“Take care of giving up your first zeal; beware of cooling in the least degree. Ye were hot and earnest once; be hot and earnest still, and let the fire which once burnt within you still animate you.” – Charles Spurgeon

Read the beginning of the series HERE

It quickly became obvious to us that the forces of darkness were not happy about God sending us a new daughter. My sons and I worked building high-rise buildings while we were planting churches and three weeks after Mercy came through our door all three of us were laid off from our jobs on the same day. I was unexpectedly laid off from a six figure income job that day and was consequently out of work for almost a year and financially we have never recovered. But the three of us getting laid off was not to be the height of the spiritual warfare for that day. We came home, gave the bad news to the girls and mom, and decided to go to dinner and forget our fears and worries. On the way home from dinner an old man who was off his medication tried to run my wife off the road in our little, safe, gated community where we lived. She pulled over and the boys and I got out to see what was going on and he accelerated to about 30 miles an hour and just missed me and hit my oldest son Luke sending him smashing head first into the man’s windshield and then he flew over the car and landed on the pavement as the man sped away. Immediately Lisa took off and caught up to the man and blocked his car with hers and brought him to a stop. My heart sank to my feet as I watched all of this just a few feet from me. But God! Even though the man’s bumper, fender, mirror and windshield were dented and shattered Luke jumped up off the ground and we discovered he had no broken bones or internal injuries and only a small scratch on his head. The EMTs who arrived shortly after and saw the damage to the car could not believe that Luke had even survived much less was unharmed. That day we knew we were in a war.

Over the next several months our entire family’s lives were wrapped up in ministering to Mercy and the spiritual warfare continued on every front. We couldn’t believe the persecution we began to receive from people, even our own extended family, who didn’t think it was right that we had adopted a black girl. We were stunned. Surely no one who named the name of Christ and knew the Bible could feel that way. Families left our church over it even. Friends whom we counted among our dearest quit speaking to us. And Mercy deep down was very angry. She was all alone in another country, didn’t understand the language, didn’t understand these crazy white people and their rules, and we quickly realized just how far out of our depth we were to help this precious girl. It was very difficult for Mercy and our whole family but continually God showed up in stunning ways to show us that He was the author of this and we were on His mission.

Many days I held Mercy in my arms while she wet the front of my shirt weeping out her anger and pain and confusion. Like the Grinch in the animated Christmas special, I felt like my heart was growing ten times its normal size. Many nights my girls sat up with her and worked with her. Day after day Lisa worked trying to help her learn English, get caught up in school (she had missed several years of school due to the Liberian civil war) and adjust to her new culture. All the while we were still writing, speaking, pastoring, and doing odd jobs trying to keep afloat financially. We made more mistakes than we care to remember now but God was expanding our hearts and minds at a blinding pace and we were learning to see, feel, and act like Jesus to the least of these.

When Mercy was dropped on our doorstep we simply took her in. At the time we didn’t even consider what to do legally not to mention with preaching and pastoring and speaking, we simply had no time to even think about it. But after a year my daughter Beverly came to me (she had just graduated high school at 16) and said, “Dad, put me to work in the ministry. Give me something to do.” So I asked her to hire a lawyer, hire a social worker, do the research, and figure out what it would take to adopt Mercy legally. And she did just that. Once in awhile she would show up with some papers for Lisa and I to sign or she would tell us we all needed to go to the doctor on such and such a day to get physicals for the adoption. Finally the date was set for our home study and the lawyer and the social worker called me (I had not yet spoken to them) and said, “Mister Bullen, we were getting worried that we hadn’t heard from you or your wife in all this time and the only person we have dealt with is your 16-year-old daughter. But we looked you up online and read some of your writings and realized that you are training Beverly to be a leader and a world impactor and not just being irresponsible with your adoption and we want you to know we think its awesome.” Whew! I hadn’t even considered how it might appear! Finally the day arrived and we went to court and signed all of the papers and Mercy was now a real Bullen. Oh happy day.

Within a year of Mercy’s arrival we had experienced a total financial collapse and were on our way to losing everything. The financial meltdown of 2008 – 2009 was in full swing and we were hanging by a thread. But God was working in us in ways we hadn’t previously known was possible and our faith and our determination were growing leaps and bounds. We began to experience, “Turn your eyes upon Jesus. Look full in His wonderful face and the things of earth will grow strangely dim, in the light of His glory and grace” in a whole new way.

