A thin, solemn-faced woman came to our compound this week. She was carrying a small bundle. Her infant daughter had the face of an old woman. Her little malnourished body was not much more than bones, and she cried weak cries from sunken cheeks. Her eyes were flat and dull. She was the embodiment of her name: Suffering.
So many children here are named after the harsh realities of life: suffering, anger, unwanted, sadness, orphan. Their names are descriptive of the circumstances surrounding their earliest hours and days.
I looked into Suffering’s two-month-old eyes that were just beginning to focus on the world around her. I picked up her frail frame and held her eye to eye with me. I just could not call her Suffering. She did not bring suffering into the heart of the Father. She brought joy.
“Ita ma Suffering. Ita Faraha.” (“You are not Suffering. You are Joy.”)
I heard this mother’s familiar story. After she gave birth she had no milk for her baby. Her daughter’s first two months in this world were spent on a diet of cornmeal and water. This child was a fighter. Many babies would not have survived this long. The mother was from a tribal homeland far away. Her husband had been taken away to fight on some distant front line, and she had no one to help her—no one to show her love.
This baby had indeed been born into a world of suffering. But Jesus does not define us by our circumstances.
I look forward to watching Faraha (Joy) grow and begin to thrive. I look forward to getting to know her mother and seeing God’s love reach deep into another family to bring healing from the inside out.
Little Faraha got me thinking. The world often tries to define us by the facts of our surroundings. For me it is the fact that I have one leg and use crutches. For others the facts might be growing up on the wrong side of town or making mistakes they later regretted. But Jesus does not define us by our past or our present.
We are not “Suffering” to Him. We are not “The Girl with One Leg” or “The Poor Kid” or “The Druggie.” Neither are we “The Rich Boy” or “The Party Girl.” He does not define any of us by labels.
He calls us by name. He sees where we are, but He does not equate that with our identity. And when the world calls us something we are not in His eyes, He has no problem with the redemption of a name change.
Faraha reminded me of that this week. Love sees beyond where a person is to who that person is. Faraha was not destined to a life of suffering. She was created to be the Joy of her Papa in heaven and to bring joy to the world around her.
Until They All Have Names
Jesus has been speaking to me more about how revival has a name. I see each person God brings me as a potential carrier of glory, a vessel of revival.
Not long ago God gave us our littlest one yet at the time: a precious baby boy eight days old whose mother died from complications in childbirth. We were one of the only places around at the time who took in infants because of the extreme expense and extra work involved for the first two years. If we had not opened our arms to him, he would have had little chance of surviving his first year.
He did not have a name, so I had the amazing honor of naming him. He was one of the first babies I named. I looked into his small, sleeping, cherublike face and heard God tell me, Daniel.
This one will speak to governments, Jesus whispered in my ear. He will rest in the midst of lions and not be touched. He will bring My word to kings. Danieli, as he came to be called, was welcomed with great joy to our ever-growing family.
He was a statement from the heart of God, as all our babies have been, each in their own way. You have heard some of their stories: Ima, Benia, Azeezah. The nameless, faceless masses of the hurting, hungry and dying here in Sudan—each has a name. Each has a face, a calling and a destiny in the heart of God. Each one. Every one. The love of God gives names to the nameless and voices to the voiceless.
Danieli is now two years old. He still sports a scar on his chin where the medical personnel cut too close during his delivery. He runs around the compound like a small dirt magnet. He can manage three baths a day and still find more dirt. He is a little boy to the core. His great big grin lights up my day whenever he comes near.
I will never forget the first day he ran. I was standing under the partial shade of our rental compound’s mango tree talking with a few of the mamas. I heard a little toddler’s voice cry, “Mama!
Mama!” I looked up just in time to see a small blue-clad missile running headlong as fast as his little legs would carry him over the uneven terrain. His arms were spread open wide. His gaze was fixed on mine. I almost wondered if he might leap and fly right into my arms. Instead he plowed into my leg and wrapped his chubby baby arms around me and looked up at me with a huge smile of satisfaction. “Mama.” He lifted his arms and waited until I knelt in the dirt to take him in my arms. Danieli. My Danny-boy. A promise fulfilled. I picked him up and remembered revival does indeed have a name.
Beth, Kojo, Data, Asa, Victoria Joy, Noora, Simon. I am learning every day how love gives the dignity of identity and calls forth the destiny of the very ones I have at times looked away from.
Our children have become some of my greatest teachers on this journey into God’s heart. They worship with such passion and such fervency that they draw heaven down to our little bit of earth. I am watching them be captured by God’s love. They lay hands on each other and pray for healing or for grace for exams or for whatever they need. And God shows up! When I am tired or frustrated, they will come and pray for me.
