Thoughts During First Flight Out

So you all can be with me on this journey, here is what I "journaled" in my ipod as I was flying through the air during my first flight from Dallas to D.C.

"I'm up in the air. Finally. On my way to Africa. Sitting next to a nice Indian man, can't remember his name, but he's very nice. I am now listening to my iPod and the first song I chose to play is called "Every Nation." I call it my victory song. The only line it repeats the whole song is, "Every tribe and every tongue, every language, everyone will worship!" What a beautiful hope I can cling to as I sit on this plane with myself and with my Lord.
I've been waiting for this exact moment for a year now since I first began emailing people and working out the details. As I would drive around town I would always look out my window up at the clouds and try my hardest to see the top of them knowing that soon I would be up above them. And now, I'm finally here. Looking out my window. there is nothing more beautiful than the tops of these clouds. How can anyone look out an airplane window and not believe in our big God?

And a few minutes later, all I could do was pray. This was my prayer:

Father, I need you. I need you deeply. I am so weak and I know I have not been preparing myself spiritually for this trip. Lord, I don't even know what to pray right now. I need your Spirit to intercede for me. I need you to prepare me.
Lord, you are my guide. You are my strength. You are my comforter. You are my joy. And Lord, you are those things to me because you are direction. You are strong. You are comfort. And you are joy.
Father, I've been waiting for this moment because I knew it would make me be completely dependent on you. And now, it's finally here. I am so completely dependent on you. There is absolutely nothing I can do on my own these next 2 months. I thank you and I praise you that you are sufficient in my weakness. I thank you that I never have to fear. I thank you for your provision. And more than anything, I thank you that you have allowed me to be your child. Because apart from you I am nothing. I can do nothing. I thank you that I can boast in you alone. I praise you because you are going to receive all the glory for every detail of this trip. Because Jordan Buettemeyer can't do this on her own. Jordan couldn't have even put a foot on this plane if it were by her own strength. And Jordan never would have, in her wildest dreams, dreamed she would go to Africa. Especially "by herself."
But I'm not by myself. I am with You. You are with me. You are in me. And you have made me brave. I rejoice in you and you alone. I love you.
Father, glorify your name!!!!

Thanks for joining me in prayer on this journey!!

As for now, I'm very hungry so I'm going to venture through the airport to find some expensive yum yums :)

Another Old Journal Entry

Ok, so I just did a little more digging and found another journal entry in a different journal. It was either on January 4th or 5th of 2007. Why I wrote in two different journals about the same thing on the same day? I don't know. But I want to share, and I pray this is an encouragement to all who read this.

"January 4, 2007 - God's undeniable call on my life for missions.

BE QUIET NOW, AND WAIT.

Isaiah 26:8-9 Yes, Lord, walking in the way of your laws, we wait for you; your name and renown are the desire of our hearts.

I have said "YES, LORD" to God's calling on my life to do missions. I have no idea where, when, or how I am going, and this scares me to death. But I know I am going with Jesus Christ. So now, I wait. I wait for God to reveal to me where, when, and how. I feel so unqualified for this. But I know God doesn't call the qualified, he qualifies the called.

BE MY ALL CONSUMING FIRE.

Consume - to destroy (as by fire); to waste or burn away.

I desperately need God to come in and destroy my life. So much of me doesn't want to answer this calling on my life because I have so many fears. I am so scared. I don't know why you have called me.

I will serve you. I will give you everything. I will trust you, trust in you alone.

God, I am fighting a spiritual battle right now. I know I need to trust you, but Satan is trying to take hold of me. God, burn away my fears. Destroy my desires. Waste my life on you. Come and consume me."

It's strange to say it, but these journal entries I wrote three and a half years ago have become such a blessing to me. To see the definite questions and fears and my obvious desire to not go, and to see how the Lord has changed all of that... Wow. My God is incredible and indescribable.

If He can transform an unwilling, scared-to-death, little girl like me into someone fearless, with a passionate desire for the nations... I am certain He can transform anyone.

He can transform you.

And I don't say that to boast of myself. I say that because it points completely to my God. He has made me fearless. He has given me a passionate desire for the nations.

