It's All Spiritual...

Hello All,

The first time I ever came to Honduras, one of the guys from our team made a comment that has stuck with me since then: "It's either all spiritual, or none of it is spiritual." I very much believe that it is all spiritual, and we can either live with a deep understanding that there is a realm beyond our own and be participants as subjects in the Kingdom of God, or we can be commodities to be used by the enemy without our knowledge. I have no desire to be a commodity. Life is very real here. If you haven't been here, I don't know how to explain to you what that means necessarily except to insinuate that death is always so close that life takes on an entirely different light. Many people around here don't necessarily have time to worry about trivialities because they're too busy figuring out how to feed their families. The literal poverty is quite real, but in addition to poverty in the physical realm, the poverty in the spiritual realm is quite real (just as it is quite real in the US as well--and in some cases, worse). There are so many people here whose stories I know well, who have experienced terrible things, who are struggling to believe that there is better, who I look at and know very deeply that, in and of myself, there is absolutely nothing I can do to help them. I am quite poor in spirit because on a daily basis I am faced with the truth that as a human being, I am so helpless to do anything meaningful for the Kingdom of God. Yet, even as sometimes, I feel so heartbroken by so many attitudes and circumstances here, I am not discouraged because even in the midst of it, God is making Himself so real to me. It is a process of humbling. I will say frankly that well-intentioned people who think that they can come down here with their own strategies and ideas for how to help without abiding in Christ and taking the time to listen and seek His very best humbly, are crazy.

I look into the faces of the girls at the Eagle's Nest, even as they are lying to me sometimes, and I listen to the struggles of my adopted brothers and know that only Jesus is enough. But, that's the beauty of it--He IS enough. My advice, my ideas, my strategies, and my human love will never ever be enough to sustain these people who are searching for real love. It all has to come from Him. I have been so encouraged by reading the Heidi Baker book, The Hungry Always Get Fed:

What is this life all about? Is it about how many people we lead to Jesus or how many churches we plant or how good a person we have been? Or is it about being so hidden in the heart of our awesome, eternal God of love that we are swallowed up in Him, so that it is no longer we who live, but Christ in us? . . . the reason that I am alive, is for this purpose and this purpose alone; to learn how to love like Jesus loved. . . . at the end of the day, what matters most is LOVE! I am trying to learn to be like Christ in every possible way, yet every day, I am seeing that Christ is already inside of me and He is happy to come out and make Himself known through me to the lost and dying world around me. . . . What is faith working through love? Simply abiding in Christ and letting the sweetness of His presence flow through us and minister to those around us who are lost, dying and desperate for God. It is believing that which Christ accomplished for us on the cross is enough to equip us and empower us to be bright, shining lights amidst a crooked and perverse generation. It is laying down our lives, so that the kingdom of God can come forth to the broken, the lost, the dying and the weak. (171).

Stop looking at your limited resources and start looking at the One who can multiply them. Stop looking at your life and thinking how insignificant it looks! Yield it to God, fully, totally, completely, and allow Him to multiply it. . . . As God worked in my life and taught me to live in His presence, eventually, I stopped looking at me. . . . Instead, I began dwelling in the secret place of God where my heart and mind were always focused on Him and not on me. I became so overwhelmed with who God is, that I stopped worrying about "me" altogether. My purpose became to keep my vision fixed on the beauty of Him, the glory of Him, the holiness of Him, the all-sufficiency of Him! . . . we cannot hold back from God. You cannot divide up your life, giving a bit to God and holding some back for yourself, just in case He doesn't show up. It's all or nothing! God doesn't do half-measures. You have to throw yourself into Him completely, holding nothing back. Then He is able to do the miraculous with your life. Then He can do what only He can do. (174-175).


This is the place I find myself. When I look at the circumstances, I am totally overwhelmed. Oh, but to look on the face of Jesus, the beautiful face of Jesus--He is so real. He is enough. I love worship, and for me, the best way to worship is to close my eyes to shut out any distractions. And, it is the same way in abiding with Christ. When I am heartbroken, I come to Jesus and ask for His eyes. I let Him draw me into the secret place. My favorite song right now is Jesus Culture's song, "Come Away."

Come away with Me. Come away with Me. It's never too late. It's not too late. It's not too late for you.


I have a plan for you. I have a plan for you. It's going to be wild. It's going to be great. It's going to full of Me.


Open up your heart and let Me in.