A little child will lead us. Unpaved roads are not scary to them. They are simply an adventure waiting to be explored. They are revival.
On Earth as It Is in Heaven
My eyes fill with tears when I see my children praying in the dirt with their hands raised to heaven, hungry for more Jesus. And when they lead worship on an outreach even our surrounding community stands amazed at what God is doing in and through their lives.
One day we were preparing to participate in an outreach at Freedom Square, a large dust field with a small stage on one end where many drunken men hang out with automatic weapons. I never know what I might find there. I have encountered everyone from madmen in chains to beggars to an assortment of hopeless, dull-eyed youth.
At this particular event I was invited to preach. Our team set up its speakers and equipment and formed a human boundary around the electronics to protect them from being stolen. We had set up right next to the barbed wire fence surrounding the local prison situated just on the edge of Freedom Square. Its location struck me as a bit ironic. I peered into the prison’s vacant courtyard. Everyone must be inside escaping the heat, I thought. The crowd began to grow around us and press on us until I could feel the barbs of the wire fence behind me snagging my clothes.
I believed God wanted me to share on the reality of the Kingdom and to pray for the sick. It was perhaps the shortest sermon I have ever preached. It was about His Kingdom coming in power. Soon a crowd of over five hundred surrounded us as we spoke about the truth of His Kingdom coming on earth as it is in heaven.
“Is there sickness in heaven?”
“No!” my children echoed back. They had heard this message before.
“Is there hunger in heaven?”
“No!” Slowly some of the crowd began to chime in.
“Is there cancer in heaven?”
“No!”
“Is there corruption and fighting in heaven?”
“No!”
“So we want to join in the prayer of Jesus, that His will shall be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
We closed the preaching with an invitation: “Who wants the Kingdom of heaven? Who wants to follow Jesus and live in the reality of the Kingdom of heaven now?” Every single person I could see wanted Him—every hand in the crowd went up.
We then asked who had sickness or physical problems they would like Jesus to heal. About three hundred hands went up.
Our team prayed a simple prayer of healing:
Jesus, we ask for Your Kingdom to come and Your will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. We command all sickness and infirmity to go in Your name. All pain must go in Your name.
We break off any curses and assignments of the enemy. In Your name we pray. Amen.
We asked for a show of hands, and approximately 90 percent of the people were healed or saw a change in their bodies after the first prayer. That was pretty exciting.
We then invited any who wanted additional prayer to come forward. A tall, middle-aged man named Jacob (not his real name) limped forward with a wooden underarm crutch. His ankle was evidently broken, and he said he was in a lot of pain. I knelt in the dirt and took his ankle in my hands, thinking, Okay, Papa, please come and demonstrate what this all looks like.
Again I simply prayed the prayer of Jesus: “Papa, Your Kingdom come here now on earth as it is in heaven.”
I asked the man to test it, and he gingerly attempted to put weight on it. No pain. I held his crutch that was almost as tall as I was while he continued to check it for improvement. His ankle was totally healed. He took his crutch and left walking through the crowd with a big smile on his face. The crowd clapped. Hurray for God!
Revival did indeed have a name. That afternoon it was Jacob.
Many think success is about huge “revival” meetings of hundreds of thousands. Big meetings are great, and they have their place. But my favorite revival stories are the ones like those of Jacob and Danieli. My favorite stories are of those people who were shown the face of Jesus simply because someone saw and stopped.
Love is learning the names of the nameless, seeing and stopping for the one in front of me until that person becomes so transformed by love that he or she will stop for the one in front of him or her. In this way perhaps a city, a region, a nation will be transformed by love, one life at a time.
I am reminded again and again here: Love has a face. Mine.
Snapshots of Home
Last week I returned from a trip back to the United States. As I bounced down the familiar dirt road from the airstrip listening to the updates and chatter from Eudita and John, I sighed. It was good to be home. I would never have thought an unpaved road in the African bush could be so inviting, so familiar. Once again cathedrals made of dirt and our mud hut metropolis surrounded me. Jesus, please keep building Your castle in my clay.
As we pulled onto the compound our children lined the drive singing, “You are welcome today, our Mama in Jesus. Hallelujah in Jesus! You are welcome in Jesus. Hallelujah in Jesus!”
I hugged the children and greeted the staff, then I unlocked my room. The spiders had moved in and taken up residence in my absence. I have since engaged in a weeklong battle to evict my unwelcome houseguests. And it has taken almost as long to excavate the surfaces of my room from the dirt that engulfed them. It does not take long here for the sands of time to accumulate.
