“Get as close as possible to those who are burning for God, and you will be ignited.” – Duke Taber

Read the beginning of the series HERE

We were serving God with everything we had or so we thought. Then two events transpired leading to two prayers that would change our lives forever. The first thing that happened was I was listening to the audio version of John Piper’s book, Desiring God, on my way home one day and this paragraph in chapter nine shook me to my very core…

 
[quote]BECOMING WORLD CHRISTIANS – “I would like to believe that many of you who read this chapter are on the brink of setting a new course of commitment to missions: some a new commitment to go to a frontier people, others a new path of education, others a new use of your vocation in a culture less saturated by the church, others a new lifestyle and a new pattern of giving and praying and reading. I want to push you over the brink. I would like to make the cause of missions so attractive that you will no longer be able to resist its magnetism. Not that I believe everyone will become a missionary, or even should become one. But I pray that every reader of this book might become what David Bryant calls a “World Christian”—that you would reorder your life around God’s global cause.” – John Piper[/quote]
 

The moment I heard those words it flashed across my mind that though I had spent two and a half decades passionately pursuing Jesus and a decade and a half training my family to be warriors for Christ, I had totally missed God’s heartbeat for the nations. All of my focus and energy had been on America, my own country. I thought for a moment that my heart would burst. Hot tears flowed from my eyes and I nearly ran off the road. I began right then to cry out to God to send my family to the nations. Before I got home I had decided I needed to leave my church, sell everything, move into a little apartment, and spend the rest of my life pursuing Jesus on His mission among the nations. Now I just had to convince my wife and children. Shortly after this I also heard another quote from John Piper which wrecked me further.

 
[quote]“How then do you serve God? You posture yourself, and you maneuver your life, and you devote energy and effort and time and creativity to positioning yourself under the waterfall of God’s continual blessing, you find out where the waterfall of God’s blessing is falling and you get under it. When it moves, you follow it so that you stay wet. And usually it takes you overseas…” – John Piper[/quote]
 

This new vision of chasing God’s joy like strategizing to stay under a globe trotting waterfall of heavenly quests blew my mind and elicited the first of the two life changing prayers. I began to pray night and day for God to let me and my family in on the adventure by sending us to the nations.

The second event was shortly after reading Desiring God I was speaking at a men’s Tres Dias retreat and a dear friend, whom I had met on my original Tres Dias, Allen Pate, was also speaking. During Allen’s message on Christian Action, he told the story of how he and his wife Cindy were called to orphan ministry and had adopted two sons from Kazakhstan and recently two daughters from Colombia. As he spoke my heart began to burn once again like it would burst and hot tears rolled down my face. Soon I was weeping uncontrollably. I recognized this feeling as the moving of the Holy Spirit once again in my heart. I had felt it before with life changing results. I literally felt as if I would die if I couldn’t get involved in orphan ministry. At the same time thoughts were running through my mind such as, “I’m a busy pastor, father of five teenagers, author, conference speaker, and I am fighting an incurable disease.” “What business, Lord, do I have getting involved in orphan ministry?” “I don’t have time.” “I don’t have money.” “Surely this is my imagination and not You Lord.” And then I had an idea. A safe prayer that I thought would get me off the hook. I prayed, “Lord, you know my heart. You know that I am willing but I don’t know where to start. If You will drop an orphan on my doorstep, I will take it in.” I gave Allen a big hug after his message and told him how moved I was and asked him to pray for us as we sought how the Lord would have us be involved in missions and especially orphan ministry. I came home and told my wife, Lisa, about my “safe” prayer. She responded, “Great!” “IF GOD DROPS AN ORPHAN ON OUR DOORSTEP… we will take it in.”

Be careful what you pray for… God takes you seriously.

Two weeks later we received an email asking us to help a 13-year-old orphan girl from Liberia, Africa named Mercy (God has a sense of humor). She weighed 48 lbs., was dying, and needed a life-saving surgery.

Three years before when she was 10-years-old Mercy had accidentally ingested lye, a colorless, odorless chemical also called caustic soda which is used to process rubber from the rubber trees on the plantation where Mercy grew up. Her esophagus was destroyed and she had lain in a hospital and eventually an orphanage for 3 years begging God and her caretakers to let her die.

Over the next several months we helped Mercy through the surgery and recovery and eventually the people who brought her from Africa came and on July 3, 2008 and literally dropped her on our doorstep. Before sending our family to the nations, God had sent the nations to us.

God had spoken to our family with a megaphone. He wanted us to have a heart for missions and especially the vulnerable children of the world. We took her in, loved her, ministered to her, and eventually adopted her as our own.

We had no idea the incredible spiritual battle that would erupt the moment she walked through our door. It nearly took us out. It certainly drove us to our knees. It was beautiful, miraculous, and excruciatingly painful all at the same time but it was exactly what we needed to go from the regular army to special forces in the kingdom of God.

Today Mercy is a beautiful, healthy, and happy girl. Adopting Mercy has been an incredible trial of faith and at the same time the single greatest miracle of love and transformation that we have ever personally witnessed and experienced.

After God dropped Mercy on our doorstep, we were feeling pretty satisfied that we had discovered the reason for the burning in our hearts for missions that had begun a few years before. I had prayed my “safe” prayer and God had answered immediately and miraculously. Furthermore, He had healed Mercy physically and was in the process of healing her spiritually and emotionally. Surely this was God’s complete plan for us being involved in orphan ministry and discipling the nations… or maybe He was about to go beyond what we could imagine or think…

Having Mercy in our home, hearing her horrible stories of abduction, torture, poverty, famine, disease, danger, and fleeing the civil war in her country, and seeing her tears and her many struggles broke our hearts for the orphans of the world and readied us for the next calling of God on our family.

Aflame For God 16 – The Condition For A Great Miracle