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    • Real Change: Hope Through Prayer

    5/16/11

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    In my community, there's been seasons where some of the neighborhood children have enjoyed playing in my yard.  One summer I asked one of the little girls, who was 9 at the time, about her dream for when she grows up.  Her upbeat, immediate response was “I want to be a prostitute!”.



    I hate pain, and I hate the hopelessness that had already engulfed this little girl and her future at such a young age. 

I hate passing by the homeless person pleading for money or the street woman begging for a john. I am so sad from hearing story after story of broken dreams and broken marriages- stories of defeat. My
own heart cries out in despair for these souls- there has got to be more!

    Proverbs 13:12 states that "a hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life". "Hope deferred" is the deep and pervasive ailment in our community.  Hope deferred-turned to hopelessness- churns throughout our society like the unending crash of ocean waves constantly hitting the shore.  Despite giving away all the food, clothing, and X-Boxes we could ever imagine to those in "need" , if we don’t address the core issue- hope deferred- we won’t see lasting change.



    Have you ever pondered what makes Christians different than the world? God’s principles work for everyone who chooses to live by them- both those who believe in Him as well as those who don't.  What then would distinguish Christians, or those who have Christ dwelling in their hearts?

The difference is His presence. True hope can only come from Him and it is the knowledge of His presence that gives meaning to life itself.

Knowing His presence and wanting to see restored hope throughout my community is why I have chosen to invest my time, talent and treasure into PrayDurham, which is an initiative to see every street in Durham covered in prayer by believers.

    Some may remember the old hymn:

Turn your eyes upon Jesus
Look full in his wonderful face,
And the things of earth will grow strangely dim
In the light of his glory and grace."

My neighbors need to know God's love and hope.  They need to know that God wants to bless us.

We, too, with both our prayers and action, get to take part in blessing our neighbors. Sometimes it is as simple as praying "Lord, bless them."

God himself gives us wisdom in how to bless others. 

    Once I asked the Lord how I could justify "blessing" the neighbors of my former office building, a men's club.  I then understood the Lord speaking to my thoughts, "Wendy, you do not understand my love.  I discipline those I love.  That club needs more of Me, not less."

Throughout the Bible and still today, God answers prayer.  What would it look like if every person in Durham was prayed for? What would it look like if every person was pastored (cared for and encouraged in their spiritual growth) regardless of whether they attended a local congregation?  What would it look like if "hope deferred" became real hope...fulfilled? I want to know.



    We have many good programs and ministries that are meeting needs and important to support.  The Lord, however, is able to do so much more than we can in our own efforts, and mysteriously he invites us to become a part of his work through prayer.  Durham is a city full of great people and ideas with lots of innovation- how much more glorious will it be when the Lord heals hope in our community? I look forward to that day!

    Do you know what you do not know?

    4/4/11

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    Grace and Peace Friend,

    Have you ever though about what you do not know? Keeping a clean house for myself was never a priority in my life until I met a woman named Fannie.  I’ve scrubbed countless toilets, and up until meeting Fannie, there was not much that could phase me from a dirt perspective.

    However, Fannie was referred to me as a client and as I began services for her home, I was shocked to discover how filthy her home would become after just two weeks!  Compared to my other clients, I could not figure out how one small family could create such a combination of clutter and dirt in just a short amount of time!

    After several months of service (with the home back to its filthy state every other week when I arrived), Fannie requested that I do a one-time cleaning of her mother’s home four hours away, where her sister had been living.  While normally I tried to keep my service area local, I decided to make an exception for this recurring client (and frankly this was the stage in the business where I would do just about anything to get the revenue up!) So two Saturdays from then, I recruited a friend and we embarked on our roadtrip to go a’ scrubbin’.

    We arrived to discover that Fannie’s mother’s house where her sister had been living was filthy beyond what I could have ever imagined!  Neither a vacuum nor a single cleaning product had touched any surface in this house…possibly ever.  Decades of smoke, grease, and dirt layered in the kitchen.   Apparently at one point there had been raccoons that had come through the attic and, as we later learned, had been retained as pets by the sister in one of the bathrooms.  Yet another room we were unable to touch at all because it (the room, that is) was used as the cat’s permanent litter box.