In a period of about thirty hours I went from running water, electricity and Starbucks back to my plastic jerry can and kerosene stove. It was a little jarring to my equilibrium. My transition back has been a bit bumpy this time, but unpaved roads have bumps.
I do love slums and leper colonies, but I also like my hot baths and cappuccinos. It would be less than honest if I told you that I love every aspect of living in the bush. I would not want you to think I am some super-saint with a Wonder Woman costume hidden in my closet. I do miss certain things. I would not be human if I did not. I am an ordinary person with ups and downs, highs and lows. I have good days and bad days. Some moments I want to pull out all my hair and become that barista I dream about. Sometimes I cannot fathom looking at another snotty nose or loving another person who is simply after our money.
I have moments of frustration. People came to introduce their “sister’s children,” but we soon found out that the children really belong to them; they just did not want to pay school fees anymore. It never ceases to amaze me how some people can lie to my face while looking me straight in the eye and smiling. I cannot even take a cookie without looking guilty.
Ultimately I am just a little woman who loves Jesus and longs to see and love as He does. For all the things I do not enjoy here, I have found many more that I do. The cost of convenience is a small price to pay in the big scheme of things. Look at what I have gained in return.
On my most recent trip to the United States, I printed a bunch of photos of the children. After reclaiming my room from dust and spiders, I began to put them up all over my crumbling walls. One afternoon Beth and some of my older girls joined me in my one-room home to hang out together. But our little gathering quickly turned into a crowd, as everyone wanted to see the pictures.
“Oh, look! There are Thomas and Davidi. I remember that day!”
“There are Noella and Noora—aren’t they pretty? They have grown since those were taken.”
Something special happens when someone loves you enough to put your photo on his or her wall or refrigerator. You feel a little more connected. You feel a little more like family. The chatter went on long into the evening. Somehow my children saw their photos on my wall and realized a little more that they belonged. This was their family and their home.
The children became just as excited to see one another’s faces smiling back from my walls as they did their own. It is a beautiful thing to see them loving and preferring one another. I watched His love seep deeper into their hearts. Their eyes sparkled a little more than before. Looking into their eyes, my heart began to fill with His love. I am proud of them. And I would not trade a lifetime of hot baths for the opportunity to see God’s dreams come to pass in each of their lives. That afternoon put things back into perspective.
I will always face difficulties and challenges. There is a cost. But the things that are most valuable are worth the expenditure when I allow Jesus to give me His eyes of love.
Called to Compassion
In this inside-out Kingdom, what is my response to a world in need all around me? What is my response to poverty, genocide, child trafficking and the global issues of oppression? Will I become so overwhelmed that I simply turn away? Believe me, I am tempted at times. But God has called me to His heart of compassion.
In September 2005 Sudan first crossed the radar screen of my awareness. I was sitting at my kitchen table in Colorado Springs not too long after I had initially heard Rolland Baker speak. I was channel surfing when a special on the children of Darfur caught my eye.
The image on the screen showed a Western woman sitting in the dirt surrounded by little dark African children covered in red dust. She was showcasing their crayon sketches of Kalashnikovs and the weapons of war that some were trying to deny existed. I heard their stories. I saw the pictures of their dreams. One little girl had drawn books because she wanted her brother to be able to go to school. A little boy drew his family being ripped apart as they ran from the birds that shot fire at them.
Before I knew it, the special was over and I was still sitting there weeping. A flood of compassion was released into my heart. My first call to Sudan was compassion. Thirteen months later I was living here.
The heart of God beats with this compassion that compelled me to action. If I truly see those who need help, then I will stop and ask what Jesus wants me to do. It might mean a short walk across the street. Or it might mean a journey around the world. But whatever it means to be the face of love as we each embrace our own unpaved road, true compassion begins in the heart of God.
Just before I moved to Africa in 2006, I was packing up my apartment in Colorado one evening when I started hearing audible music. I thought that was fairly odd because I did not have the CD player on. But it became louder. It had no words, just tone woven effortlessly upon tone. I had never heard anything like it.
I followed the sound to my sitting room and walked directly into a wall of God’s presence. I lay down with my face on the floor. The sound grew louder and stronger, tone and sound woven with color and light, all-enveloping. I was being taken into an encounter with the compassionate heart of my Papa in heaven.
I began to hear the sounds of many children echoing in and out. Suddenly I was standing with Jesus in a vision surrounded by thousands and thousands of brown and black children. I just stood there and cried as I listened to them call me Mama. I was overwhelmed and thought, Hmm, God, I am just one person and there are a lot of children here. I do not really do kids anymore.