This past Sunday, I was just in worship at church and bringing before Him once again my own helplessness and the things I see here that have me heartbroken. I began to pray for God to stir the hunger and thirst for righteousness. With my eyes closed, God just began to show me that I was in the midst of the whirlpool at Niagara Falls where my brother and I visited only a month and a half ago. His hands were stirring the hunger and thirst for righteousness like a whirlpool. It is important to note that He was the one doing the stirring. No man in and of himself regardless of how great of a sermon, how sacrificial an offering, how intuitive a counseling session, etc. can stir the hunger and thirst for righteousness in the heart of someone else. Only God can do that, and it is only through this hunger that God's best begins to manifest in the lives of human beings. In the midst of this stirring, I was reminded of the river of God's presence in Ezekiel. As the whirlpool churned and the waters were rising all around me--waters of hunger and thirst for righteous and waters of difficult circumstances and heartbreak in the natural--I found myself dancing with Jesus, laying my head on His heart. I wasn't afraid of drowning because He was holding me. I was perfectly secure listening to His heartbeat.

The message of this image was continued in the scriptures from which Pastor Marcus spoke on Sunday--2 Corinthians 12:7-10, Habakkuk 3:17-19, and Deuteronomy 8:

2 Corinthians 12:7-10


And to keep me from being puffed up and too much elated by the exceeding greatness (preeminence) of these revelations, there was given me a thorn (a splinter) in the flesh, a messenger of Satan, to rack and buffet and harass me, to keep me from being excessively exalted. Three times I called upon the Lord and besought [Him] about this and begged that it might depart from me; but He said to me, My grace (My favor and loving-kindness and mercy) is enough for you [sufficient against any danger and enables you to bear the trouble manfully]: for My strength and power are made perfect (fulfilled and completed) and show themselves most effective in [your] weakness. Therefore, I will all the more gladly glory in my weaknesses and infirmities, that the strength and power of Christ (the Messiah) may rest (yes, may pitch a tent over and dwell) upon me! So for the sake of Christ, I am well pleased and take pleasure in infirmities, insults, hardships, persecutions, perplexities and distresses; for when I am weak [in human strength], then am I [truly] strong (able, powerful in divine strength).

Habakkuk 3:17-19


Though the fig tree does not blossom and there is no fruit on the vines, [though] the product of the olive fails and the fields yield no food, though the flock is cut off from the fold and there are no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord: I will exult in the [victorious] God of my salvation! The Lord God is my Strength, my personal bravery, and my invincible army. He makes my feet like hinds' feet and will make me to walk [not to stand still in terror, but to walk] and make [spiritual] progress upon my high places of trouble, suffering, or responsibility!
from Deuteronomy 8:


All the commandments which I command you this day that you shall be watchful to do, that you may live and multiply and go in and possess the land which the Lord swore to give to your fathers. And you shall [earnestly] remember all the way which the Lord your God led you these forty years in the wilderness, to humble you and to prove you, to know what was in your [mind and] heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not. And He humbled you and allowed you to hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know nor did your fathers know, that He might make you recognize and personally know that man does not live by bread only, but man lives by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord. . . . Know also in your [minds and] hearts that, as a man disciplines and instructs his son, so the Lord your God disciplines and instructs you. So you shall keep the commandments of the Lord your God, to walk in his ways and [reverently] fear him. For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and springs, flowing forth in valleys and hills; a land of wheat and barley, and vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey; a land in which you shall eat food without shortage and lack nothing in it; a land whose stone are iron and out of whose hills you can dig copper. When you have eaten and are full, then you shall bless the Lord your God for all the good land which He has given you.

God knows what He is doing. While the circumstances and spiritual soil may seem tough, God is at work. He is stirring the hunger and thirst for righteousness. And, in His perfect timing, He will bring forth people who are ready to come to Him, ready to hear the truth of God, and ready to receive His love. Meanwhile, I am content that He is humbling me and that He is allowing me to hunger after Him. The greater my weakness, the more perfect His strength and ability to work through my life. The greater my hunger, the more space He can fill in my heart.

Please keep Honduras in your prayers. Please never discount the power of prayer to the ministry here. As Papí Alvin put it to me four years ago, it is the very life blood of the ministry. We cannot exist without prayer, without seeking God. If you are reading this, I would ask you to consider taking Joel 2:12 to heart in regard to Honduras:

Therefore also now, says the Lord, turn and keep on coming to Me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning [until every hindrance is removed, and broken fellowship is restored].

I so appreciate all of you who stand with me in prayer. I am unspeakably grateful.

All for Jesus,

Sarah