I have a new sister!!!!

I met Kelly in January of 2011 because we were on the same basketball team.  We got along fine, but our relationship was pretty much limited to on the court. At the beginning of September Kelly and I played on the same team again for a basketball tournament. This time though, the Lord had stirred in my heart a deep burden for Kelly. I started praying for her like crazy and begging the Lord for opportunities to talk to her and in the mean time for him to change her heart and draw her to himself. I kept praying and continued to intentionally seek out opportunities to hang out with Kelly. This started out with us just playing pick up together more often and then I invited her over to my apartment for dinner. As an underclassman, she loved getting off campus and it was a great way to just get to know her and love on her.

As we continued to spend more time together, I was able to hear about her family and religious background. She had grown up Catholic, but was not satisfied with the teaching of the Catholic Church and relayed to me that she was “searching” for an ambiguous “perfect fit” for her. I invited her to the Summit and she agreed. After the first time she came, she had many questions. We went to the mall after the Saturday night service and shopped and ate dinner, which provided the perfect opportunity for us to talk through everything that she had heard in the service. I was able to fully explain the gospel to her and then answer any questions she had. 

After continuing to come to church with me for a few weeks, Kelly told me that she felt like she really didn’t know much of what the Bible said, but wanted to. I asked her if she wanted to start meeting weekly and reading the Bible together. She was excited and agreed. I had previously downloaded a document JD had posted to his blog called “Taste and See,” which just compiles a variety of verses together in a format that can help facilitate studying scripture with a nonbeliever. After two weeks of going through The Word together, I believed that Kelly had a strong understanding of the gospel and its implications, so I challenged her to a decision. I told her to pray about it and count the costs, as it was important for it to be her decision, not mine. 

The next weekend we got dinner as normal, watched a movie and march madness and as I was leaving Kelly flat out told me, “Hey, I believe what JD was talking about tonight and I want my life to start to change.” We talked for about an hour about what exactly this meant and what this practically would look like in her life now.  We rejoiced together at how the Holy Spirit had so clearly changed her heart and opened her eyes to her need for a Savior. Kelly shared with me that just months earlier, a girl she knew had invited her to a Bible study via texting. Kelly said that she did not want to go at all, so she simply ignored the text. Now just 4 months later, Kelly’s heart has been completely transformed by the love of Jesus.

There are two major lessons I learned during the past few months from my relationships with Kelly and Jesus. First, from start to finish, this was a complete display of the Holy Spirit at work and simply using His children to accomplish His purposes. Almost every time that I would meet with Kelly and either share the gospel with her or explain scripture, I experienced intense spiritual warfare and felt that my words were the farthest thing from being cohesive. I constantly struggled with distractions and could not maintain a thought pattern. This was extremely frustrating, but I am so thankful for it. I am so prone to pride and self-magnification, but the Lord completely stripped me of receiving any possible credit in Kelly’s conversion because I’m about positive that nothing I said made any sense. I simply opened my mouth and prayed that she didn’t hear a word I was saying, but only what the Holy Spirit was saying to her. And boy did He speak to her!

This leads me to the second way that God grew me through this experience: prayer. For many years I have witnessed to friends and desired for them to come to know Christ, but my emphasis was always on speaking to them with convincing arguments and convicting them with my words. Right before I would meet with someone, I would pray that God would speak through me and have his way in the situation. I never saw much fruit from these relationships. So what was different with all those situations and the most recent one with Kelly? Very simple--prayer. Before I even started reaching out to Kelly, I was pleading with the Lord to save her. I would go boldly before the throne of God daily and presume upon His great grace and love for her.  Audaciously, I fully expected that Christ would redeem her life and I prayed earnestly to that end. The Lord’s heart was tender for Kelly and I prayed that He would accomplish His will in her. My family and friends also joined me in pleading with Jesus to save Kelly. He heard the cries of his children and he answered our prayers, in order that the Father might receive glory. Now I know the secret to evangelism: me speaking is primarily an act of obedience through which Christ then rises and acts in response to His people’s prayers. Therefore, any time I spend with an unbeliever should be far outweighed by the time I have spent in prayer beforehand. Any words I speak should be far outnumbered by the words that I have spoken to my Heavenly Father in preparation. As much as I hate to be cliché, I simply cannot think of any other way to say it, it is truly prayer that changes things, namely people’s hearts. 

Since then, it has been incredibly powerful for me to see how Jesus is transforming Kelly’s desires and giving her a huge burden for the lost around her. Last week when we met to study scripture together, I asked her if there was anything that she has really been struggling with since becoming a believer two weeks earlier. She replied, “Yeah, actually. My friends are really good people and they are really nice, but they don’t have salvation and they don’t know Jesus and it’s really been bothering me.”

