On the Eve of the Border Walk

Lectures have now drawn to a close; the weeks of routine teaching intermixed with chores are over. Two out of us seven trainees have gone home with the end of the season. I write on the eve of a new chapter: the Border Walk.

As I mentioned in my last entry, the Border Walk is literally a prayer walk along the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland--one island, two countries. Technically, Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom, and the Republic of Ireland is an independent member of the European Union, but the divide between the two countries is not monitored by any kind of border control. This will allow us to crisscross freely back and forth across the border. Here is a list of the cities we will be passing through and staying in, in order:

• Rostrevor (the YWAM base; our starting point)
• Newry
• Crossmaglen
• Darkley
• Lisnaskea
• Enniskillen
• Belcoo
• Belleck
• Kesh
• Castlederg
• Strabane
• Londonderry-Derry (known as "Londonderry" to the North, or "Derry" to the South)

This is what our schedule looks like, as far as miles go:

Please pray for physical strength, endurance, and perseverance for us as we walk 200 miles over a course of 16 days. For most of us, the DTS schedule has consumed almost all of our time, leaving little or no time for physical training. I, for one, am a bit concerned for the initial shock on my body. Practical things to pray against would be soreness, exhaustion, and blisters. There will be a couple luggage cars available to carry us if we are unable to go on, but we want to walk as far as we can, praying for peace and the cities we are walking through. We want to see God move mightily in these cities, and heal very deep wounds in the people. Blood has been spilled in these cities, and the people have far from forgotten it. Pray the love and Truth of God will not get buried under religious labels and political affiliations, and that the Spirit of God will move in these cities, rejuvenating them and bringing them back to life in His name. Pray that when people see us walking along the side of the road and ask us what we are doing, that God would open their ears and hearts to hear and see what He wants to do, and that He would put the right words in our mouths and help us to respond with wisdom and respect. Also pray that we will be able to find enough bathroom spots along the way. ;)

The days of walking will be long, and far, with few changes of clothes, and showers where we can catch them. We will be sleeping on the floors of churches and sometimes in people's homes, in our sleeping bags. The DTS will not be the only people doing this (base staff will be coming too, and people from the community can join), but most other people will only be joining on certain days; it is very unlikely they will walk the entire distance with us. For the second week, we will most likely be dragging a cross along with us.

We leave tomorrow morning. It is unlikely that I will have access to wireless internet during this time, so I will not be able to update until I get back. Please keep us in your prayers!

Being Turned Inside Out

I know I haven't written in awhile. To be honest, I haven't done a lot of adventuring during that time. What has been happening has been much more personal. God has been confronting me with not only the way I view Him and the ways that He works, but He has also been confronting me with the way I view myself, and how that reflects back upon Him. These are hard lessons to learn. If a person has grown up a Christian, they have looked at what has happened in their life, and the course on which their life has gone thus far, and they have drawn conclusions from this about how God works and what God wants to do with them. It is, for instance, way easier to "believe" that God is untamable, like Aslan, than to see the effects of the Spirit of God doing things that do not make sense to you. Your box of "Who God Is" and "What God Does" gets broken. Suddenly, God doesn't fit into the mold anymore. Suddenly, the Spirit of God seems a stranger. Who is this Spirit, and why is he working in a way that He hasn't before in my life? If He's not acting like I thought He always would, should I still trust Him?

That is a sampling of some of the questions that went through my head and heart a few weeks ago, and I would be lying if I said the issue has gone away. The temptation is to just say "yes" or "no," and then move on in that direction. But I don't want to do that. I want to carefully examine and consider what I am seeing. I want to test whether these things are of God. And if they are, that means I have some changing to do. If they're not, I still have some changing to do. Because you cannot see and acknowledge such things, and then act like they are not true; you have to respond. Otherwise, you don't grow, and what was the point of that experience anyway? So I want to not just discount or accept new principles and experience, but to broaden my understanding of God, and at the same time deepen my trust in Him.

Whether or not I agree with everything that I see, or that comes to mind, I believe it is my responsibility what I do with it as a possibility--how I handle it, how I respond to it, how I let it mold my views and affect my life. It is with this mentality that I have struggled through questions of just how wild the Holy Spirit is, what I can trust that I know for certain about God, and what lies the enemy has told me or conclusions I have drawn about myself upon which I have based my entire way of thinking. In the past three or four weeks, I have constantly been falling apart and being put back together--not a state conducive to accurate and fruitful communication to others, but certainly a necessary state of metamorphosis.

I came here intending to lose myself in the culture. I am indeed losing myself, but it is not the culture here that I find changing me. God has seen what I have done to myself in the name of chasing after His glory and being pleasing in His sight. He has seen to the real core of issues that I once dug up in my limited understanding. I tried to fix things according to what the Bible said, and according to what people told me what they saw of me. I tried to blend in with culture at home. But that is not what God wanted for me. Perhaps that is not what He ever intended.

If I have prayer requests, they are these: To be open to the full depth of God's love, not frightened of how overpowering it is, or its grip on me; to be positively responsive to it, as He picks up things in my heart that I would rather destroy or let collect dust on a shelf than even look at (let alone deal with). That my spirit would line up with my body, rather than feel trapped in it. And that my physical body (and my emotions and spirit, I suppose) would hold up under the strain of early mornings and long days of focus. (My body has already given out periodically over the last couple weeks. It seems to be doing better now; I can only hope and pray that continues.)

We have two weeks until our Outreach Phase begins. The first 16 days of our 2-month Outreach will be what we are calling the "Border Walk." This involves us walking the entire 200-mile border of Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, crisscrossing between the two countries so that we spend each night in a different city in the alternate country. (Remember that although it's all on the island of Ireland, as we walk this line we ARE technically crossing an international border [even though passports will not be an issue], and all the Irish know it. So please pray against prejudices, especially for our two Northern Irish teammates as we go repeatedly into the Republic.) The Border Walk is actually a prayer walk, praying for reconciliation, and we will be carrying a large wooden cross with us as we walk and pray. Word is the smallest distance we will travel in one day is 8 miles, and the largest distance is 22 miles. As most of us are out of shape, and have tennis shoes that are not ideal for such long stretches of walking, the distance we are covering on foot seems rather formidable. Please pray for strength (physical, emotional, and spiritual), that even in our weakness we will be able to love on each other and on others, and that as we walk God will show us what we need to pray for and put people in our path who are hungry for the change that only God can bring.