I bought a one-way ticket to Nepal!

I have just under a month before I get home and to be honest, I feel ready for the timing of it all. In this season I feel like I have given the squad and the Lord my everything, and it hasn’t returned back void. This has been one of the most beneficial, growing, and solidifying seasons of my faith walk and life with God has been so beautiful! I don’t know how to put into words the many memories that have been accumulated in this time, and I don’t know if I will try because some moments are sweeter kept to one’s self.

While leading this squad, my faith and life with God as a whole has been under pressure… the best kind. With having the eyes of thirty missionaries fixed on the legitimacy of my discipleship to Jesus, I received a much needed refining season. I ran through scriptures surrounding what Jesus says His disciples are to look like and made sure I counted the true cost of discipleship. He clearly demands surrender, doesn’t dodge promised persecution, and ensures that He will remain with those who remain with Him.

Obscurity has been a spiritual discipline that I have tried implementing more in my day-to-day walk as a disciple of Jesus. If you are unfamiliar with the practice of obscurity, it is defined as the state of being unknown, inconspicuous, or unimportant. When you apply those three words into your pursuit of God and bringing His kingdom in your lives, you quickly see that obscurity is counter-cultural to say the least. We have websites such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and even this blog that you’ve clicked on, that can easily offer a platform for your life to be known, noticed, and praised by what you do for Jesus. I hope to give praise with what I do, not receive it from others. My life has been all too filled with seeking first mans approval or praise, while after the fact making sure Jesus got some recognition. My heart has been after God and I truly have loved Him and there was no doubt of that, but He hasn’t always been the Lord of my life. It’s now time He regains His deserving throne of my heart.

Earlier this year while in Costa Rica the Lord started breaking my heart for Muslims. With muslims making up nearly 25% of the worlds religion, that is 1,900,000,000 (1.9 Billion) people who don’t believe that Jesus is the way to eternal life. It is actually their only ‘unforgivable sin’ to believe that Jesus is God. There is such an urgency to get around them and share the truth and good news of Jesus and His present Kingdom. I have been praying and asking the Lord for direction and He truly came through. Even after getting a clear word from Him, dreams while sleeping, and words that He gave someone to give to me, I still found myself hesitant to move. I continually took it back to Him not because of doubt, but I genuinely just wanted to please Him with my next steps and wanted to be clear that it was from Him and for Him. The Lord clearly was saying Nepal and a few days later when I went into town to take a racer to get an X-ray, I bought a one-way ticket for Kathmandu, Nepal at the coffee shop in town.

Five days after getting conformation from God and buying the ticket, India had one of the worst Covid breakouts, killing hundreds of thousands and closing their borders. With hospital beds surpassing max capacity, many of Indias residents sought care in the bordering countries. Nepal became overwhelmed by the influx of cases from India and closed their borders the following week. My heart broke for all of the people, each number a human created by God, most who simply don’t know our God’s goodness and promises. The initial feeling was to doubt that God actually spoke to me, I mean five days after booking the flight their borders close?? But I don’t leave until September and I have a deep sense that God will do a miracle and I’ll get there.

Pray with me. Pray for them right now, over your phone/tablet/computer, pray for their Covid situation that is still a daily fight for most of their citizens. Pray for people of Islamic faith in Nepal that their hearts are stirred and prepared for Christians to come and share the truth of Jesus. Prayers for the laborers to increase and for the soil to be fertile for lives to be changed. Please pray with me about their borders opening up and for a miracle to happen to get me there, come September, without many complications!

God has been doing a work in me that would take a while to explain, so I won’t get all too detailed in this blog. However, I would love to share with you more of what this process has, and is, looking like. More blogs to come! 

“Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock. Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son: ‘Ye were bought at a price’, and what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us. Above all, it is grace because God did not reckon his Son too dear a price to pay for our life, but delivered him up for us. Costly grace is the Incarnation of God.”-Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship