Endurance

This week at my meal group, bible study, we discussed endurance and what it means to run the race with endurance and what the purpose is of running the race.

At first, what came to my mind was a personal example. This is an example of emotional endurance. I really am bad at sports, but I love playing. Every year at our school in Cambodia we had a athletic day (track and field day) and of course I always got last place in every race. I would often get encouraged by teachers, peers, and parents to finish the race, though many times I didn't want to, or felt the need to, cause I was last anyways. But I always finished those races.

Backing up a little. In sophomore year of high school, I joined all three sports offered at our school. Basketball, volleyball, and soccer. It was an emotional endurance because, I was an anchor in the team, at least that's how my teammates saw it. I could've easily quite, but I didn't because I loved what I was doing and I couldn't let my teammates control what I did or not. It took a little while to get to that place because in 8th grade and as a freshmen, I stuck to just volleyball, because I was the best at that sport. It was worse when I had my sisters on the same team. They have a competitive spirit which is bad because it helps bring the team to victory, but I didn't have that. I played for fun, and it was the only thing that kept me fit. There were conflicts between interests and different goals. I would get 'why do you do the sport you know you're not good at?' and 'oh, please don't mess up.' and more. I endured it, because I was encouraged through my coaches that I did belong to that team and to not pay attention to those comments. Though hard to ignore, I got stronger and I will do a sport I love even when I am told not to. Even through this God had richly blessed me. At the end of that year I won the sports award for the class, as there's only one per grade. I had also received the Gwen Coventry award, which was the highest award at our school given to 1 boy and 1 girl throughout high school. It was based on character and student leadership. It was insane to think that, out of all the athletes they could've chose from, they chose the least athletic.

I found a verse in Romans. Romans 5:3-5 "Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us." Reading this was encouraging, because those award didn't show my athletic abilities, it showed my character, which was shown through the endurance.

I don't mean to be prideful or arrogant. I'm simply sharing my story of God's grace and how I ran with endurance and purpose in that era of my life. I hope this can bring encouragement, because knowing that you aren't the only one going through a situation brings encouragement and hope.

God Bless

Hope

Google defines hope as "a feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen." I agree with this definition to an extent, because hope, allows for us to go further than what we see. Jesus is the hope to the hopeless and Jesus hasn't told us to give up hope. Romans 5:5 says "And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us." 

Hope is one of the ways that gives us a desire to live, but then even after life we have a hope to be with Christ. Hope can also come in different forms, for example: I have hope to see my birth parents or family again. This kind of hope is very ambitious because realistically I will probably not be able to see any of them again. But to take away that hope, takes away part of my life, because they are the people that have similar genes that I do, possibly within the same gene pool. I have never met them or know anything about them, but I still have hope that one day I may be able to see them. That's a very extreme example, but it's true. God can do the most impossible and bring hope to what seems  very hopeless. Another more realistic example; graduation is approaching and that's the end of High school, Middle school, and Elementary school, if I had no hope, I would see graduation as the end. However, I have hope that I will have a career and a future beyond high school. It allows me to see further than high school and motivates me to keep going.

I have hopes that I can reach my goal on my fundraising for YWAM DTS. gofund.me/maggiezrhea
I hope to reach this goal, which can take me beyond what I can see or imagine now. 

As Christ followers, our hope is to be with in heaven with God one day. Our preacher said that, hope helps us see beyond the horizon.  Having Hope in Christ allows us to see that there's something beyond even death, which is eternal life with Christ in heaven. 

Taking away hope from someone, no matter how far out of reach it seems to be, I personally would feel robbed. Even if it was something that others know that it can't happen and it's so far out of reach, it's still robbing a person from that aspect of their life.

I want to close with this verse from Job 11:18 

"You will be secure, because there is hope;

    you will look about you and take your rest in safety."

Orphans

I was once a child, a child apart of no home, an orphan, a child with no knowledge of biological family. And I am the child of God. 

Just thinking about those two perspectives… Not knowing your biological parents hurts, it leaves an emptiness to you, questions left unanswered. I'm usually told, 'be grateful you have a family', 'God is our father' and these are true there's no doubt and I believe in it. Ironically, the people who have told me these things have known their biological family. There's something to human nature that longs and desires to know your biological history, your past generations, your genealogy. It's usually not on my mind because I have a great family and great parents with a great God. But signing and filling out medical forms, when it says family history, I have to say 'unknown'. It's kind of tough because, unless God does a miracle (which He definitely could) I will always have to say that when filling out forms or whatever. There are also those moments when people talk about China or talk about their experiences, it gets a little heavy. A friend of mine went to my birthtown and when he came back and talked about it, I wanted to ask him so many questions I knew he couldn't answer. I wanted to try and find my identity with them. 

In Ephesians it talks about God being our father and how He has adopted us into his family. What's great about being adopted is that, we have a human experience of that, and have a sense to God's adoption for us. Being able to say that is a great honor, not too many people can attest to that as they haven't had the experiences of an adopted child. However, oddly enough, when we would tell people about us being adopted, they would ask, 'oh how is that?', some people our age have said 'isn't it tough?' And yah, there are those rough times (as mentioned above) but they are outweighed by the blessings from being adopted. 

I feel that God doesn't want us to ponder on our personal pasts, especially for us who know nothing about it, but to embrace what we've been given. We have been blessed to be in a great home, overlooked by great parents. And nobodies perfect so there are the issues, aside the point, adoption here on earth is a glimsp of the ultimate adoption. 

God Bless

Immigration

Being an immigrant, a TCK (Third World Kid), and an MK (Missionary Kid) I have a bunch of stories and many different perspectives on well known stories of my family. Never thought it this way, but I am an immigrant and this is a huge issue in the political world today, as the US presidential candidates for 2016 are addressing. Why is this such a huge issue? From my observation, this hasn't been much of an issue in the US in the past. It's an issue now, because I think ISIS is one of the main fears on America's hearts. But on a more personal level, reflecting back, David Martin Ruiz was an immigrant (I think) and he killed my brother. This hasn't changed my views on immigrants, because the ideal isn't realistic. America would ideally love to keep all of their citizens safe, reality is, they can't. Also, isn't America's statement "In God we trust", why aren't they trusting God now? God wants us to bring others in our home, the outcasts, the rejected and the lost. So are we going to ignore that? 

Here's a verse that clearly states what we need to do:

“‘When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the Lord your God."

Do we ignore this?