Dirt Piles of Self Sufficiency

So far this has been rough. Very rough. You know that humbling moment when you think you have more faith than you actually do and God really shows you the conditions of your heart. Pride. So much pride. 

My life for an extended amount of time now has felt pretty comfortable, pretty stable and secure. Nothing shattering or threatening has come into the picture that would put my heart in a vulnerable place, severely desperate and of need for more trust in Father. How unfortunate now that I see this in comparison to before. Oh Jesus how awful I feel for wanting to stay in the comfortable. I have repented a lot the past few days for holding onto comfortable circumstances, for having those secret desires to live an average safe life. This is so much more exhilarating and thrilling, so much more risky and adventurous. I feel on top of the world as I take risks and leaps with Jesus. Don't get me wrong here at all, I have made a fool of myself in my mistrust and my shameful lacking of faith the past few weeks as I still wait for thousands of dollars to come in for my trip.  I have said and done some silly things in the past week out of that place of mistrust and probably have complained to more people than I can count on my fingers about the impossibility of my circumstances. It has been so so hard to keep my eyes fixed on His gaze. The best way to explain all of this in a nutshell is this: I'm really seeing the dirt. Even before being taken to Africa I am already playing in the dirt, seeing the many, many orphaned parts of my heart still not believing their adoption. I have been seeing all the ways I rely on myself- the ways I try and make things come together and what I try and conjure up for myself to earn favor. There are so many parts of myself that act as if I am fending for myself, as if I have no one -"I must do this on my own!!" 

It's so easy to learn so much about being a daughter, having a Father that always comes through, protects, defends and provides in the safe and sound life circumstances. I think it is the most beautiful thing when He takes us into the physical circumstances that will bear the fruit in our hearts everything He has been teaching us in our heads. Truly every dropping seed of head knowledge to the heart is a glorious act of grace. 

I just feel a huge tidal wave of His grace soak me right now as I get ready for Mozambique. He is opening my eyes dramatically to the self sufficiency of our culture- the self sufficiency that we all get caught up in here where everything comes easy and there is just SO MUCH. I had a dream last night that I was with these two particular friends and I was taking them on this tour of some glorious, glamorous house that was worth millions pretending it was mine. I was showing off the wealth and all of it's outward beauty. I remember being so proud in my dream that this was "mine"... hmm, I think my dream was significant and could have maybe been to show me the emphasis of my own poverty. 

Jesus' heart breaks for the self reliant and the independent. In our culture we have anything at the tap of a bottom or the point of a finger. We have all we need and more and since we are so used to things coming so easy, we take the glory in thinking that we have conjured up all that we have and all that takes place in our lives on our own. Heidi Baker in her book "Compelled by Love" says that after The Lord brought her to the poor in Mozambique her heart broke and split in two for the bride, but it wasn't the bride of Africa. It was the bride of the West. Oh how unfortunate we are here so in need of His grace. At least the orphans in Mozambique know they are orphans and at least the needy there know they are needy and their neediness actually makes them beautifully more needy. The most unfortunate thing is for one to not even know their neediness, their brokenness and their despair. 

To this bride, our modern day western bride- our greatest struggle, what stands between us and intimacy with the Father and our ability to become little children is our self sufficiency. Oh the dirt.

Father show us the beauty in the beggar, show us what you see in the poor. True beauty that lasts is found in the least. Give us a heart that wants to be least of all, to truly be ourselves in Love Himself as we learn to abide. Lay us down to our desires for more of this world. 

You see desperate need as THE most beautiful thing. Help our self sufficiency. Help our adult- like mindsets that need to know, understand rationally and logically, and that need to plan and control because "doing it alone is the only option". Help our unbelief. 

We want to be beggars. We want to be children. 

Desperate for the Dirt.

"Kayla, I want to take you to the dirt".

The past two months this has been the sentence that has been repetitive in my mind which has made it's way down to my heart in so many different ways already! 

I have never felt this way before. I have never been so desperate for sun scorched land, for the dry places, for the dirties places, like I am this season.With this Spring approaching, back in September I knew Spring 2014 would birth a new season and a shift of atmosphere, inwardly and outwardly. I sought out The Lord and inquired Him for months about what this meant and in January I started to feel the anxiousness, the "I'm sitting on the edge of my seat" feeling. In my heart many things have been changing, the eyes of my heart have begun to see things I never thought I would have the courage to see and my heart has begun to feel what I never imagined it would feel. Lately I feel like I have been seeing little children everywhere, dirty and needy, poor and hurting, broken and defenceless with no one to take care of them, desperate for acceptance and a place at the family table. Hearing invisible cries come out of mouths of people I don't even know on the subway, busses, street corners and in my own family. Now please don't misinterpret what I'm explaining. I am not mentally going crazy and seeing and hearing things. What I mean by this is simply that God has been giving me the eyes to see the orphan here like never before-the deeper realities of what Heaven sees in the hearts of his children all around me, despite physical appearances such as confidence, wealth, pride and independence. The dirty places, the places of need, longing and dryness in the hearts around me have completely shattered my heart and has left my heart craving for Father's love to invade all around me like I have never experienced before. 

Father's heart for His children is to seat us with royalty, to bring us to his table to celebrate, to clothe us in His robes and satisfy us with His riches, to embrace us and drench us with his kisses and to bring us into His heart chambers of acceptance where no more performance remains. 