In my previous post about Stephen, God revealed to me how Stephen's tag lines pointed directly to Him. And it became my prayer that I would have a tag line that points directly to Him. On my own, I am "Jordan, timid, weak and unwilling..." But now, with my great God, and by the power of the Holy Spirit living inside me, I fully believe I am now, "Jordan, fearless, strong, and willing to follow wherever God leads..." That is a tag line that boasts of the awesomeness of God. Oh I pray that Jordan disappears in light of His power and of His greatness.

I feel 2 Corinthians 12:8-10 is a perfect place to end...

Paul, speaking of the thorn in his flesh, said,
"Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.' Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong."

Looking Back

This evening, I can't get Africa off my mind. I can't get missions off my mind. I can't get the nations off my mind!

I started reading "The Missionary Call," and what I have read so far simply has defined the term "missionary call." We use the term so freely in churches and conferences, but the term never really gets defined. Here's the definition Mr. M. David Sills offers us:

"The missionary call includes an awareness of the needs of a lost world, the commands of Christ, a concern for the lost, a radical commitment to God, your church's affirmation, blessing and commissioning, a passionate desire, the Spirit's gifting, and an indescribable yearning that motivates beyond all understanding."

This got me to thinking. I began thinking back to when I first sensed God's calling on my life to missions. And then I remembered that I wrote something in my journal about it. So, I did a little digging, found my old journal from my freshman year of college, flipped through the pages, and stumbled upon this entry from January 5, 2007...

"As of January 4, 2007, God has made one thing very clear to me. I have an undeniable calling on my life to do missions. He has worked on my heart this past week and he physically took over my body and made me stand up as a symbolic way of answering His call at Passion '07. PRAISE GOD! It was nothing in or of me that made me stand up. It was purely the Holy Spirit. And at this moment, I have no idea where, when, or how I am going. But I do know that I have said "yes Lord" and that where, when and how I go won't matter because I know I will be with Jesus Christ."

I literally remember this exact moment. I remember exactly where I was sitting in the Georgia World Congress Center. I was near the front of my section of the bleachers. Louie Giglio was speaking and said something along the lines of, "If you are sensing God's call to missions, stand up," in many more or less words. All I know is, I stood up. Instantly, these thoughts were racing through my head...

"Oh crap, what did I just do?"

"Why am I standing?"

"Woops, I think I stood for the wrong thing."

"Oh no, I think I need to sit down."

"I'm so confused. I really need to sit down."

But... I kept standing. Then Louie asked the people around us to touch anyone nearby who was standing and begin to pray over them. I remember someone grabbing my ankle. I don't remember who, I just remember the touch. I tell you all these details to let you know how vivid and how real this moment was.

I am so thankful for that day. I am so thankful the Lord literally took over my weak legs and caused me to stand. I am so thankful for the 1.5.07 journal entry. I am so thankful for the questions that filled my mind. And I am so thankful for how the Lord has been at work in my life these past 3 years since then and has perfectly orchestrated every single step leading up to this very moment, and leading up to what is about to take place in the next 5 days.

Those questions that once filled my mind - the where, when and how - have now clearly been answered.

I am so thankful to be able to say:

I am going where? To Niamey, Niger in West Africa.
When? In 5 days, for 2 months.
How? My great God has provided and my trip is fully funded.

And I am so privileged to be going with my one and only, Jesus Christ.

Stephen

Just wanted to share with everyone what the Lord taught me today. I found it to be very challenging and encouraging. Hope you find it to be the same!

STEPHEN

Acts 6:5 – “Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit…”
Acts 6:8 – “Stephen, a man full of God’s grace and power…”
Acts 7:55 – “Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit”

What awesome tag lines Stephen has after his name. A man full of faith. A man full of the Holy Spirit. A man full of God’s grace and power. What would my tag line be? If someone were writing about me, would they say, “Jordan, a woman full of faith and of the Holy Spirit”?

Oh Lord, to have you as my label. I don’t want to just be “Jordan, a good Christian girl” or “Jordan, a really sweet girl.” I want to have a tag line that points directly to you.


But how do I get there?...