If you’ve ever been around young children, you know that sometimes they can say the most profound things, but have no awareness of it. I felt like that is what happened here with Kelly. She was simply telling me what was on her heart and really had no idea how radical and amazing it was that she was feeling this way. It was so utterly obvious that the Holy Spirit had been at work in Kelly’s heart, and just as He drew her to Himself to be adopted as His daughter in a matter of weeks, He was also starting to transform her heart to be sensitive to the desperate need and emptiness in the lives of her friends. I was overjoyed by what Kelly had told me. I felt like it was the first fruit of her salvation that I had personally witnessed.

27 million slaves...Do Something Now

As the title of this post indicates, there are over 27 million slaves in the world today. This is a growing issue both in America and internationally. This crisis is growing right under our noses and we need to be a generation that did not stand and watch saying "how awful", but we need to act. The Bible calls us to ACT and not for our own self-satisfaction or a tax deduction, but for Jesus, our Lord. In Matthew Jesus says,
And the King will answer them, 'Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.'

and conversly...

Then he will answer them, saying, 'Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.'

Which category will you be found in? Please pray about what God is leading you to do about this crisis.
Here is a video that gives you an opportunity to do something right NOW. I am going to this conference over Christmas break with thousands of other college students and will be taking with me funds that the Lord has led me to give and any that He leads YOU to give also...please do not be a bystander. I will GLADLY take any money you want to give for this.

 If you have any questions, please feel free to email me at ecastle91@yahoo.com

The nations, our neighbors

Since my freshman year I have been tutoring a Karen refugee family that lives in Chapel Hill. There are about 7 or 8 in their family who live in a two room apartment. Needless to say, it’s pretty crammed and extremely simplistic. The living room has a single mat on the ground and the walls are covered with posters of the continents, Buddha, a Buddha shrine, and Thailand forestry.

They are from Myanmar, former Burma. However, many have spent the majority of their lives in the refugee camps in Thailand, across the border. This is the case of the family I know. 

There are three children and to make matters more interesting, one of them is an aunt to the others (intermarrying is common in their culture). Pee See is the oldest at 22 years old. Last Spring Pee See became the first in her family to graduate from high school and she now attends Durham Tech Community College in hopes of one day becoming a nurse and returning to her country to help her people there. In addition to trying to juggle a college course load in a language she is still attempting to learn, Pee See works until late at night Sunday through Thursday at one of our dining halls on campus in order that she can help pay the rent for her family to live in the apartment and for her tuition. 

Kyaw Shar Aye is next. He is thirteen years old and very much searching to try to fit in with the mold that our culture has set and he feels the pressure to conform to that standard. He is extremely talented. An athlete, musician and he does very well in school.

Asusu is the little baby of the family. She is 5 years old and already becoming a product of American culture. She loves to share her hips and sing decade old pop songs like “I’m a Barbie girl in a Barbie world” (just up my avenue, right?) in her broken English.

I love each of them so dearly and long for them to truly know Jesus. Please be praying for the gospel to become clearer than day to them and that they would understand its exclusivity since they now claim to believe in both Buddha and Jesus.

In light of the Lord’s command to go out into the nations preaching his name, He has chosen to bring the nations to our doorstep and now we must act by reaching the nations, which are now our neighbors.  

Life on the Hill!

[Chapel Hill for all you non-North Carolinians]

Well, it has been a long time since I’ve blogged. If you were worried, I made it back to America safely about 2 months ago and since then have gotten my immune system back functioning normally. Praise God!

 

Now I’m back in Chapel Hill and about a month into my senior year here. While I seem to have a tendency to over commit myself, this semester is proving to be the busiest yet as I attempt to juggle a rigorous 18 hour course load, two jobs, leading a freshman Bible study, and tutoring. While all of these things seem great, my prayer is that they are not just “things” to me, but rather opportunities to worship the Lord through my life and hopefully spread the gospel to the people that I am around that I love so dearly.

As I’ve been getting used to my schedule and the various things in which I am involved I have been challenged with how to reflect the gospel in my life in each area and how to most effectively share the hope of my living Savior with those that surround me.

So, today I will share with you one area where the Lord has spoken clearly to me and I am thrilled with how I see him moving and working around me.  One of my jobs is working within Campus Recreation, specifically for Intramural Sports as a Supervisor. I love my job as it allows me to be around sports all the time (and if you know me, then you will know that a job couldn’t get much better than that). Additionally, I love the people I work with…they are fun, athletic, out-going, personable, competitive, smart…but they don’t know Jesus. This breaks my heart.

