Tag Archives: witness

Poverty Strongholds Finale – Pain Upon Pain

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11. Poverty Strongholds – Pain Upon Pain

  1. Demons
  2. Poor Stewardship
  3. Lack of Knowledge (common sense)
  4. Mind Sets (faulty thinking)
  5. Lack of Holiness
  6. Agreements with the Enemy
  7. Bad Theology
  8. Blaming & Excuses
  9. Refusing to be a Blessing
  10. Pain Upon Pain 

Today in conclusion to this series I am writing about #10 Poverty Stronghold, Pain Upon Pain. 

My original doodling of this material, while in Uganda, began with the first 8 strongholds, and then once home and as I was writing my first post about this topic I realized that pain upon pain is a critical contributor to poverty strongholds. In identifying this I thought I would rework the Poverty Stronghold Diagram / Pie Chart to add in pain upon pain, and yet, as I’ve been fleshing out the rest of the material I realized that in fact, pain upon pain is a stronghold that overlays all of the other strongholds; we see that strongholds of Pain Upon Pain are laid over it all, informing and confounding each individual stronghold in turn.

I begin by repeating here what I wrote in my first post regarding pain upon pain that is buried deep in a people and passed on to generations after generations:

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Hands Off!

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Every once in awhile I come across an indiscretion within the body of Christ. It is something that in some circles is considered normal but ultimately reveals itself to be the precursor to much bad fruit. It is this thing about permission and an assumed ownership of each other’s gifting and callings.

I remember many years ago sitting in a church service listening to a message regarding the verse, “To him who has been given much, much is required” and immediately through my mind ran a litany of all the things I had been given.

Now, the Lord had already been telling me for some years that one day I would be impacting many, many people around the world. I was slowly adjusting to this thought and preparing myself for this work of the Lord that was still off in some distant future.

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The Work of Death

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God delights to meet with His people. Gathering, walking, talking, abiding in each other’s presence, this is the agenda and heart of God and all of His efforts ever since the beginning of time have been unto relationship, and since the fall, have been about restoring relationship.

Within the text of Genesis, right at the start in chapter three, we find God restoring dignity to mankind and covering over what had already been lost.

“The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them.” Genesis 3:21, is not just a nice little verse about the newest fashions of the day. It is about God interrupting created order for the sake of his children. God the creator of all things, the one who sustains all life, kills one of his creatures for the benefit and blessing and restored dignity of both Adam and Eve.

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Coming Out of Agreement

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It is a very easy, natural even, to agree with the compromises of health and of strength within our bodies and lives. Years back I heard it said this say, “When you agree to your limitations they are surely yours.”

I recently heard the testimony of someone who had at one time realized her agreement with the chronic ill-health she was experiencing. This began of course in the mind, “Gosh, I am so physically unwell” would replay in her mind and spirit until one day she realized that she was in agreement with ill-health.

Once she realized this she made a decision to come out of agreement with ill-health, and as she began to disagree with her chronic ill-health she became healthy. To this day she does not have the compromised health she was once experiencing.

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Capturing God’s Heart – Simple Guide to Sermons – Volume 35

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I write this today to give some practical and simple guidelines to those who are compelled to share the word of God but may struggle with any of the following:

  • Do not have a Bible school training
  • Do not have opportunity to study the Bible for hours at a time
  • Are brand new to the Bible

This simple guide can be used by pastors and by lay persons to prepare a simple sermon, a Bible study class, or to simply share a personal testimony.

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Our Nakedness is Covered by Our Lord

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I’ve facilitated dozens of people through hundreds of prayer ministry sessions. Here in the company of each other and the Holy Spirit individuals turn towards the Lord.

Everyone comes with unresolved pain, unrecognized conclusions about life, fears they can’t quite name, anxiety, and more and as I direct and lead them in bringing these kinds of things to the feet of Christ and his cross and into the throne room of God there is never a harsh word spoken. Never.

