This Great New Year

I have such great anticipation for the wonderful year that this will be. Amazing things that will continue to happen here in Cambodia.

It has now been just under three months since Neth and I officially opened our business: Employment Services Cambodia (www.es-cambodia.com). Looking back on recent months I get goose bumps thinking about all that has happened in this short period of time. I do not possess the words to adequately describe the blessings God has showered upon us. As I look forward to what I know God will do this year I also know that these past three months, amazing though they have been, are only just a small start to what is about to come. At ESC, we have a vision that has given us for a Cambodia. We envision a Cambodia with a healthy economy and healthy workforce; freedom from the prevalence of corruption, oppression, and greed; and freedom from shackles of poverty and deliverance from all the bad things that poverty brings. We see an economy in Cambodia that produces to it's full potential and provides in abundance - abundance without waste, but abundance which is shared freely and generously. We know that to get to this place it will take more than improving education and job skills; more than improving wages and working conditions. To reach this place we will need a spiritual transformation in Cambodia. We will need a renewing of our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. This is an exciting time to be in Cambodia because we are seeing change happen rapidly, but we need to remember that the foundation of this change must not be found solely in bricks and mortar, not in just education and jobs, but it must be a foundation of changed hearts of the people in Cambodia, a transformational renewing of the hearts and minds of people in Christ Jesus.

A few days ago I read something that Oswald Chambers wrote. I related to this as there are times in my life when I am uncertain about what I am supposed to do. "When God brings the blank space, see that you do not fill it in, but wait. The blank space comes in order to teach you what sanctification means, or it may come after sanctification to teach you what service means. Never run before God's guidance. If there is the slightest doubt, then He is not leading. Whenever there is doubt – don't.... Natural devotion may be all very well to attract us to Jesus, to make us feel His fascination, but it will never make us disciples. Natural devotion will always deny Jesus someway or other.... Peter did not wait on God; he forecast in his mind where the test would come, and the test came where he did not expect it. "I will lay down my life for Thy sake." Peter's declaration was honest but ignorant...[Yet, Jesus responded to Peter that the cock would not crow until Peter denied Jesus three times.] Jesus said this with a deeper knowledge of Peter than Peter had of himself." I feel like sometimes I go between this "natural" love and devotion to Jesus and then He breaks me in seeing my lack of obedience. I am constantly being broken and reshaped, molded and transformed; always renewed.
I believe there will be a lot of this ahead for me.

Yesterday morning I woke up and had these words in my mind and on my heart; and so I wrote them down as the beginning to a song:

     My days of wandering now are done
     I've been redeemed by God's Holy Son

     Though I struggle still with earthly things
     I have a forgiving Lord, a Holy King

I wish you all a happy and blessed 2014.