Charity: Water

Feeling pretty excited to try and raise some money for the program Charity: Water.

The program itself is dedicated to bringing clean, safe drinking water to people in developing nations. They're non-profit and use 100% of public donations to directly fund sustainable water solutions in areas of greatest need. It's crazy, but just $20 can give one person clean water for 20 years.

I've always taken water for granted... in the last 30 minutes,

I've used the sink probably.....4 or 5 different times, threw some dishes into the dishwasher, and after I post this blog, I'll be taking a shower. This is one of the MANY, MANY things that I take for granted... but that's another post all together. All of a sudden today, watching a video on how my old church (Eastlake Community Church) is hosting a benefit to help this charity out, I actually felt as if I might be able to help as well. I was looking on the website, saw that you could buy a bracelet, and thus it began. ...

The coolest thing about this is, going through the third Love language, (Acts of Service) just yesterday and as we were discussing, we came through a whole topic that really hit my own heart. We talked about your natural ability to serve, and if that's a characteristic that you posses. My own answer was that I think I do, but not out of a completely right heart. I LOVE to serve. But sometimes I know for sure that I serve out of obligation rather than wanting to show people that I love them, or even serving them just to show them a little bit more of who Jesus is. I think my hesitation in serving isn't to those who I don't know very well- it's to my closest of friends. EX: If someone from work asks me to cover their 4.45 hr shift, after I've already worked an 8 hour day, I'm totally cool with that (despite the money). Or even when I'm over at another person's house, I have no problem helping them clean up- I actually enjoy it!

But it's cleaning my own house, or doing things for my mom, sometimes even when Dustin needs me to drive him somewhere, I get that weird, "I don't really want to do this but I will because I should" kind of heart. And I think there's a few levels to that.

1) Fear. I think that on some level, my subconscious fear is that if I continually serve and serve, people will take advantage of me.

2) Selfishness/wanting my own glory.

As ridiculous as it is, that's my own heart. I pray that God would change my heart when it comes to serving those closest to me. I know there is a lie that I'm believing when I get scared that I'll be taken advantage of. I need to remember Eph. 6:7 and Col. 3:23 where it says that I work as if working for the Lord, and not for men. ...Ammmen. haha. :)

All this aside, back to the Praise-story I was developing here: Despite my own selfish heart, God still choses to bless me and use me. And this whole action of Facebook messaging almost every

person I know and asking them to trade out 5.24 for a sweet 3.00 bracelet, is God working in me. Because yesterday, I asked him to help me to get better at organizing events in a serving sort of way. Because I definitely have the desire to be a planner. I have little pieces of organization hiding within me, but I think my own laziness has kept me from pursuing that.

So here I am to praise God, because he says to me ⁷ "Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.⁸For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. " (Matthew 7:7-8, ESV)

I never have really lived out of that belief, until recently, and only because God has had to shove it in my face twice over before I get it. I thank God for his patience with me. :) Continually.

I pray that God would be using me, reguardless of how much I suck at representing him. I am far from perfect, but I love that God doesn't expect me to be. God wants an open heart from me, and an open hand, so that I can image him fully.

It's like the John Piper sermon where he talks about our views on how we image God by talking about the difference between a telescope and a microscope.

Both of these things magnify. Yeah?

Think about the Microscope. What does a microscope do? It takes something very small and makes it bigger. Early in being a Christian, I thought it was my job to be the microscope. But this is totally wrong, in every way, because it says that the Almighty God, who can control creation with one word and can create the most beautiful places and things, needs someone like ME to make him bigger. If you know me very well, then you would instantly laugh at the thought.

The doctrine of Sarah-making-God bigger is not an accurate one.

in contrast to the microscope...let's think about the telescope now. You use a telescope to look into the sky, right? So the idea of a telescope is that when you look into that unfathomably HUGE sky, you're able to use the telescope to bring that sky a little closer to you than before. You can magnify one small part of the vastly detailed sky in all of it's glory.

I want to be a telescope. God, teach me how to abandon my own selfish wants to think I'm the one that's needed for you to be big. Teach me how to be a telescope. :)

I want to bring clean water to people who don't have it. God is a provider.