Why are they calling me Mama? There are so many of them!
I just stood there beset by a sea of brown and black faces, at a complete loss as to what to do next. Before I could go any further Jesus said, “Beloved, Father wants you.”
Instantly (heaven has no time between thought and action) I was before the Father. I was looking into His chest, which was a burning, flaming, pulsing ball of fire. It looked like a million exploding stars, a nuclear reaction that was ebbing and flowing in rhythm like a cosmic visualization of the sound of the song I was hearing.
All I could think was, What?
Papa replied, “This is My heart.”
I felt myself moving through His chest closer and closer to this flaming explosion of love. It drew me into it like a magnetic pull. Suspended in this mass of liquid love and fire, I felt no gravity, no bearing, no weight, no up, no down, no before, no after, no beginning, no end, nothing but eternity’s now. Time ceased to hold any relevance.
I began to realize that this was the heart of compassion He wanted to put in me to carry. Not only did He want to immerse me in His heart of love, but He also wanted its burning, pulsating, eternal song to resonate in my own heart. This was the Father’s blessing. This was the Father’s song. And in the Father’s heart I had truly come home.
Suddenly I was walking among the children again—thousands and thousands of them. They were crying, “Mama, Mama!” But this time I was not overwhelmed as I was before. Their cries made the flame of His love burn all the hotter inside of me until it began to burst forth from within my heart. One by one the children caught the flame and began themselves to burn and to run into the darkness to carry forth His light.
They sang the song I had heard in His heart, and as they burned with the fire of His love the night around them began to shine like day. Darkness and light became the same because the children carried His glory light within them, and heaven was more real to them than earth. Because of love they were fearless and unstoppable.
Compassion is not a weak word. It is the fiery reality of the Father’s heart that compelled Him to give us His best in Jesus. It is the motivation of His inside-out Kingdom. It is the Good News of His love in action. It is the one word that easily could change our world if we would let it.
A Movement of Love
I found out the other day that southern Sudan alone has over a million orphans. That is a pretty staggering number. The whole of Sudan has three times that. My heart longs to see every one of them have a loving home. One person can do only so much. But what could one person loving one person who loves one person do? Our little group certainly cannot do everything. But each one of us can do something.
In the face of such devastating need I have wondered: What if a thousand people here simply took ten children into their homes, churches or villages? That number of a million orphans would be reduced by ten thousand right there. Ten thousand children would have homes simply because a company of people chose to see the needs around them through eyes of love and allow their responses to be compelled by heaven’s compassion. A good plan and a well-funded program are not enough to meet the needs here. But a movement of love just might be.
What would a movement of love look like?
Could an army be raised up to fight hate with love, injustice with mercy, war with peace, poverty with generosity, despair with joy, striving with rest and religion with freedom? Can you imagine such an army?
The soldiers in this army would be fearless lovers of God. They would know His heart so well that they would carry His heartbeat everywhere they go. This Company of the Consumed would dream bigger than the pages of history and refuse to settle for what their eyes have seen. They would dance through the harvest fields of the nations with their gazes locked on the eyes of Love Himself.
His glory will cover the earth as waters cover the seas. We have His promise on that one (see Habakkuk 2:14). A movement of transformational love is rising up to be released from every tribe and tongue and nation. Those who wield this most powerful weapon called love are arising from the hidden and unseen depths of His heartbeat.
Have you seen them? The dangerous, fearless lovers of the King, who has so captured their gazes that no circumstance can distract them, no obstacle deter them.
They are the unlikely ones, the burning ones, the passionate ones whom the world has overlooked and called foolish. They will arise from the ends of the earth with a yes cry in their hearts and a song sung with their lives. Some of them are three, four and five years old and live in my house. But many more are waiting to be found.
What would a people look like who are fully embraced by love? What would a people become if they were totally set free to live out their own identity and sound? What would an army of love be, released from the darkest corners of the nations to carry the light of His face, seen through their own, as they see who they are in Love’s eyes?
The wave dancers and light carriers are being released. The unpaved road is an invitation to the depths of Love’s heartbeat. Watch out. Here they come: the unstoppable lovers of God whom nothing can deter. They bring with them life in abundance, light so bright that the darkness flees before its coming and night becomes as day at the rising of His glory in and through their lives.
The Edge of the Map
In the first chapter of this book I told you that life does not always lend itself to roadmaps. Now you have seen a little more what that has meant for me. Following the pursuit of God’s heart has literally taken me off road and off the map. I have been to places in the last year that only Jesus and a few other people know exist—villages that are likely on no map anywhere in existence.
