to be changed by it

This has been a big deal week and it's been killing me not to share it.  But that takes fifteen free minutes :) Here we are!

It's a brand new semester, we have 8 brand new students and a whole lot of returning students.

Like, a whole lot.

I remember living at the old campus and coming to this new one, before 2010, still being constructed, and thinking about how luxurious...one whole classroom for each cohort!  A HUGE cafeteria.  A 2 story men's dorm!  We went from NO women's dorm to a beautiful one with FIVE bedrooms that could each sleep four!  A large chapel.  It was so big and spacious and beautiful I could almost pinch myself.  

We had less than 30 students!  What were we ever going to do with all these tables?  How strange we would look taking up a fourth of the cafeteria.  How big the classrooms seemed, our feet no longer underwater in the rainy season, and the sun no longer shining through the rusted sheets of tin roofing, chickens no longer walking through the chapel. 

Granny with Lily....and Granny yesterday, counting her children.

Suddenly, I am pinching myself again.  Suddenly I pop into the cafeteria to ask Leme and question and it is completely, utterly and totally overflowing. Every seat, every plate, and this is no small thing.  It may be no small thing anywhere, but feeding people, being able to feed people, feeding people WELL...in Haiti, food...this is a really precious gift. A really big deal.  

And Granny laughs to me, "If Pastor Matt brings one more child home for dinner, I'm gonna lose it!"

 

I walk through the classrooms, and suddenly they are too full.

And every time I stand up in the chapel, someone new squeezes in the bench, and we go to the cafeteria to borrow chairs.

To boot, pinch me because this first week of the new year Matt set up as Holiness Emphasis Week, a tradition coming from our alma matter, Asbury University.  He invited Stan Key, the president of Francis Asbury Society, to be our speaker.

And suddenly there is something major happening at Emmaus, bigger than the student body.

Because the holiness message, the idea that as Christ-followers, we are to be holy as He is holy, the idea that we must trust and be what the Bible tells us is truth, more than any education, more than any social aid, more than any outreach...THIS is root of transformation.  And the students have been HUNGRY to hear, and the simple truths Stan's been sharing have already been transformational.

Monday, he preached on how sin works, comparing it with leprosy and discussing our great need for a change in our nature, not just in our behavior.  Monday night he and Matt spent a more intimate hour with the students addressing questions and digging deeper.

Today, he spoke about holiness when it comes to sexual purity, talking through God's many "no's" of Leviticus 18 and God's beautiful three "yes's" of Genesis 1 and 2.  Finally he compared our lives lived in holiness and purity to a train solidly on the tracks God designed for it, noting that a train on it's tracks has purpose, joy, and peace.

However, if the train sees a meadow that seems lovely, and decides that it is good to go visit that meadow and therefore leaves the track designed for it, it actually leads to its destruction and chaos and danger.

At the end of the service there was an altar call for a commitment/re-commitment to sexual purity, within our marriages, within our singleness, to teaching God's Biblical plan within our churches, and the response was overwhelming and powerful.

This photo doesn't touch the sacredness of those moments of commitment today.

Tonight Matt and Stan spent another 2 hours with the students, outlining the sermon again and answering questions. 

I am utterly convinced that a commitment to Biblical holiness (not legalism), holy as He is holy, representing a holy God in a broken world, and living and teaching that holiness in churches throughout Haiti is the only thing that will truly transform the heart, Haiti, the world.  

How EXCITING to see that commitment happening at Emmaus, how humbling to see it happening in our students and in ourselves, how beautiful to pour over the Word together...and be changed by it.  

A LOT of change is happening, and I'm in awe of our God, growing and pruning and purifying, praise the Lord.