Time after time, for years now, I suggest, “Ask Jesus what you do with this” And as they take their query to the Lord, always unsure and risking to bare this part of their life to God, the Holy Spirit always replies and directs in warmth, affirmation, compassion. Always.

And burdens are lifted time after time after time after time after time.

The hard work is the turning to God. We all have shame and embarrassments, regrets and disappointments, lies and condemnations playing over in our lives in one degree or another. These are the things that keep us from God.

But not because God is holding these things against us, no, rather it is us who hold these things between us and God.

We have our failures, we have our sin, we have our shame, whatever it may be, and we keep it close to our hearts trying, trying, trying to overcome and solve and fix this thing that just won’t go away.

We orient to our broken lives and turn away from God in our shame. But the thing only gets worse when we do this with cycles of despondency and failure taking hold, increasing our guilt, increasing our fear, increasing our anxiety.

It is only as we realize that we cannot fix this thing or our lives, only when we come to the end of ourselves, that we are convinced to turn toward God, to fix our eyes on Christ, and to open ourselves to his grace in our lives.

For the grace of Christ is a powerful agent of transformation. By it we are changed. Simple as that.

It’s not about our working at things harder. Christ didn’t die for this.

It’s not about our making things right. Most things cannot be made right.

It’s not about our striving, service, sacrifice. You can’t make it happen.

It’s about grace and the power of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Hang out with him and you will become a different, more whole, healthy, balanced, wise, content, person.

You will increase in holiness, righteousness, patience, peace, love, just to name a few.

I have personally entered into these intimate conversations with the Lord via prayer ministry well over a hundred times and as I bring my own stuff to the Lord I am changed in my perspective of God simply by how he conducts these conversations.

And then, in the witness to dozens of others encountering the same God again and again and again, I stand as a witness to the gracious manner of the Lord.

God is not out to get you. God is not out to get anyone.

God will not embarrass you. God will not uncover your shame.

In the book of Genesis 9 we find the story of Moses becoming drunk and laying uncovered in his tent. We read that his son Ham saw his nakedness and proceeded to talk about it to others; Ham increased the uncovering of his father.

Then we read that Shem and Japheth took a garment and walking backwards covered over their fathers nakedness; they refused to participate in his uncovering but instead committed themselves to his dignity regardless of his drunken state.

This is exactly how God is with us. THIS IS EXACTLY HOW GOD IS WITH YOU AND I.

God is committed to your dignity regardless of your drunken (fill it in for yourself) state.

I’ve seen it hundreds of times. I’ve experienced it myself hundreds of times.

God covers over our nakedness. He does not expose, humiliate, condemn.

In this we have confidence to come before the throne of grace receiving life afresh.

“Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” Hebrews 4:16

Amen and amen with all praise to you Lord.

How to Pray

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In my ministry travels I’ve become aware of the fact that not everyone knows how to pray. In fact, I’ve found in some places that it isn’t traditionally thought that the people can pray but rather believed prayer is only for the learned and the leaders, the bishops and pastors. But of course, this simply isn’t true.

Jesus himself taught those around him how to pray and we find this instruction in Matthew 6:9-13:

“9 Pray then like this:

“Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name.
10 Your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
11 Give us this day our daily bread,
12 and forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
13 And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.”

Jesus begins this prayer with an intimate term of Father. This would have been surprising to those he taught, scandalous even, because he is suggesting familiarity with God, the kind of close relationship that we may know in our earthily families but that would never be imagined with the creator of the universe.

And yet this is the start of Jesus instruction. He is basically opening up a new dimension of prayer as that of intimate, close, familiar, conversation. Imagine if you will a kingdom and a king. In this kingdom there are the common folk, those who work in the palace, other leaders alongside the king and then there is the family, the children of the king.

In any kingdom there is protocol that governs which people can approach the king and in which manner. The rules might be many and few would have opportunity for an audience with the king. But imagine that in that kingdom and with that king, though there are many rules, that the children of the king require no protocol and are not subject to the same rules. A son or daughter of the king bypasses all the rules and protocol by virtue of being a son or daughter. They have unparalleled access to the king.

