STORIES

I don't have it all figured out. I spend most of my days trying to figure out what the next best thing to do is. Most days I get it wrong. Over the course of the past year, the Lord has shown me that that's ok. Deep in my heart, I want to be a missionary sent by a church with the purpose of planting churches in unreached parts of the world. However, the truth is I still have a long way to go in my journey before that becomes a reality in my life. Despite this tension, I find comfort in that God's only requirement of me is that I remain faithful to Him and when I stumble that I would return to Him. It is through God's grace that on these past few trips to Colombia, the Lord has placed us in front of faithful men and women and given us very concrete examples of what faithfulness looks like lived out in day to day life. During our time spent with these faithful men and women, God has shown us the qualities that make a man or woman faithful. Consistent in Obedience For those who don't know, during our time in Colombia, we served at a foundation/ homeless shelter/church that helps men and women encounter Jesus, get off the streets and live restored lives through the gospel. However, many of you don't know the story of how this ministry grew to be where it is today. During our time in Colombia, we had the honor of interviewing Pastor Douglas; the man who God used to found City of Refuge. I wish I could share in this short blog the whole story of how City of Refuge came to be, but it would be too many pages for the scope of this blog. Instead, I want to highlight elements from the story of how City of refuge came to be and the lesson it is teaching me about what it means to be a faithful man of God. Douglas began his story with childlike faith, hearing stories of God speaking intimately to faithful men following God's voice wherever it led. Stories like David Wilkerson's the cross and the switchblade helped mold Douglas' mind and shaped his expectations from God. Following the call he heard on his life, Douglas ended up in Medellin Colombia in the early 1990's at the height of Pablo Escobar's drug empire in Colombia. In what may feel like a crazy turn of events, God called Douglas out into the streets of Medellin late one Saturday night. Douglas followed God's leading and ended up finding a group of homeless men in an alleyway and started ministering and praying for one of them. Suddenly, midway through his prayer, he found himself surrounded by a large group of men. In his fear, he thanked God for the opportunity to minister to the man, but he thought these men were surrounding him to kill him. Instead, they asked if he could do for them what he did with the man. Just like that, a ministry was born. If God can birth a ministry from one insane act of obedience, he can sustain a ministry by small, repetitive and mundane acts of ministry. It is easy after a radical moment in an alleyway to get carried away with emotionalism and seek that high every time that you act out in obedience to the voice of God, but Douglas was not that way. He obeyed the voice of God not because of emotions, but because He believed it was God leading Him and that God is a rewarder of those who seek Him. Subsequently, Douglas has gone out in obedience to the call into the streets once a week for the past 30 years. Whether it was just him going out, or a group; whether he saw people reach salvation and be delivered from drug addiction or not; Douglas was not seeking an emotional high. He was seeking to be faithful. Today City of Refuge sleeps about 80 homeless men a night, has anywhere between 10-30 men and women in their drug program, ministers to Venezuelan refugees, has a large children's ministry and is a healthy and vibrant church. Though not without setbacks and hardships, the story of city of refuge has shown me the power of obedience to the voice of God and even more importantly, the power of consistency in obedience to the voice of the Lord. Compassionate with the Truth During our time in Colombia, we have had the greatest opportunity to get to know another faithful man of God named Harry. Harry and his wife Margaret came down from Times Square Church in New York about 16 years ago. During his time at City of Refuge, Harry has become a right hand man for Pastor Douglas dealing with all the day to day operations of the foundation and working especially closely to the men in the program. I will never forget back in 2019 when one of my team members asked him what the hardest part of the ministry was for him and he said the hardest part was "not becoming cynical towards those you minister to". It wasn't until I returned these past few times that I finally understood what he meant. Ministering to recovering drug addicts is hard. They are not always the most honest people. It is hard for many of them to let go of their old ways of life. The sad reality is that most people who enter the program don't complete the program because real change requires too much of them. Ministering to these type of people day in and day out can be exhausting and can very quickly lead to cynicism. It is hard to express in words the level of care and compassion that I witnessed Harry pour out to the guys while still being firm in truth. On our most recent trip, two of the guys had gotten into an altercation. They had been having conflict regularly for a while and one of the guys walks into his office one day while we are sitting there with Harry and tells Harry he can't take it anymore. This guy keeps insulting him and tearing him down and he has tried humbling himself and apologizing for his contribution to their conflict and Harry asked him one of the most unforgettable questions. It kind of shocked me and it shouldn't have. "Have you offered to wash his feet yet?" The question was packed full of truth and yet at the same time filled with compassion. One of the greatest examples of compassion we have in the bible is when Jesus washed his disciples feet. Jesus saw that the greatest need his disciples had was to be clean (though the cleanliness he spoke of was spiritual) and he got on his knees and washed his disciples feet, though he could have easily have asked them to serve him. The reality is that ministering to homeless and drug addicts is much like cleaning dirty feet. It is not a desirable job and requires humility and the knowledge that once those feet are clean, they will get dirty again (that's when it's tempting to be cynical). What I saw in Harry in the way that he loved those guys in the program despite all their junk was a picture of the compassion Jesus shows us in our wretched and depraved state. He cleans us up knowing that we will get dirty again. It's loving people when they are hardest to love and it's seeing what people need most and being willing to give them that at great expense to yourself. God Glorifying Humility In addition to our interviews at the foundation with Harry and Douglas, we had the beautiful privilege of talking to a faithful woman of God named Rebecca. We met Rebecca back in 2019 when we did the world race. At the time she was serving faithfully at City of Refuge. During our return last year in October, we discovered that she felt like God was leading her to start a ministry devoted to helping Venezuelan refugees escape prostitution and sex trafficking. The challenge was that Rebecca served at City of Refuge for 12 years before feeling the call to start this ministry. She didn't just want to leave because she had a lot of responsibility in the ministry at City of Refuge and it was difficult to find someone to replace her. However, even more importantly, she wanted to honor the leadership God had placed in her life and not leave City of Refuge without the blessing Pastor Douglas and the church. Rebecca's patience in waiting for God to bring her calling forth and seeking the go ahead from the authority God placed over her through the church is inspiring. She is now working in Medellin with Venezuelan refugees and looking to start a halfway house to house women rescued from prostitution. Submitting to Godly authority doesn't always feel good and often does not fit our timing or desires, but it is always God glorifying because it is an act of humility in submitting to God's design. God taught me a lot about what it means to be faithful on my most recent trip to Colombia and I am so grateful that he has surrounded me with such inspiring faithful men and women that he uses to teach me the kind of character he is seeking to build in me before I am useful to Him in ministry.