Not only have my eyes and heart been awakened to this around me, but I have felt completely laid down in the way I see into my own heart too. I am a dirty mess of an orphan still becoming a daughter. I am not fully sanctified yet, meaning there are still so many dirty places of my own heart that I havnt let His blood go because of shame and fear of His unacceptance and dissapointement. I feel like the struggle for me has always been to ask for forgiveness and claim healing and restoration into places of my heart tht are still orphaned with my eyes closed, without wanting to actually see how bad the sin is, how dirty it was before He forgave them. I picture myself as a little child covering my eyes and pointing to places in my heart saying to Jesus " okay I know there's that specific gross stuff so I'm so sorry please just go there and get rid of it so you and I don't have to see it any longer!" One can only see the extraordinary power of His grace and the extravagance and beauty of his love when they know how dirty their rags are. I feel like I have walked so much of my life under His grace not actually accepting the dirt of my heart, wanting to just get rid of it as soon as possible so neither me or God have to look at it any longer, with the mentality " the faster I'm healed, the more acceptance I will gain from the Father".  Father has been showing me His eyes that see everything that's beautiful in the not yet, that sees royalty along the roadside and heaps of diamonds and precious stones in the ash heaps. His grace goes into the dirt WITH us and loves us there. He doesn't just long to pull us out and get us cleaned up as fast as possible. He loves to go into the dirt first, to look at our stuff straight on and say I love you IN it just as much as I will love you outside of it, I love you just as much dirty as you will be clean. My love sees your dirt piles as the most beautiful parts. His story is redemption and his name is Grace and the dirtiness that bring us shame and leaves us as orphans, He embraces and says "This is why I am Love, I love being Love for you because of these parts of you the most". He longs to play with His children in the dirt just as we are. His acceptance dances with us on the ash heaps and dirt piles of our hearts and changes them all into beauty. His eyes are increasingly becoming the most beautiful eyes I have ever seen and I want to see through them more and more!

Two years ago I started feeling a call on my heart from God for Africa. Since graduating from Bible College, by the power of His grace and Holy Spirit in me I started developing more of a heart for the orphan, for the outcast, for the unacceptable, abandoned, fatherless (spiritually and physically), and for the poor (spiritually and physically). After my best friend went to Africa to be with the poorest of the poor and to work alongside of a vision the same as mine, my heart became increasingly heavy and longing for that same experience and to put actual steps into the dreams of my heart. My heart became longing to experience the dirt, to love on the orphan, to work with the poor, to give my life for the outcast and deserted ones. 

This spring I get the opportunity to join Heidi and Rolland Baker in their ministry that takes in orphans, that sees the captive and sets them free through the blood of Jesus, that accepts in the outcasts and supplies food and a home to the poorest of the poor in Mozambique. I also get to go to the dearest place in my heart- South Sudan, which has more than 1 million orphans, 1 in 5 die before they are 5 years old and because of the vulnerability and youth of the nation, it has been left with villages raided, people and especially children taken from their families and homes and used for military by the LRA armies and or left to die on the streets if not already killed. Father is longing for children to be rescued and saved in this baby nation and He is finally fulfilling His promise to send me to be apart of what He is doing there and I know being there will just increase my heart for the orphan and clarify the vision He has for my life. I feel so so so filled with awe, joy and love as He has shown me his beautiful faithfulness!  

Not only do I feel Him calling me here for all these reasons, but I feel like a huge part of why I am going is to go deeper in knowing and seeing more of the orphaned places in my own heart that I have been so scared of seeing, to take me into deeper places of acceptance of myself as I see myself more with His Father eyes. The way we love the one in front of us radically changes as we learn how to come into acceptance of ourselves in the arms of Abba's embrace. The more we learn His grace for our own hearts, the more we will leave legacies of love and grace in the lives of the ones around us. 

I am starting to see more and more that God is calling us all to the orphan. Maybe for some of us that means letting Him take us to the physically orphaned who has never experienced acceptance and love, who needs a father and mother embrace, who needs to be fed and taken into safety and shelter. But maybe for others it simply just means learning to see the orphans in front of us, the ones who in our everyday just need to experience belonging and acceptance that can only be found in God's grace and loving Fatherly embrace. Also in that, learning how to dive into the orphaned parts of ourselves and accept and surrender to a Father's heart for us. It is a lot easier said than done, receiving his love, acceptance and forgiveness into the dirties parts of ourselves is the hardest thing we can do. 

I am so excited about my journey with Jesus to the dirt!!! 

I pray that you can be apart of this with me, both as I prepare for the reality of that this spring and summer but also as I venture into this within my heart, I pray that your heart can go there too in yours right alongside of mine. Going to the dirt is not easy but if we are asking more and more for Love's eyes to see, I believe He takes us there naturally but by the power of His Holy Spirit- supernaturally!:) 

I am excited to start blogging more about my heart preparation journey the next two months before I go and throughout my time in Africa! 

If you would like to know more about my journey to Pemba, Mozambique and my outreaches also to Uganda and South Sudan, email me or send me a Facebook message to receive one of my support letters!:)

Kaylaknappp@gmail.com

This is Iris Global's website- the ministry I will be coming alongside of!

www.irisglobal.org 

Isaiah 51:3

"For The Lord Zion He comforts all her waste places and makes her wilderness like Eden, her desert like the garden of The Lord ; joy and gladness will be found in her, thanksgiving and the voice of song"