This is the image that Jesus paints. As sons and daughters of God we have full access. It is the same as when my children would crawl up onto my lap when they were smaller. They needed no permission and no invitation even, they simply knew and acted on their freedom to snuggle in whenever they wanted. This is how we approach our prayer life, our whole life, with God.

At the same time we find Jesus directing our hearts and minds to honour God, “hallowed by thy name”. We acknowledge the greatness of the name of God. In this we declare his goodness, his might, his holiness, his omnipotence, his governance; we give honour to God.

We say ‘Father’ and we say ‘How great you are’.

Both hand in hand, familiarity and comfort and ease alongside worship and adoration.

In verse ten Jesus directs our prayers into agreement with the Father’s will on this earth. Throughout scripture we are taught about the power found in agreement of two or more. In our natural and human life we find it all too easy to agree with Satan. Our minds are often full of his lies, his condemnations, his attacks, his confounding, but for a life that goes forward in the strength of the Lord it is imperative that we begin agreeing with God, with his promises, his purposes, his hope, his strength. ‘Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven’ gives us the model of how to align our hearts and minds with the plans of God.

Here we put down our own best thoughts and wisdom and declare our allegiance to a wisdom higher than ours.

Verse eleven with its simple ‘give us this day our daily bread’ declares and admits our dependance on the Lord for our very lives. Taken literally we cry out to the Lord for the necessary food and resources to get us through each day. This simple line also models to us that we take it one day at a time. Notice that Jesus did not instruct us to pray ‘give us this years bread’. Rather we walk day by day with the Lord.

Taken symbolically this simple line points us to our need for spiritual bread which is of course Jesus Christ himself. John 6:35 finds Jesus saying, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.” Here we acknowledge our need of a saviour and when we do this we enter into all the possibilities and resources that heaven holds.

Verse eleven is interesting. The ability to speak out ‘and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors’ brings us face to face with our own hearts for only if we have forgiven others can we speak this with sincerity. Our attention is immediately, yet indirectly, drawn to the state of our own hearts and we are given pause to consider a moment the truth of what we are speaking for ourselves.

It becomes apparent very quickly if we have in fact forgiven others or not. Our hearts catch us if we have not and we are compelled to enter into this work of forgiveness. Here we are simply reminded of the heart of the gospel and compelled to live it out.

In addition to this simple remembrance for our own sakes is the incredible power in forgiveness unto another. John 20:23 says, “If you forgive anyone’s sins, they are forgiven. If you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.”

It appears that we are entered into the work of our Lord and his grace unto each other. Suggested here, if not explicitly stated, is the power unto life or death. Consider how it reads in the Complete Jewish Bible, “If you forgive someone’s sins, their sins are forgiven; if you hold them, they are held.”

Without forgiveness we hold the sins of others. And don’t we know this to be true. To hold the sins of others in our being becomes a heavy and tortuous thing. Bitterness destroys us from the inside out.

The depths of this Matthew 6:11 verse we may never fully comprehend, never fully fathom the depths of, yet we can agree and bring our hearts into alignment, into agreement regarding God’s forgiveness of others and therefore our forgiveness of them as well.

Jesus finishes off by instructing, “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” This last part of The Lord’s Prayer holds for me the least clarity. It seems to be a cry of our need to be delivered from our own wayward heart and ways; an acknowledgment that we have this huge propensity to sin and to evil and our subsequent and desperate need for the Lord’s help.

Its a good place to end I think. For we’ve just traversed a wide journey. We started off familiar in the Father’s arms and we declared the glory of his name (vs.9). We’ve stood alongside in powerful agreement unto his will and heart over our lives and this world. As vice-regents we have commanded the kingdom of God into our realities (vs.10).

