesus did was because He loved me.  Sometimes I start to think He just died a historical death that really has nothing to do with me, Jamie.  Or worse I let ignorance of the details make me feel like what he did was a mere expectation, as if Him being God means he owes me salvation.  That makes no sense unless you're completely unaware and utterly self-centered.  However, it is when I am in the valley of Achor, the valley of trouble and pain or suffering, that I cry out to God for relief, for purpose, for hope.  God always reminds me that if I see how much He loves me I will see the door of Hope, the bridge leading to Himself.  I am drawn to Jesus and what He did on the cross so that when I feel the depravity and dirtiness of my sin I can more personally feel the love of His cleansing blood.  

When I see what my sin looks like in the light, I fall in love all over again like the first time.  Like the Israelites when they first were set free from Egypt, I come back to freedom, joyously! 

J