    As I spent my day in that house of my client’s mother and sister, chiseling and scrubbing as I could, I realized something:   My client, Fannie, whose house was by far the dirtiest house on an every other week basis out of all of my clients, actually had a well-kept, sanitary home in comparison to what she had likely experienced as a child.  Fannie knew that her home was cleaner than what she had grown up with, yet she was clueless that still most homes were kept much cleaner than her own.  Fannie did not know what she did not know.  

    This “Fannie” experience helped me begin to think that surely I must also have blind spots in my own life- that just as Fannie has set her life course based on the standard she had known without realization of a different norm- that there could be areas in my life where I did not know what I did not know.   

    We all set the course of our lives based on our other experiences.  Fannie was doing amazingly well compared to how she had grown up but I don’t think she understood that there is a completely different way to live (that did not involve a filthy house!).  So many times we live life completely out of our experience. I began asking the Lord to please show me what areas of my life I live like Fannie! I slowly began to see how I had let the things I knew from my experiences influence my thought processes, communication, and the way I related to people, money and food. 

    The greater challenge to myself was to begin examining my own “glasses” of experience to be able to differentiate between what I see through those glasses and what is truly there. When we set out on what we believe is a true and right, do we know that we are seeing truth, or is it only just a slightly better version compared to our own experiences that looks like truth to us?

    In unlocking “the creative” in our lives, the first step is to learn to check our blind spots so that we can orient our own perspective.  This is an ongoing life journey- to discover the things we do not know.  How does one even begin? Start with cultivating curiosity. 

    Blessings,
    Wendy

    PS- Fannie later stopped services for unknown reasons and I didn’t hear from her.  Several years later, my sister, Jessica, returned to the office from a Carpe Diem Cleaning consultation, and proclaimed, “I just did an estimate for every two week services for a client whose home is the worst possible home we could possibly have ever taken on!  I even stepped in dried dog poop in the living room during the consultation!” She didn’t tell me the name of our new client, but I secretly thought that this new home was probably close to what Fannie’s had been like.  Well, a few weeks later, I was reviewing the list of new clients, and guess who had returned? :-)

    Unfolding the Kingdom in Durham

    3/9/11

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    Grace and Peace Friends,
    The Butterfly Unfolds
    God is moving in Durham! Have you ever watched a butterfly unfold its way out of a chrysalis? This is what I see happening all over Durham: God’s Kingdom unfolding and spreading its wings all over our city. I see believers connecting with each other and finding that they share a common vision for becoming the Body of Jesus. I see ministries partnering together to accomplish what no one group could accomplish alone.  
    For instance, John Blake, Durham’s CEF (Child Evangelism Fellowship) executive director,  hosts a quarterly gathering of individuals, ministries and non-profits all of whom have a passion to serve Durham’s under-resourced communities. However, they have not walked together to combine their efforts until this point. Now there is a more coordinated effort to bring real change in the lives of people in these communities.  
    World Relief is an international faith-based non-profit who helps refugees resettle from oppressed regions around the world. The Durham office has helped resettle 200 refugees in Durham last year alone. Jesus’ Body in Durham has been His hands and feet for people who have never heard the Gospel, but now live within a 5-mile radius of our homes. 
    There are many unsung heroes just like this in our community who are advancing God’s Kingdom in all aspects of our city. They are praying for and serving in our schools and are seeing real change. They are praying for their neighbors. They are organizing people to serve in many projects throughout the city. They are brining God into our city and He is making the difference!
    From my place in the city, I have been hearing stories like these for several years now, and my passion is to be a cheerleader for all the unique, down right cool and creative ways that believers are bringing God’ glory to our city. God is moving in Durham! It’s wonderful to watch it unfold!
    Blessings, 
    Wendy