Dear Friends,
Phileena and I just returned from the 3rd bi-annual WMF staff retreat. It was an amazing time of worshipping, sharing, reflecting, and celebrating together as a community. Nearly 100 WMF staff and board members gathered in San Diego , California for 10 days.
The theme for our retreat was based on Henri Nouwen's book, Can You Drink the Cup? In the book, Nouwen writes a series of reflections based on the Scripture in Matthew 20:22 where the disciples, James and John, ask Jesus if they can sit on His right and left hand in paradise. Jesus responds to their question with a question of His own, “You don't know what you're asking, can you drink the cup I am going to drink?”
As a community, we asked ourselves this same question. Can we drink the cup that Jesus sets before us? Can we hold it? Can we lift it? Can we finish it to the dregs?
It's a crucial question and one that we needed to ask as a community. What is our cup? What does this mean for our WMF community? Sandy Cullum, the prayer and intercessor coordinator for our retreat, put the cup of our WMF community in such perfect terms,
“I can picture a day in eternity when our magnificent God gathers us together and shows us what a young American man's wounded heart being healed looks like to Him, He will let us listen in on the happy voices of children who will never again be called “orphan” playing soccer with Jesus, and He will show us a woman who had once been a disposable rag gazing with shining eyes at her bridegroom who will cherish her forever. He will let us see and hear and touch people whose lives were changed as His Spirit, His Living Water flowed through the Word Made Flesh community in response to our prayers.
Imagine being a single young man, knowing that you are at the height of your physical strength and sexual virility, longing deeply for the full relationship of marriage. You have consecrated your body to God, you have taken a vow of purity, yet you live and walk daily down streets where prostitutes call out to you. In order to communicate with your family and friends, you frequently use the internet café where most of the surrounding men are pulling up pornographic images on their screens. You weep at what poverty and sexual sin has done to the men, women and children in the streets around you, and your anger rages internally. Your heartache and despair increases and the voice of your enemy, the destroyer of your soul taunts you, holding out pornography as the one thing in life you can control.
Imagine yourself as a young and beautiful single woman who has been listening intently to the LORD to hear your value, not only to Him, but your value as a unique person who has wonderful gifts to give to others. Yet each day when you walk on the streets, men not only call out to you with lewd suggestions, but grope you in crowded buses and grab you on the streets.
Imagine being a newly married couple with all the challenges of adjusting to the many personality and family differences. You desire the honeymoon/newlywed bliss of intimacy that others have talked about, but you live in one of the hottest and dirtiest cities of the world where you never feel clean, where privacy is almost non-existent, and you are bombarded with questions from strangers and requests from neighbors the minute you step out your door.
Imagine being a young couple with little children. You've been away from the states for so long that your parents have barely gotten to see their grandchildren. You wonder if you should be raising your children in this strange culture with the overwhelming needs of the people pressing in on them through you. You wonder how long your parents will live and what your children might be losing by not getting to be with grandma and grandpa. You wonder if you should stay here.
It was a sweet time in the presence of Jesus as we listened to what He was asking us. The Lord met many of us in powerful ways. Many of us renewed our commitments to the poor. Many of us re-evaluated our callings and sensed the Lord asking us to make a deeper commitment to what He has called us to. There were many of us who needed healing and renewal and God was faithful to meet those needs.
I can't imagine a better time and I want to thank many of you for praying for us while we met.
Following such an intense time for our community there is now a lot to catch-up on. We still need your prayers as we transition out of the retreat and look forward to our community's refreshed view of our collective future.
As you pray for us please remember to keep these specific requests in mind:
Writing: I spent much of the spring working on a number of writing projects. I more or less finished the rough drafts of 2 of these projects and really need to re-gain focus to finish working through these drafts through the rest of the summer. I really, really could use your prayers. I've found that as I write I seem to open myself up to forms of spiritual attack that I've previously not experienced. Pray that I'd have clarity, determination (to finish), and the ability to hear from God as I try to capture His heart for the poor and the world.
Support: In September, Phileena and I will be traveling to Thailand where I will be participating in the 2004 Lausanne Committee of World Evangelism's 30 th anniversary meetings. From there we'll travel to Chennai, India where we hope to help finalize the purchase of a new facility for the WMF children's home there. At this point we currently lack the funding to make this Asia trip. We trust that the support will be there, but as you can imagine, we're a little concerned about being able to raise these funds. If you're able to contribute to this trip we'd be so blessed.
Direction: As many of you know, Phileena and I spent 8+ months of 2003 OUT of Omaha; our hopes are that we will have spent 8+ months of 2004 IN Omaha by the end of the year. We have really been blessed by the time we have already had here in Omaha, but we know that once we begin traveling again this fall our itinerary will quickly fill up. Please pray that we will know what exactly the Lord would desire us to be using our time for once we begin traveling more.
You all have been so good to us over the years and I close this letter with a heart bursting with thankfulness for your investments in our lives and the poor. May God bless you for your every sacrifice and may He return to you a hundred times what you've given to Him.
Holding, Lifting, and Drinking to the cup of Life to the very bottom,
Chris for Phileena Heuertz