Hungry for the uncomfortable...

I've been reading Ann Voskamp's blog "A Holy Experience" a lot lately.  Ann is in her own words "Wife to the Farmer & Mama to 6. Author of NY Times Bestseller, One Thousand Gifts. Believing all is grace & He alone is enough."  She gets it!  She has been in Uganda and has been able to capture so much of what I loved and still love about that place so eloquently in her blog!  She wrote a "Letter to the North American Church" that I mentioned in my last post about some of her thoughts and experiences in Uganda.  It completely captures what Uganda does to your heart!  Here's just a glimpse:

 

"That one woman with no shoes and no husband and 7 kids, walk up to the front of the church and put this bag of beans into the basket as her love offering to God – my heart ached this raw conviction and I could feel it with you, North American Church, what you really wanted: You’re hungry to love like this. You are hungry for the uncomfortable." 

 

I'm hungry for the uncomfortable!!  It's a scary thing to say I know, but I have never felt so comfortable and close to God as I did those two weeks in Uganda!  The simplicity of life there forces you to just completely rely on Him and his promises.  Seeing people who have so little, even nothing, but still find something, somehow to give back to God so joyfully will burn a lasting impression on your heart!  I want that kind of Joy!!  And the love the people there exude is just so contagious!  They truly understand what it is to love as God loves!  God has been convicting me of a lot lately, and I feel like this is an amazing time in my life to really make some changes!  I'm praying about so much, and waiting for God guide me and help me understand a lot of the changes I've had in my life lately.  One thing I know He is teaching me more and more is that I don't have to be in Uganda to experience Him the way I did there.  There are so many more distractions here, and things to take our focus away from living for Him, but he wants our all regardless of where we are!  It means we have to work harder and more intentionally to put aside those distractions and be in communion with Him because it's worth it!  To experience His Joy is worth living uncomfortably, so we can experience His comforts!  I know my heart is yearning to do more, to be more, but ultimately to LOVE more!!  As Ann
so eloquently says

"Living radical isn't about where you live — it’s about how you love.  It’s about realizing– Love doesn’t happen when you arrive in a certain place. It happens when your heart arrives in a certain place – wherever you are, right where you are, dirt road Africa or side street America. Because it isn’t where we love. It’s how we love. It’s who we love. The reward of loving is in the loving; loving is itself the great outcome of loving. The success of loving is in how we change because we kept on loving – regardless of any thing else changing. The value of loving is in the value of being like Christ."

 

And that my friends is how I want to love!!