“May the God of peace, who through the blood of the eternal covenant brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, equip you with everything good for doing his will, and may he work in us what is pleasing to him, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen." Hebrews 13:20-21

Let’s simplify this verse…

“May the God of peace… equip you with everything good for doing his will, and may he work in us what is pleasing to him…”

May God equip you and may he work in us.

Father, I need you to equip me. I need you to work in me. Lord, equip me with everything good to do your will. I can’t do it on my own. I need you to work in my heart. I need you to crush this heart of stone. I need you to replace my fleshly desires with desires that match yours. I want to love what you love and hate what you hate. Lord, work in me what is pleasing to you. I want you to look down from your throne and say, “See her? See Jordan? She is my servant and she is full of faith and the Holy Spirit. She is full of my grace and power. And I love using her to bring me more glory.”
Father, I can’t do it on my own. Give me your eyes Lord. Come and change the way I see this world. Show me what is really important. I need you to invade my life supernaturally. Come and invade my whole body, from my fingers to my toes, my eyes, my brain, and my heart. Take it all Lord. I am a weak, sinful person. I want to desire you with all that I have. I want to find my joy in you. I know you are the best for me. I know that by being in your presence I will be ultimately satisfied and fulfilled. But my flesh can’t fully grasp or pursue after that.

Oh Lord, this is my prayer:

“Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.” James 1:27

“Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For everything in the world – the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does – comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever.” 1 John 2:15-17

When Stephen was about to be stoned, he looked up to heaven and said, “Look, I see heaven open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.” When he said this, the people covered their ears.

The people of this world don’t understand the things of God. They take offense at the things of God. Christ even said in John 15:19, “If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you.”

As followers of Christ, we should be so set apart from this world that the world hates us. If the world loves us as its own, I think we should be questioning the way we live. As followers of Christ, we are called to a life of suffering for his name.

Stephen was a true, no-doubt-about-it, follower of Christ:

Stephen was full of faith.
Stephen was full of the Holy Spirit.
Stephen was full of God’s grace and power.
Stephen was clearly set apart from this world.
The world hated Stephen.
Stephen suffered for the name of Christ.

I bet God looked down from His throne and said, “See him? See Stephen? He is my servant and he is full of faith and the Holy Spirit. He is full of my grace and power. And I love using him to bring me more glory.”

Now, let us all “throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.” Let us strive to live lives that separate us from this world and bring glory to our awesome God.

To See Christ More Fully

So I recently realized that as of yesterday, I have exactly 7 weeks until my plane departs and I'm on my way to Niger! At first, this was a bit of a discouraging discovery because I thought I was down to 5 or 6 weeks, but no, 7 weeks it is. 7 weeks of waiting... waiting... and more waiting.

But the more I think about these 7 weeks, the more I realize that God has a reason, a divine purpose for this time of waiting. And I want to know what it is. I don't want these 7 weeks to be wasted. You see, these past couple of weeks I have really been struggling and fighting against myself more than I ever have before. I'm realizing more and more that I am my own worst enemy. This flesh I live in puts up a really strong fight. It will do anything to keep me from delighting in and seeking after the Lord. The thing is... That's all I want:

One thing I ask of the Lord,
this is what I seek:
that I may dwell in the house of the Lord
all the days of my life,
to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord
and to seek him in his temple.
Psalm 27:4

As I have been reading through a couple of John Piper's books - Let the Nations Be Glad and When I Don't Desire God - How to Fight for Joy - I am learning that God is ultimately glorified through the lives of those who are most satisfied in Him. It's this really cool cycle where God commands us to delight in Him. But we, as fallen, sinful beings, can't do that on our own. Only God can grant us delight in Him. So we get on our knees. We pray. We seek. One thing. Joy in Him. And when we receive that joy, He gets the glory for it. He gets the glory because He is the Giver of that joy (we can't take credit for it) and because it speaks volumes to the world when we treasure Christ above all things, even in the midst of suffering.