We then immediately fall to our knees declaring our utter dependance on his provision both physically and spiritually (vs.11) and are reminded of and brought to account the state of our relationships with the Lord and with others (vs.12).

Finishing off finds us once more standing alongside the Lord simply stating our humanity and declaring his omnipotence (vs.13).

Prayer is first and foremost a matter of our hearts position before the Lord. It isn’t the words we speak or the length by which we pray, it has nothing to do with eloquence, nothing to do with volume, and its not really about repeating what we know about God, rather it is a private conversation between God and you.

In this the simpler the better. Too many words and we lose our effectiveness.

On my recent trip to Mozambique, where prayer was a loud repetition of facts about God my own prayers became simpler and simpler.

“God we welcome you. God we love you. Thank-you for this day.”

 

LEARN HOW TO PRAY over at http://teachingpeoplehowtopray.org

Blessings on You Friend

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It was the summer of 2008. I had for some years already been waiting on the go-ahead from the Lord to invite a team of prayer warriors to come around me.

The preparations for the work of CCI as it is today (and will be tomorrow) had been happening for some time in my own heart and mind and gathering what would amount to a personal board of directors was my first outwardly public act.

The list of who I would invite had been made some time earlier and so as the summer of 2008 progressed I pulled out my list of candidates and went over it again with the Lord.

On that list was Lorna Rande, someone I had known since I was seventeen years old. As Lorna and I look back on the years it is amazing the way God weaves lives together. We realize, not only for our enjoyment here on earth but because there is spirit realm work to be done and He knows our spiritual DNA and the partnerships that need to form.

Lorna Rande

And so He weaves us together in heart and spirit and then in life. This has been my experience with Lorna. My heart has always had a welcome space in Lorna’s heart. She has advocated and stood alongside me personally for many many years and as that turned into Capturing Courage International her heart alongside us has strengthened who we are.

What has sadly become apparent, and yet we are at peace, is that the time of her service and heart specifically to myself and Capturing Courage is at an end.

Every single person who has been tucked into CCI for a time has come with a specific assignment, an impartation of blessing, over our work. And then, at some point in time it becomes apparent that that specific job is completed and the person is released.

And so it is time to say goodbye to Lorna, not as friends but in this specific work. And so we say Thank-you Lorna for your incredible investment of heart and concern and advocacy before the Father on our behalf, on my behalf. Bless you.

We declare the Lord’s keeping and deep peace over you in the name and the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, with all glory and honour to God and all delight over your future.

God-speed my friend as you go forward in life.

Who’s the Boss?

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As with any para-church organization, as with any start-up of any sort, as with any new church plant, we at Capturing Courage have been walking through financial challenges and lessons for awhile now. And we have learned a lot of things.

I used to shy away from money matters. Money used to frighten me and there was always a sense of confusion about how to navigate choices and decisions regarding money. But of course this didn’t do me any good whatsoever. I used to think that the answer to this confusion would be to have more money. After all, if I wasn’t hindered in my choices perhaps I wouldn’t be so confused.

But large infusions of money are never the answer. I know this now. For if we are not competent in the little we won’t be competent in the much. These last few years have seen us becoming competent in the little. And it’s been a really good thing.

In the midst of the last couple of years a few definitive things have been sorted out within my own being that are now impacting the character and nature of us at CCI (as in any organization the leader sets the tone and standard and growth – the organization won’t grow beyond the leaders growth).

The first thing the Lord did was to separate my sense of self from money. In other words, who I am has nothing to do with, takes no bearing from, where our money is at at any given time. Meaning, if I had debt (I learned this in the midst of debt) I was not a less-than person. God poured into me his love and grace and comfort and leading just the same in debt as in much.

This was the work of many painful months (as the Lord dismembered my unholy soul ties with money – I was way too associated with money), looking back I wouldn’t undo this. For this separation then set into place the ability to have much without it making any statement about myself as well. And as we go forward within the many promises and assurances from the Lord that there is plenty of money for the work called of us it is imperative that much does not speak of us but speaks of our Lord.

