Reaching the World God Loves

So, I’ve wanted to write a little bit more about the dinner we were able to have a couple of weeks ago with the Navigator students and our homeless guests in Enschede.

It was really exciting to me to see such a success. When the night was over the people who came felt like they had a good time, the students were talking about doing this same thing more often and we left with friends from both the group of students and our homeless guests too. I didn’t expect it to fail, but I just didn’t expect it to be so good.

The next day, as I was having my quiet time (just a time to be with God and listen to Him), I felt drawn to Philippians 2:3-11.

As I read the passage, God reminded me that when Jesus came to the earth he was leaving heaven behind and simply coming to us. He didn’t first make the world fit for His coming, nor did He come in a way that would make it more comfortable for Him once He came here. In fact He simply came in the exact appearance as anyone of us and even died like us, though far more painfully than any of us may expect to endure. And, in all of this, He took the victory that will win the entire world back to God.

If there was any success in “our night” then it was surely joined in with what Christ did on the cross! And, if we should expect any more victories, they will also be joined to what Jesus did in life and on that cross too.

Now, one of the decisions we had to make was where we would have the evening. Early on we didn’t know that God would drop the best venue into our laps, but I probably wouldn’t have thought of it that way at first. There was a local church that might have been an option; it looked nice, it was bright, had plenty of room, etc… I thought that it should be an option at first, but my wife knew better and was opposed to this. She said that ‘it would make them come out of their world too much.’

In the end I realized that I was very wrong and my wife was very right. After debriefing with the students that night I heard that some of our guests said that ‘they felt like they could be themselves.’ If it were all up to me I would have preferred the brighter, roomier, gathering place that the church had to offer, but the night wasn’t about what I would prefer – it was about reaching out to other people for God’s glory and their relationships with God.

It appears to me that our dinner was like what Jesus did for us in this: we didn’t ask people to come into our world, but we became like servants and entered into their world to share God’s love with them.

Out of this passage God has been challenging me to become more like Jesus Christ, to come closer in relationship to Him in this way.

What about the rest of us?

Do we practice coming into the world of others, or do we ask others to come into our world before we show them the love that God has already shown us? This is what I find myself doing too often and I know that God wants to change that in me. I know that it will be hard, but I also know that this is what Jesus has already done.

Let’s follow Him in this together, shall we?

In Christ,
The Abiding Kingdom

Het Koningsfeest

As close as I can tell, that would mean “The King’s Party” in English.

I really was rather uninvolved with this whole thing, but I did have my parts here and there: mostly pushing my wife and her ideas out into the open a little bit at a time. It all started back a few weeks ago while we were visiting the C3 Church in Enschede, the Netherlands.

We were standing around after the service and wondering who we should talk to next. We had already met a Dutch missionary to Indonesia and learned some more of what YWAM was doing there. Still, we were a little bit hesitant to strike up a conversation, but someone else was a little bolder than us. One of the ladies turned and introduced herself, her name was Dorien and soon we found that she was a YWAMer too! She was the leader of the Bible study group leaders for the Navigators student association in Enschede.

Before long she asked what we were doing and I shared about my work with Mission Adventures. I also mentioned one of my wife’s ideas about having a dinner for the homeless people around Enschede. Dorien was very excited about this and said that her group in the student association wanted to do something like that too.

Within a few minutes the idea sprouted into a plan, together it was possible for the three of us to have a date, a building, and helpers for the night.

There was a lot of work to be done before the night was pulled off though. As soon as we arrived home my wife started looking into all the places where homeless people could find food, help, and shelter in Enschede. I think it was the very next day that we grabbed a pair of bicycles and rode around the city center searching for the places we found online. We asked whether or not this was a good idea, how best to advertize for it, and if the places could help us. The responses we received were all very good. We learned of a couple new places that we hadn’t found, and everyone was willing to take up flyers when we would bring them.

It was interesting, at this point things were all rough, but they were coming together really quickly. We hadn’t even really met any of the homeless people yet and stilled referred to them as some strange community we didn’t know much about; though, that would change over the next couple weeks.

Yes, mind you, I should mention that from beginning to end this project and process only took about three weeks, plus a couple of days. It had to move quick or else it wouldn’t happen.

We were also able to meet up with Dorien again to see the building we would use for the night. It had plenty of tables, chairs, room for guests, cooking equipment and all for the right price. We also found an opportunity to have the event sponsored by the CDA in Enschede, a Christian political party. Things were looking really good!

About a week later we had made the flyers and began handing them out to the various places we had been to before. At our first stop, Humanitas, a sort of café for people to come get bread and a warm drink, we met a couple of people we would get to know better. One was a young man whose family came from Morocco. Around we went until we also got to a nicer, or more well-funded, place called Tactus, it was meant to be a place for people with drug addictions. My wife was able to talk with another person there who didn’t think he would come; he said that he used a fake heroin instead of the real drug, most of the time the Christian organization wouldn’t give him any help because of that. He was rather burned by the Church on that point.

There were a lot of ups and downs for us as we went around the city center. Sometimes my wife would feel really good about everything, and then would feel down and nervous. Throughout the day the answer was prayer. Each time we were down and needed encouragement our God was there for us.

At this point God had already pulled us out of quite a bind!

On the day that we meant to take the flyers out we heard that we wouldn’t be able to rent the building! Someone else had already got it, but Dorien was already at work figuring out an alternative plan while we took the time to pray. It felt like the sort of thing that I had felt God do before, but I think this was also the first time for my wife to really feel it with something that was hers. So, we prayed, and again God encouraged us to trust that things would go well.

After several hours we found that it did go well, better than we could have imagined it! Dorien was able to speak with the owner and instead of the lower floor we were able to get the smaller floor above our original building (which meant all of our flyers were still good), we were also able to get a charity price of €20 instead of the original €150, and soon after we heard that the CDA would give us €250 for the event! We expected to be having faith for just having the event, but God swapped up the original idea for an even better venue!

Finally, the night had arrived, several of us were finishing up the hall and setting the last tables as people started to come in. The rest had gone out to invite people from the streets, beginning their invitation with, “Do you have a place to eat tonight?”

It was really cool to see; the lights were all low in the old bar, several party light things moving now and then, and as the people came they would throw their arms out to their friends and shout greetings to one another. Dutch people, whoever they are, seem to like small places rather than big ones and they say it gives them a nice close feeling (they call it gezellig). So, of course, almost everybody crammed around the first table until enough people showed up to fill the next table and so forth.

Soon the place was filled with people from the street and people from the student association talking and having a good time. My wife and I were able to talk with the young man from Morocco again. We spent most of the night with him. We were able to serve a three-course meal of soup, beans and bread, brownies and ice cream for desserts, all followed by some coffee for anyone who wished for it.

We didn’t have any big program in the middle, though we were intending on it, but lessons for times to come, perhaps. What made it a success was that the “homeless people”, so labeled, felt like people enjoying a warm meal with other people. Nobody was turned away and afterwards we heard that they felt like they were able to be themselves. It was an open environment where we could get to know each other and make friends. For that, I would say that it felt like one of the best outreaches to people on the streets that I had ever been a part of.

Oh, to add even another blessing from God’s wisdom, the persons who rented the floor below us turned out to be a decent band. We had music right through dinner!

This morning, as I was thinking about how to write about this event and the preparations for it, I felt that God was telling me to read through the book of Philippians, found in the Bible. Chapter 2, verses 3-11, really stood out to me.

I’ll write more about that later, but you should go check it out for yourselves for now.

Thanks for reading!

In Christ,
The Abiding Kingdom