I was reading today in Piper's When I Don't Desire God and the name of the chapter is "The Fight for Joy is a Fight to See." I only made it through the first couple of pages before I had to quit and gather my thoughts. What I read was so simple (yet complex - it's John Piper...), and exactly what I needed. Basically the concept he presents is that in order to delight in God, it all starts with seeing the glory of God in the beauty of Christ. He says it like this:

"Nothing in the universe is more central than the radiance of the glory of God revealed in Christ for the enjoyment of his people. Therefore, the importance of seeing it for what it really is can hardly be exaggerated. For seeing it is foundational to enjoying it. And that joy is foundational for showing the worth of Christ in the world. It is foundational for the life of love and sacrifice and suffering that it sustains.

And here is the part that sums up my goal for the next 7 weeks:

Therefore beneath the quest for satisfaction in Christ - which sustains the life of sacrifice for Christ - is always the quest to see the glory of Christ. All strategies in the fight for joy are directly or indirectly strategies to see Christ more fully.

To see Christ more fully.

So this is where I now find myself. I have 7 weeks before I leave for Africa. 7 weeks to prepare. 7 weeks to ask you to join me in prayer that God would help me overcome this battle I fight against myself. I am struggling, and I need help.

To see Christ more fully. This is my prayer. It's all I want. I want to throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. I want to run with perseverance the race marked out for me. I want to fix my eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of my faith, who for the joy set before him endured far more than I will ever have to endure. Please join me in this prayer.

Fo fo!

Fo fo! (Hello!)

Wow, all I can say is God has been so good these past few days and has just been blowing me away over and over again!! Since this past Thursday night I have met several international students from Niger: CJ, Nathan, Dan, Hadiza and Omar, just to name a few, all of which speak French and Zarma, the two languages I need to learn. I met most of them playing volleyball, and volleyball is now our common ground for hanging out a few nights a week!

It has been so neat to see the ways God is constantly preparing the way and confirming His will to me through all of this! I've been thinking my trip to Niger was set to begin June 30th, but it has already begun and He's brought the mission field here to me!!!

So today I met for the first time with my new buddy CJ to get a head start on learning some Zarma. Up til now I have been trying to teach myself from a pronunciation guide that Phil, my field supervisor, sent me over email. Let's just say... Praise God I met these students!! My pronunciation has been simply awful. I discovered this on Thursday when I first met CJ and decided I would try my "Zarma-speaking-skills" on him and he had no idea what I was saying!... So back to today... My first lesson...

I met up with CJ in Starbucks on my campus, and we sat and talked for about 2 hours. He taught me some basic greetings, corrected my wrong, self-taught pronunciation, and told me a lot about the culture. Niger is primarily Muslim, and CJ got to tell me a lot about Islam and I also was able to share a lot with him about Christianity. It was a really great first meeting!!

Needless to say, I still have a very long ways to go in learning Zarma, but these few first steps have sparked such a crazy excitement in my heart about going! And being able to put real faces and names to the people I am going to be living life with for two months is starting to change everything!

I am so thankful and so incredibly blessed by how the Lord is leading and preparing me and where He is taking me!

A few key prayer points for now:
-That the Lord would continue to satisfy me in His word so that I may fully reflect His glory
-For this excitement in my heart to continue to grow!
-That He would continue to provide opportunities for me to meet with my new friends
-For doors to begin to open for the Lord's will to be done in their lives!

Kala hanfo! (See you another day!)

The Fight to Delight

So I got my passport in the mail! YAY!! One step closer to getting to Niger!

Today I feel so much better about going! I think the Lord is working on changing my perspective and reminding me that missions is solely about bringing Him glory. I think the most impacting truth I've discovered from Piper's book so far is where he said,

"The great sin of the world is not that the human race has failed to work for God so as to increase his glory but that we have failed to DELIGHT in God so as to REFLECT his glory..."

That truth has given me so much peace and comfort. And now, I realize that the foundation of what He has called all of His children to is simply to delight in Him. For when we are truly delighting in Him, our lives can't help but to reflect His glory and He WILL be glorified!!

So here I stand today, facing my newest battle - the fight to delight. Fighting for joy in Christ is a daily battle in this fallen world with so many distractions and counterfeits being thrown our way. It is the desire of my heart to simply delight in His presence to be able to fully reflect His glory.

"...in your presence there is fullness of joy..." Psalm 16:11