In other words, I am the same person whether in want or in wealth. This was a critical first thing to learn and something I learned down to the marrow of my bones. As Paul wrote in Philippians, ” for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need.” 4:11-12

This journey with money has simply been a process of removing ego from the mix. In any of the things we are called to, but particularly within the spirit realm, there must not be anything of us in the mix. Meaning, where we are in the flesh we are weak and prone to compromise and confusion (and outright attack). Where we are in the spirit things are clear and systematic, genuine and true investments in the kingdom of God.

Ego particularly shows up in money decisions. I recently received a text from one of our Ugandan pastors who was expecting me in January. I had let him know that we had made the decision that I would not travel there in January for a number of reasons. His reply was laden thick with disappointment and it caught at my heart.

All of a sudden, where one day before I was so sure that I wasn’t to travel, I now desperately wanted to head there in January. But upon further study of my heart I realized that there was still woven through me this lie and feeling of being a disappointment. I went before the Lord with it, did some business alongside the spirit, wept and prayed it through, and have come out the other side freer than before.

You see, if our decisions are laden with our own ego and the lies and such woven there, our decisions will be bad ones. And we will end up ineffective and unproductive in the work at hand.

We have made it very clear in our statements about how we decide when and where to travel and that we move according to the Holy Spirit only. We don’t go with our best ideas or anyone else’s for that matter. Yet right there in the midst of feeling a disappointment all of the careful movement with the spirit was almost thrown out the window.

For, with the spirit + not disappointing = really bad decision making.

Ego had to be removed once more from the equation. Money matters and the decisions around them highlight where our ego’s remain in the mix. For in my need (notice, my need, not the Lords) to not disappoint I was ready to bombard our donors for more money and to ‘make it happen’ for January in Uganda.

But in this I would have violated so many of the things we have learned. For instance:

1. Do with what we have.

2. God is not in a rush.

3. Faithful with a little.

4. Trust the timing of each trip.

5. Slow steady growth is best.

6. Do not move with the programs of men.

7. Rest in the Lord and he will provide.

And quite frankly, if the only way we can follow the leading of the Lord and understand his timing is by the money at hand or not at hand, we are still crippled as leaders. If the only thing that tells us that ‘yes now it is time to go to such and such a place’ is the money available we are sunk.

It’s one of the other things I’ve been learning and that must still be fully realized in my being, that money is a non-entity. That in the kingdom of God money holds no more power than a flea on the ground. It is us who give way too much power to money. It is us who exaggerate its voice.

To truly move by the Spirit would be the ability (for us at CCI) to hold back even with much money in the bank. For are we making rational decisions alongside the spirit or emotional decisions alongside money?

Our hearts want to go everywhere today. As we continue building and investing and showing up in relationship after relationship my own heart is torn and tested time and again. We cannot go everywhere at once. I’m not even so sure we can go everywhere in this coming year. So how do we decide?

What I do know, is that we wait on the leading and the guiding of the Holy Spirit. We put aside our own best thoughts and wisdoms and we truly wait. Then, when the Lord says, ‘Go’, then we go, and not before. At the same time when the Lord says, ‘Go’ we make our plans in the provision of the Lord even if we cannot see it all at the front end.

Money is simply passion and energy and vision and we call it forth in surrender and service to the leading of our Lord. The lack of it will not lead us, the much of it will not lead us. Rather, we are led by the Spirit of our Living God.

As we surrender again and again to this way of being alongside our Lord we create a space, we lead the way, we set the stage, we model to money that it too must surrender to this way. Money must also bow itself to the timing and direction of our Lord here at CCI.

Amen and amen in the name and the blood of our Living Lord Jesus Christ.

With all glory to you Father.

It’s Not Our Work

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“I was somewhere with you, a place I did not know…..there was people around  big ugly people that were chasing people and when they caught them …they would throw them in this muddy river…

You Cyndy  were standing on the shore and I was  standing beside you watching …..Then Cyndy you bent down and reached and caught one of people in the river and pulled him/her up. I could not tell if men or women or child was being pulled up with only one hand, so strong you looked, so strong you were.

