Love > Power [Priscilla]

I want to submit a different opinion about the last few weeks.

I am ridiculously proud of everyone on the mission team. And I sincerely enjoyed when the Holy Spirit would fill a room we were ministering at and bring about a “cryfest”. It actually happened a lot. It happened most of the nights at Cao Ya (resulting in 3 people radically accepting Jesus as Lord and the Cao Ya youth group taking off weeks of work to join the mission team when they initially did not want to). It happened throughout a lot of the 72 hours of prayer at Shou San. One of the nights a mob of people wailed before the Lord at the altar. We were so stunned by the move of the Spirit that we didn’t know how to end the night. How do you tell a bunch of sobbing people “Ok. Uh, we have to stop now because there’s a 11pm neighborhood curfew where we can’t make noise anymore or else the police will come.”? The “cryfest” happened a lot during MTL times (Minister to the Lord) where we prayed almost 2 hours every day. One night the Holy Spirit fell in the room and our meeting ended up lasting 5 hours as we sat in the sanctuary crying out for our lost family members. It happened the last night of Tien Liao where little kids cried in the presence of God. A 16 year old girl (non-Christian) missed the sermon and entered the sanctuary (cold turkey) in the middle of ministry time and just began to cry under the heaviness of the Holy Ghost. A middle school girl named Sally was sobbing for almost an hour straight in one of our team member’s arms. The “cryfest” happened again at Princekin Elementary School. A gym was transformed into a sanctuary as 50+ little kids (even preschoolers) were crying as they encountered the thick presence of Jesus. Tissue boxes kept being brought into the room as more and more crumpled, white tissues littered the floor. There are more examples of radical moments throughout the mission trip. The “cryfests” happened many times as the Holy Spirit pounded the places with His glory. I loved it when He would minister that way...

BUT...

Those moment are not what impressed me the most. Don’t get me wrong. I loved the “cryfests”. I believe that God moved mightily in them. But those were not the most important/touching moments to me. What moved me the most were those normal days when we (the team) would faithfully go out and love, play, and talk to the kids about Jesus... even when it was tough. That’s where the REAL LOVE was at. It’s easy to get a bunch of people in a room and cry. All you have to do is tell them Jesus loves them, worship (so that the throne of Jesus will descend into the room), and let them loose to encounter. Easy pie. You can just stand at the side and watch. What’s hard is BEING like Jesus to them. It’s hard to motivate yourself to want to win their trust and become their friend. That’s why doing skits, games, testimonies, small groups, and crafts can seem so much harder. IT IS HARDER! It’s harder to love people. It’s not meaningless activity. It’s actually the more necessary, most humbling, and most loving activity of all. It’s easy to just throw them in a room, play some music and watch them cry. But to invest in their lives? To love ON them? To be willing to tell them about Jesus when they’re seemingly disinterested? To disciple them? That’s the tough part. It takes a lot of humility.

I am less impressed by traveling preachers who throw out the Jesus bomb at revival meetings (don’t get me wrong, I think they are necessary and vital in the advancing of God’s kingdom), and more impressed by pastors who stay faithful to a flock, press on through the mundane to disciple them, and practice patience in loving the individual. There are tons of Christians out there who would love to join the Hillsong traveling band and throw wild Jesus parties out for masses to cry at and have a spiritual high. But there are few people who are willing to do the thing that is most like Jesus and faithfully love the weak, unspiritual individual through the mundane.

I love this year’s mission team. It was composed of people who were humble enough to pray and serve. They were all meek enough to love the unlovable day by day, step by step, and choice by choice. We are not perfect. There were definitely days were the accuser of the brethren would put disheartening thoughts into our minds and say that way we faithfully worked to love and teach about Jesus was ineffective and meaningless. But Jesus’ words are the truth and they break the lies of the enemy. Jesus says that when we speak His words it does not return empty (Isaiah 55:11) and that if we give people even a cup of water He will reward us for it (Mark 9:41). There is no doubt that this year’s mission trip was by far the most spiritually powerful. But power without love is empty. I am proud to say that the mission team truly poured themselves out to love everyone God put in their way. Every member exhibited astounding patience, kindness, selflessness, and hope... even in the mundane. To me, witnessing such faithful love in them during the tough days was the most radical expression of Jesus to a broken, love-deficient people.