About this time a Tres Dias brother, David Richardson, emailed me to say that he was going on a trip to Colombia, South America with Allen Pate (the guy who broke my heart for orphan ministry) and they felt strongly that God wanted me to go with them. I told him that we were weeks away from being on the street and had our hands full with pastoring and Mercy and there was just no way I could go visit orphanages in Colombia with him. Four more times over the next several weeks he reached out to me insisting that “he knew” this was from God and that I was supposed to be on this trip. Time after time I told him no. Three weeks before the trip was supposed to leave I finally found a job back in construction with some dear Christian friends that was going to put us back on top financially. “Yes!” I thought, “God has answered our prayers. Good thing I didn’t take David up on that crazy idea to go visit orphans in Colombia.” I called David on the phone and told him that I had just been hired at this company and there was absolutely no way I could go to Colombia. I’ll never forget his response. “Well, ok brother, but I just know you are supposed to be there. Don’t be mad at me but I’m going to keep praying that you will go.” “Fair enough,” I replied, and that was it. The next morning I walked in to my new job and my friend/new boss’s face was white as a sheet. “Matt, I’m so sorry but the contract we hired you for was canceled this morning and we can’t use you now.” I assured him that it was ok and walked out the door but as I stepped across the threshold leaving that place of business I was reaching for my phone, hands shaking. “Hello, David? This is Matt. I think I’m supposed to be on that trip to Colombia with you. I don’t know where I will get the money but count me in.” I went home and told my family what had happened expecting them to be upset, especially my wife, but quite the opposite was true. They had just been watching a movie called Faith Like Potatoes and they insisted I sit down and watch it. I didn’t feel like it but agreed. The story in that movie touched me to the very deepest catacombs of my soul. To this day I can’t watch it without crying. At one point in the movie (which is a true story) the lead character Angus Buchan says, “The condition for a miracle is difficulty. The condition for a great miracle is impossibility.” That exploded in my heart because I was sitting in an absolutely impossible situation and yet I knew we were on the edge of something crazy amazing and I felt the Holy Spirit’s peace waft over me and then my wife said, “You know, Beverly will turn 18 while you are on the trip to Colombia…” “Oh!” I said, Then I shouldn’t go?” “No,” Lisa said, “What I meant was you should take her with you. What better way to spend her 18th birthday than loving on orphans in Colombia with her dad?” “But we don’t even have the money for me to go”, I replied. “Well if God can send one, He can send two,” she said. And then she finished with, “The condition for a great miracle is impossibility!”

Three days later a man in our church called me and said, “Pack your bags Pastor Matt. Some of us men are pitching in to pay your way. You and Beverly are going to Colombia.”

And we did…

Aflame For God 17 – Gasoline On A Bonfire

“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

As I was reading the scriptures this morning this came to me and I had to share with you all.

The Cost of Adoption

Once upon a time there was a young Jewish man from the town of Nazareth for whom God had a mission. “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife; for the Child who has been conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. “She will bear a Son; and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins.” (Mt. 1:20-21)

Basically what the Lord told him was, “Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to adopt a little boy named Jesus.” God’s main mission in life for Joseph was the adoption of a very special child.

I’m sure, just like any young man, Joseph had dreams and ideas about his future. He was engaged to Mary and he probably already had some children’s names picked out in his mind. He probably had visions of expanding the family carpentry shop and working along side of his sons and living a quiet and peaceful life in Nazareth. But God’s mission changed everything… adoption changed everything… there was no way that Joseph could have known the cost of obeying the Lord in this seemingly harmless adoption of a baby but here are some of the ways that I thought of this morning that his life was dramatically changed.

First, Joseph has to endure the disdain of his town and probably his family for agreeing to marry a pregnant girl this is why he intended to release her from the engagement privately before the angel appeared to him. You see the angel appeared to Mary and to Joseph but not to the rest of the town…

Second, God orchestrates the Roman government to take a census in which Joseph and Mary will have to uproot and travel to Bethlehem because Jesus needs to be born there to fulfill prophecy. Everything Joseph has worked to build up in Nazareth is gone. So they start all over in Bethlehem.

Third, Joseph is faced with the stress of his young bride having a baby in a stable because there is no room in the inn. None of this would have been his plan A for his life.

Fourth, After 2 years in Bethlehem suddenly a king, of all things, is after his son and God tells him, “Get up! Take the Child and His mother and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is going to search for the Child to destroy Him.” (Mt. 2:13) The little family has to flee in the middle of the night and once again start all over in Egypt. Imagine a Nazareth small town boy now in a place he knows nothing about. This adoption has now completely altered Joseph’s life in ways that he never could have imagined.

Fifth, After a few years in Egypt he is once again told by the Lord to pick up and move. “Get up, take the Child and His mother, and go into the land of Israel; for those who sought the Child’s life are dead.” (Mt. 2:20) He heads for Bethlehem but then hears that Archelaus  is reigning and fearing for his young son goes back to Nazareth where he and Mary are undoubtedly notorious.

Sixth, The next time we see Joseph he and Mary travel to Jerusalem for passover and lose track of Jesus and spend several days backtracking and losing time looking for him. Once again we see how this adoption impacted and disrupted Joseph’s life.

Seventh, Though Joseph was not around to see it, this boy, Jesus, ends up being tried as a criminal and being executed. But not only that, he involves his brothers, Joseph’s blood children that he no doubt prayed for, loved, and was proud of. This Jesus involves them in His mission and they are all eventually executed as well.

I’m sure when Joseph accepted the mission to be an adoptive dad, he couldn’t have foreseen the cost and the trouble that it would bring to his life… but neither could he have seen the immeasurable blessing and eternal impact that this one act of obedience allowed him to be a part.

When Mary says in Luke 2 that all future generations will call her blessed, she is right because God chose her to be the mother of God. But think about how blessed Joseph is in heaven right now because he got to be the adopted dad of God. Wow!

Adoption has been called the living gospel because it depicts what God has done for each of us (John 1:12; Rom. 8:15&23; Gal. 4:5; & Eph. 1:5) but it also depicts in an earthly sense the amazing mission that God gave to Joseph of Nazareth and it should encourage us to follow his example and obey and endure because we don’t know what God may have planned for our adopted child.

Russell D. Moore in his book Adopted For Life says, “Joseph serves as a model to follow as we see what’s at stake in the issue of adoption. Joseph, after all, is an adoptive father. In some ways, his situation is, of course, far different from ours. In other ways, though, Joseph’s mission belongs to all of us. As Joseph images the Father of the fatherless, he shows us how adoption is more than charity. It’s spiritual warfare.”