I’ve been learning a lot about truly listening.
Here I am surrounded by orphans hungry for attention. My team covers these children in love and it still never feels like enough–they crave our hugs, our words of affirmation, our time. It breaks my heart open for them. Many of them don’t know what it is to have an authority figure pursue them and fight for their hearts, and I want so badly to be able to fill that hole only Jesus can fill. When I am with them, it cannot be about me. The instant I allow my perspective and my priorities shift to myself, I have lost a battle with the Enemy. I am here to fight for these kids and to pursue them with the wild, consuming love of Jesus, and I am here to listen.
I am here to listen when Jesus says to me “take your shoes off and prayer walk through the ankle-deep mud.” I am here to listen when a child demands yet another round of rock, paper, scissors. I am here to listen when my teammates are hurting. I am here to listen when I don’t understand a word of the hour-long church services. I am here to listen when I feel a pull to a kid who has fought me every minute of the english lessons. I am here to listen and I am here to love. But those simple objectives are so easy to forget sometimes, even when I am surrounded by hurting children and being led by girls who are passionate for the Lord. And if it’s easy to forget here, how much harder is it back home? Everything is more complicated in the States–relationships and opinions and communication. Life back home is rushed and this past year I lost my grasp on how much of my relationship with Jesus should involve just being still and listening. Listening to His voice and to His children and loving all the time, no matter what I hear.
I know that Jesus will continue to open my heart to receive what He has to say and will teach me more and more about being an active, reflective, intentional listener. I want to fall in love with being a listener and I want to choose to continue listening long after I return home. My prayer is that I will be able to listen with Christ’s ears and see with His eyes. I hope my heart for people will grow in leaps and bounds and I will truly be able to view everyone I come into contact with as a precious, treasured soul whom Jesus is head over heels in love with. But just as I must keep my priorities and perspective on my ministry here, I must do that at home. Every situation and person I encounter is an opportunity for radical ministry. I am a part of the church, and I am called to be a disciple, and those truths do not change in America or in Cambodia.
My challenge to myself is to pursue listening and seeing with the ears and eyes of Jesus now, as I fight for these orphans and my team, and later, when I return to the States and life grows more comfortable. I want to pursue Jesus in humility, and through Him pursue people in a genuine way that glorifies Him.