The Lord laid it on my heart to start praying for my co-workers and friends in campus rec. Within the next few weeks I find out about 3 other supervisors in campus rec who are believers, one of whom is my boss. I start talking to them about the burden I feel for our co-workers and it seems that the Lord has placed a similar burden on their hearts. My boss let me know of 2 other guys that we work with that are believers. I was so encouraged to know that there were 6 of us who knew Jesus and how much faster and more effective we would be able to be in reaching UNC campus rec for Jesus! I contacted each of the people and asked if they would be interested in meeting weekly together to pray for the salvation of our friends and each of them were so eager to do so. The 6 of us now meet weekly and lift our friends, coworkers and superiors up in prayer!

The Lord completely orchestrated all of this. I’m so thankful for the hearts of my brothers and sisters in campus rec who are joining me in praying for opportunities to share Life with others. We are not just crossing our fingers that something happens as a result of our devoted prayers, but we are waiting in eager expectation, knowing and believing that God will answer the prayers of his children and bring lost souls to Him.

²³ Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. ²⁴And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, ²⁵ not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.    –Hebrews 10:23-25

Goodbye Uganda

Today is my last full day here in Uganda. So these are just 2 prayers that I have prayed through frequently here and I’m sure I will continue to pray through even once I’m home.

Take some time to meditate on them.

“O God, I have tasted Thy goodness, and it has both satisfied me and made me thirsty for more. I am painfully conscious of my need for further grace. I am ashamed of my lack of desire. O God, the triune God, I want to want Thee; I long to be filled with longing; I thirst to be made more thirsty still. Show me Thy glory, I pray Thee, so that I may know Thee indeed. Begin in mercy a new work of love within me. Say to my soul, “Rise up my love, my fair one, and come away.” Then give me grace to rise and follow Thee up from this misty lowland where I have wandered so long.” -A.W. Tozer “The Pursuit of God” 

“Jesus, I need to give myself up. I am not strong enough to love you and walk with you on my own. I can’t do it, and I need you. I need you deeply and desperately. I believe you are worth it, that you are better than anything else I could have in this life or the next. I want you. And when I don’t, I want to want you. Be all in me. Take all of me. Have your way with me.” –Francis Chan “Crazy Love”

Stay tuned for updates on more ways you can get involved in what God has been doing here in Uganda and also in Kenya and Papua New Guinea. The Lord has been doing tremendous things in the past few months and has brought many new children into our path, whom we have in faith taken in. Now we must respond by giving freely as He leads each of us to. Please be praying about this opportunity to serve the Lord.

Are we really the church?

This morning as I read through Acts 2, I was amazed at the picture painted of the church and how it functioned, especially in response to what had just happened at Pentecost, following Jesus’ ascension.   I would encourage you to read through all of chapter 2, but since I know that might not be realistic for you to do as you are reading this, I will give a quick summary of what happens prior to the last 6 verses. 

Peter speaks at Pentecost and presents the gospel to all the people before him. The message of the gospel was more offensive than ever as Peter tells the people about the coming of Jesus which was prophesied about since King David and then Peter tells them “Let the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.” These people had literally just crucified their Messiah, but the disciples did not compromise the message of the gospel or refrain from preaching the gospel in its full force, truth, beauty, and offensiveness. Just as a side note, I wonder how many times you and I have shared the gospel with people, and felt uncomfortable by the harshness and severity of the gospel and either compromised or considered softening the message of the gospel so that the audience, whoever it might be, would be more receptive to hearing about Jesus. I pray that God would rebuke me ever so quickly if I take his good news into my own hands and in doing so, strip the gospel of its truth and power. After the disciples spoke the full truth of the gospel, the Holy Spirit, now resting upon them, stirred the hearts of the people listening, and verse 37 says that “they were cut to the heart.” The Holy Spirit did the convicting, once the apostles were faithful to deliver the message of Jesus and verse 41 tells us that 3,000 souls were saved!

The next part, verses 42-47, is incredible and depicts the church’s response to Pentecost and the 3,000 souls that were saved that day. I cannot summarize these verses as they are so beautiful and powerful, and I want you to be blessed by the words too, so here they are:

“And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. And all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.” Acts 2:42-47

The church, the body of Christ, simply did what Jesus did. They acted in the way that he had led them. They devoted themselves to meeting together and eating together, both in the temple and in their homes.  They were physically together and united in one mind and spirit. They were removed from their possessions in that they did not cling to what they had, but they freely gave to all who had need. Their hearts were glad and generous as they praised God- and they also had favor with all the people. The Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.

WOW! What a picture- a beautiful picture of what the church should look like functioning together.  And when that happened, the Christians were joyful, the outsiders had favor with them and people were being saved daily…

No wonder the church has the reputation it does today. Truthfully, aren’t we often the opposite of what that passage depicts? O how we grieve our Father’s heart when we do not function how he intended us to.

Lord, please bring us back to you and establish this desire in our hearts. May we meditate on scripture, imitate the way you lived, and follow the model set forth for us in this passage. Help us Lord to be your body, for we are far from it.