The Costa Rica Mission: Joy and Fire

Day 18: July 29, 2012

I started the day off with church. During worship, it has been my prayer that God would give me joy in my worship. I have lost so much joy in what Jesus has done for me, maybe that’s because I never really had joy in my salvation in the first place. I know that Jesus has saved me and I’m grateful but I don’t have overwhelming joy in my heart because of it. I started to think about that and I thought about the reality that I was on my way to Hell. I have never really thought about me going to Hell before, because I’ve been a Christian so long. But it’s the truth, I was going to go to Hell because there is nothing good in me. I have sinned and done wrong and because of that I didn’t deserve to nor could I go to Heaven. Without Jesus, I would be going to Hell in eternal separation from God. But Jesus died on the cross for me and saved me, not because I deserved it but because he loves me that much. I take that for granted so often and that’s why I don’t have more joy in my salvation. I have always been saved and known I will go to Heaven, so I wasn’t overjoyed when I found out otherwise because I have never known anything else. But I am praying that God will give me overwhelming joy in him and that I wouldn’t take my salvation for granted any longer.

It was a good sermon from Dr. Daves (one of the missionaries here). He talked about receiving the fire of God. His message was about letting God’s fire refine you and clean you. The fire of God will never destroy but it may hurt a little while it cleans all the dirt out of you. It gave a new meaning to songs that have lyrics about God’s consuming fire. He also talked about God coming through your life like an earthquake and shaking your life and transforming your life. And then he talked about the wind. In a storm the wind will come through and blow the dead limbs off of the trees. In the same way, the wind from God will come through and blow away anything dead or useless in you.  It was a good message and I really enjoyed it.

After church, I spent the day with Christine helping her to clean her classroom. It took us a long time but we finally finished and got it back in order for classes tomorrow! Glory Christian School’s classes start back up tomorrow and thank goodness we get a little break from having teams here. Pastor told us to take the next two days to rest and I am grateful! I’ll probably spend my time doing a research project I started and sleeping in. It will definitely be nice!