I was afraid for you Cyndy you just kept pulling and pulling crying out “I can’t let go” over and over. and when you pulled we saw that the people were all attached to each other so that that there was a long line of them  coming up …how many we did not know .? It seems like never ending….

Then we heard a loud noise coming from where the ugly big people were, and then everything got quiet, and they had disappeared….we saw the water become clearer and all the people you had pulled out started to walk away from you and I. they were singing….loud singing and walking away.

You turn to me and said, “You must go home now” and then I woke up.

The depths of work done on this last ministry trip to Mozambique are slowly coming out of the depths of myself. The entire time I was away I kept thinking, “How am I going to share this trip? How do I summarize this in words?!”

Slowly, bit by bit, I’m finding words for it all. This prophetic dream (just above) was given to one of our prayer partners and it summarizes perfectly the work in the spirit realm and the impact in people’s lives.

I am glad for a dream that helps to explain the work, for I’m finding it difficult to put words to what was deep and under the surface. The trip, on the surface, carried no drama and held little spectacle.

There was merely four of us (and one little one) traipsing across many kilometres by train and bus, truck and motorbike, and by foot, to visit ten churches, their pastors, and congregations, and then these profound conversations.

It began in Chupanga. Our first real stop. We had arrived in the morning and the first service was that evening. I cannot even remember what I spoke on but at the end of the service I was asked to pray for the people.

Now I have a bit of a rebellious streak to me, and over the course of the trips I’ve taken I’ve become really tired of being brought out as the circus performer who will now work wonders on you through her prayers. blah…

So that night I refused. I said, “No, I won’t be praying for you. Rather, I am going to teach you to pray for each other.”

And so this is what I, and my translator Whisky, tried to do. Once I was done teaching Whisky went on with much encouragement’s. All to no avail. It was a bit of a dismal failure from what I could tell.

But the evening concluded and back we all went to the house we were staying in. Upon our arrival we found the Pastor and his right hand man already there. How they got there so fast I’ve no idea!

And I realized that I just might need to explain why I had refused to pray for their people. So I shared what I had been learning the last few months.

I shared the bigger thinking the Lord had been giving me, the conviction to teach the people to do the work of the Kingdom (it doesn’t just belong to a few), how churches grow when people are empowered, what I’ve been learning from the house-church movement in India, and I also shared a prophetic word from one of our pastors in Kenya.

It was a bit of a long explanation, really a laying out of my heart and how the Lord was leading us at Capturing Courage, and once I’d finished their immediate question was, “You mean people can pray for each other?”

I was stunned. Struck. Saddened. In disbelief.

“Yes, people can pray for each other.”

And there began hours of conversation, late into the night, about life in Christ, about prophecy, about prayer, about leadership, about marriage, about men and women in the church, about so much.

Question after question was directed at me accompanied by a hunger for wisdom and clarity. Long past bedtime we finally broke up our gathering. And then picked it up the next day.

That next evening I didn’t preach, we simply held a forum. With Pastor Daniel, Whisky, and myself on chairs at the front of the church Daniel presented question after question, Whisky translated, I answered the question, Whisky translated, and on we went.

Life changing conversation that will not fade away.

And I still don’t have words for it all. But I’ll keep sharing it a layer at a time. So many dimensions.

The Lord is simply at work. This I know. My bag had been packed for Mozambique for an entire year. Literally. Packed and ready to go. For a year’s time.

The timing of the work of God is critical to any ministry. It is why we move in sync with the exact leading and timing of the Holy Spirit. Not before, not after.

For these works are not of us. In any way. We are simply conduits of God’s heart over people and areas. There are so many things that must align in realms that we do not see, that it is best to simply trust and wait, and then when we hear the ‘go’ we go. Quickly, efficiently, simply.

