Tag Archives: faith

Capturing God’s Heart – Faith – Volume 22

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I’ve had a request to write about Faith. When I think about faith I think about our hearts.The core of our lives comes from our hearts. Our hearts experience many things. It is with our hearts that we feel and decide and go forward in life.

It is also in our hearts that we find darkness and lies and fear.

In essence life springs from our hearts. In Proverbs 4:23 we read, “Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.”

Every part of our lives is an outworking of our hearts. It is why it is so important that we get our hearts right with God. That we align our hearts with God’s heart.

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Workers Needed

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Pastor KakubaWhen Jesus said, “The harvest if plentiful, but the laborers are few” he wasn’t kidding.

I’ve come face to face with this again and again. The hunger just for what Capturing Courage is bringing to the table is more than we can keep up with.

I can only imagine other more larger organizations.

We need a few (actually a lot) more laborers:

  • Are you interested in standing alongside indigenous leaders around the world?
  • Can you speak from your heart?
  • Have you experienced loss and failure and disappointment?
  • Have you experienced the power of God through it all?
  • Do you know the Holy Spirit?
  • Are you interested and willing to learn and grow in Spiritual Authority?
  • Are you able to invest some of your life overseas?
  • Can you work hard?
  • Do you want to impact redemptive change all over the world?
  • Can you leave niceties behind and find yourself at home no matter where you go?
  • Are you interested in standing alongside leaders in support and strength?
  • Would you be willing to make lifelong friends from all over the globe?
  • Are you interested in being mentored and equipped to minister around the world?
  • Can you wait on the Lord’s explicit leading and direction?
  • Are you equally comfortable with children and leaders and men and women and the elderly?
  • Have you known your own poverty of soul?
  • Are you sensitive to the Holy Spirit?
  • Do you love leaders?
  • Do you love?
  • Do you know Jesus?

Are you willing to grow in love, to be challenged and equipped and empowered, broken down, refined, and then built back up in the power of God?

Then do we have an opportunity for you.

Seriously.

The invitations from Pastors and Evangelists and Bishops from various parts of the world just keep coming in.

But they are not just invitations. There is a hunger and a heartfelt eagerness for training and equipping that is both beautiful and humbling.

These Pastors are doing amazing work. Hard work. Constant work. Consistent work. They are continually stretching out beyond themselves, and leading and reaching and enveloping their countrysides for Jesus Christ.

And quite simply,  they themselves need to be strengthened.

As a leader, when I am feeling overwhelmed and out of my element, when I need a dose of encouragement and tools of strength and strategy and additional wisdom added to my leader-tool-belt I go to the nearest Chapter and buy another half dozen books to build me up.

Rural indigenous Pastors do not have this same luxury.

Their faithfulness astounds me. As I receive letter after letter, email after email coming into my inbox explaining and telling of the work they are undertaking I am simply honored to be meeting them and so blessed by their lives.

Simply put, we at Capturing Courage simply want to be faithful to them.

It is our privilege to serve them. Will you join us?

While there is always a need for funds for the work, what is really so absolutely necessary are simply more people willing to give their lives away, willing to invest themselves in something that is bigger than all of us.

While Capturing Courage’ headquarters are located in Vancouver BC Canada, if this invitation strikes a cord with you, if the Holy Spirit resonates this in your life, then we are interested in speaking with you no matter where you are located.

Take a look at our Spiritual Authority syllabus for this is the core training we are taking and what you would be required to immerse yourself in for a time.

Beyond this you would be expected to be sensitive to the Holy Spirit and keen enough to bring your own expertise and experience of our Lord to the table. Are you gifted to heal emotionally? Can you touch and bring physical healing? In your presence are others encouraged and uplifted? Are you okay with team and are you able to mutually bless and come under another’s blessing? Do you understand the challenges that leaders face?

What are your particular passion and gifts of the Spirit and how do you see them fitting in with the mandate of Capturing Courage?

Contact Me and lets begin a conversation.

It is Okay

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310 compressed314 compressedLong years back I made this dress for my first daughter. A lot of work and care and effort went into this dress. What you can’t see is it has a crinoline and a little slip all attached underneath.

The collar is cross-stitched and in itself took some 10-20 hours to complete. The ruffling is by hand as well as the ribbon detailing.

When I look at this dress (I saved it along with the others I made my daughter her first five years) I am reminded of how well I wanted life to go. I’m reminded of the hopes and dreams and all-good intentions of making life as pretty as this little dress.

A few years before this dress when I was contemplating marriage I must admit there were a few red flags. My heart was not completely settled by any means, and yet into the conversations I would have with the Lord was the admonition, “It will be okay.”

Long story short, the years turned out far worse than I had ever imagined anything could be. But I look back and I see it truly has been okay, in the biggest broadest sense of the term.

The big picture of my life required those hard years. My heart had to be freed. My thinking had to be changed. My perspectives had to be transformed.

I had to come to know the deep love of God regardless of circumstance and surroundings.

I needed to find God in the midst of hunger, despair, loneliness, heartache, fear, and poverty.

And I did indeed find God in all these things and ways and then some. My hearts rough edges were smoothed to a shiny gloss. The part of me that needed everything pretty-as-a-pin now knows that external beauty and peace means nothing if there is not beauty and peace in ones inner being.

Fast-forward some two-dozen years and on the morning after my four-month old granddaughter Anna died in her sleep and I heard her say to me, “It’s okay Nana” I was ready to bank on that.

There wasn’t a part of me that did not know that it was okay. Really. Truly.

Has it all turned out like I thought? Barely a speck of it!

Is it okay? You bet.

So now, when I sit with my grandson Dorian on my lap, or think of my kids and those they will choose as spouses, the career decisions they are making, the educations gone after or not, I know that we don’t know how any of it will turn out.

The life of this little one Dorian we have no way of predicting. Will his life have challenges? Yes

Will he know heartache and struggle? You bet.

Yet will it be okay? Yes and amen.

I can sit with my grandchildren and with my kids with peace in the midst of the unknown, with joy in the midst of sadness, for with a heart that does not need anything perfect or nice, this bright red thread of peace and joy runs through all the muck and the mire, the unexpected and the difficult.

Because in the difficult our hearts are made expansive. In the unexpected we become resilient. In the unknown our faith is grown. And in sadness we find joy.

Our life’s expanse has room for more people. Our resilience makes way for new strengths. Our faith spurs on new life. And joy, well joy is never taken away. Once we have it, once we know it, everything changes.

We think we must have the good and the worthy to invest in the Kingdom of God. Nothing is farther from the truth. We must first start by offering our losses and our failures, our incomprehensible realities. Only then do we truly get God as good and trustworthy and honoring.

And only then can we invest out and about to those we meet regardless of their circumstances.

Quite frankly, until we are okay with it not being okay, we will never meet others in the midst of their pain. Until we are okay with loss we can never sit in companionship alongside others loss.

Until we have come face to face with our own poverty of soul we will never truly be able to fellowship in the poorest places on earth.

And until we know it doesn’t have to be perfect we have little to offer but grinding expectations and dishonest reckonings.

Bottom line, none of it is okay, but that is okay.

For we, we are simply okay.