But they are not forgotten. God knows each hair on the elderly village grandmas’ heads there. He knows the names of their grandbabies who joined the statistical ranks of the one in two children who die before they reach age five. He knows the names of the nameless, and no one is ever faceless to Him.
It has been a privilege to share with you my journey of discovering more of what it means to live loved by God and become an expression of His love to the people around me. The unpaved road into God’s dreams has been quite the adventure. And I certainly have not arrived. I still have many miles left to explore, many chapters of this story left to live. Every day I learn a little more. Every day the adventure continues.
I could not have anticipated where this journey would take me in such a short time. Our family is less than three years old, and already God has done so much. Papa really has made His home with us just as He promised He would. I am humbled every day by His faithfulness.
As I look out at the coming of yet another year of His promises, I can scarcely fathom where the pursuit of His heart will take us in the days to come. Much that lies ahead of us here appears unstable and uncertain in the natural. But we live in the supernatural reality of His goodness where any storms that come are actually heaven’s invitation to dance.
But what about you? In the beginning I told you I wanted you to keep reading right to the edge of the map—and then step off the known path into your own story lived from the center of His love.
Each of our paths will lead someplace unique. You may not be called to the bush of Africa to love forgotten children (or you might be!). But as each of us embraces our individual unpaved road into His heart of love, as each of us encounters more what it means to be the face of His love in places of pain around us, truly His Kingdom comes.
I want to invite you to a life lived beyond the edge of the map.
At the edge of the map, a holy adventure awaits. A movement of love is arising in those who will choose to lay down their lives each day, becoming the expression of God’s grace and goodness to the people He brings them. Heaven is becoming so real to this coming generation that earth will begin to fade into a shadow.
We are invited to join a global tribe of sons and daughters of their Father in heaven whose silence is louder than the shouts of multitudes, whose prayers are stronger than the decrees of kings, whose authority is found in humility, whose gaze is fixed on eternity, whose lives are found in giving them away. We are called to be part of the coming of an upside-down, inside-out Kingdom where the last are first and the greatest are servants of all.
At the edge of the map is a company of those who are emerging from garbage heaps and refugee camps, from universities and shopping malls—those found in unexpected places at unlikely times, called from far-flung corners of the earth to converge in God’s heart for such a time as this. Here we are the desperate ones. We eat the bread of hunger. We drink the cup of longing. We choose to look beyond what appears to be to what really is. The world has written many of us off, left us for dead, pushed us aside and rendered us invisible. But heaven has heard our cries, caught our tears and whispered our destinies into visions at night that dance across our sleep and wake us with their songs.
And now heaven calls us forth to make real God’s unformed dreams in this hour until the essence of His beauty crowns the ash heaps of nations and the dawning of His glory chases away even the memory of darkness. The world may never know our names, never see our faces; but heaven hears our cries. And on this unpaved journey into the heart of our King we are called to become the whisper of His hope, the voice of His truth and the face of His love.
Eternity has written its story on our hearts. We have only one life to give, so we give it away extravagantly, hilariously, without reserve. We could not imagine we’d get to pour out our lives loving Him and seeing His eyes find us again and again in the gaze of broken, hurting humanity.
We are not those content to bloom in greenhouses and gardens alone. Our hearts long for the wastelands and war zones of our day. Our roots are firmly anchored in heaven, and from there our wings are released to soar on the earth. Our no’s have been burned away in the fire of God’s love. Only a yes-cry lived out with our lives moment by moment remains.
This is life lived beyond the edge of the map. God’s heart of love is calling you. Nations are waiting for your yes to His unpaved road. Are you ready?
Papa, I want to thank You for the ones reading these words.
I ask right now, Holy Spirit, that You wash over them and fill them with Your perfect love. Give them child-eyes to see the invitation of the unpaved road. Draw them deeper into Your heart, that they may live all of life from the place of knowing how loved they are. Papa, wrap Your arms around them. Let them hear the songs You sing over them in the night. Let them know the place they have in Your house. Let them know that You love them because you love them.
I ask You, Papa, to stir hunger in them and call forth the dreams You have placed in their hearts that they have not even dared to embrace. Take them lower in humility, deeper in intimacy and higher in revelation. I ask that You submerge them in Your fiery presence until they are see-through in love and carry Your glory wherever they go.
I ask You for a movement of love to begin one life at a time that will literally change nations from the inside out. Teach all of us how to dance in the storm, and let us live a life of love without limit. Amen.