This is God’s work, not ours.

 

True Poverty

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I’ve arrived home from my trip to Mozambique. It was stunning and simple, beautiful and layered in profound peace. It will take some time to put words to the time and experience. Yet bit by bit I will share the goodness of God in Mozambique. Where to start? This is pressing on me:

I came across my first poverty this trip. And it had nothing to do with available possessions or food and everything to do with pain and sorrow.

Here in a small church we found sadness pressed down running over. It was all we could do to stay there. Even our small group found ourselves pressed under it.

The houses were the same as everywhere else I’ve been. The cookhouse was large and spacious. The dirt floors were no different than any other we had been in. The storehouse of grains and such seemed well stocked.

The first indication that things were different was that the floor in the house was not as well swept as other places we’d been so far.

The second thing was the sorrow of the children. I don’t think there was a minute that passed without at least one child sobbing over something.

My heart was already heavy as we gathered for worship that evening. The songs were the same, the dancing by the young teen girls was the same, and yet such a difference.

There were visible medical difficulties. A number of the people, young and old alike, had crossed eyes. One young teen was mentally challenged.

And to my shock the ‘choir’ girls mocked and laughed at an old woman passing by. I had never before encountered such disrespect. To the girl who was mentally challenged they laughed and made fun. This is when I really knew that something was very wrong in this place.

While singing my own heart had been despairing. Every persons eyes carried so much pain. And into the weight I too almost became bowed down to hopelessness. Yet into that space God reminded me that he was big enough for the problems here. “Of course!” I was reminded.

I was to bring the message that evening, but opted rather to simply pray for the children. To speak, to declare, goodness and light over their lives, to agree with God’s hope and plans for their futures. And so one by one I prayed and declared the goodness of God over each little life.

It was the least and the most that I could do.

At first I thought that the parents just didn’t know how to love their children. Children would cry and parents would laugh or ignore. But in the course of our twenty-four hours there I realized that it wasn’t that they didn’t know how to parent, but that they were all caught in crippling cycles of deep pain.

It is no secret that those in pain pass on pain to others. That when loss and sadness increase we either work our way through these things or we become hardened and flat in our own responses. Hardened in our own responses we have nothing to give to the pain of others. We cannot meet them in their pain for our own is just too great.

In that space we begin to mock others, to make fun of those less than us, to hold off hope, to refuse comfort. We cannot, after all, give what we have not yet received.

And so I began praying against the cycles of pain that are there. Began standing in the gap, like one putting a stick into the wheel of a bicycle that just must by stopped.

Our one evening there, over an open fire and under a stunning starry sky I did share a message on my heart. A favorite one of mine, that we need not bring our much to God, but rather we bring our little, and God makes it into much. Of how we do one day at a time and of the importance of leading in generosity toward each other. Of confessing our fear and trusting God to pour through us in ministry to each other.

It seemed appropriate in this place that was bowed under such weight of sorrow and sadness. God’s way out of heartache and despair is the same for each of us. Truth transcends culture.

This word was well received and in the gentle spirit in which it was given I trust is even now making its way through layers of hurt and pain.

As we left the next day, we gathered as usual in the main home to sing and pray. I closed off the time in prayer and made sure to speak directly to the cycles of pain and to declare their end and in their place the goodness of God.

My prayer was of course much longer than this, for in the praying I sought to validate where they were at, the state of things as they were, and to bring hope and a sense that healing is possible as they go forward.

As I finished off and said my Amen the women wiped tears from their eyes.

This community will continue to be in my prayers. And the churches nearby are gearing towards more intentional care and mentoring and healing alongside them. This place of true poverty, that had nothing to do with possessions or food or clothes has everything to do with cycles of pain and of sadness that overwhelmed.

It is as I have suspected. Poverty is not often about food or clothes or housing (although I understand it sometimes is), but the most crippling poverty of all is a lack of knowledge of the goodness of God. True poverty is an absence of hope.