New year, new hopes

Hello friends,

How are you? Hope you are having a great year/ semester so far! I did not blog for a long time because I was in the USA for a Christian missions conference called Urbana. Not sure what you think of when you hear missions, but we talked about and learned about a lot of things. There were around 17000 people there, in St. Louis, and it's not the number that counts but the passion to serve people around the world and bring the good news of Christ through both words and action.

I went to a Hinduism workshop and an Islam workshop (taught by people who lived among people of those religions), just learning about the religions and what similarities or differences there were between Christianity and those religions. Also the speakers in the general sessions talked about issues like poverty, trafficking, forgiveness and reconciliation, the environment, etc.

I was really inspired and I want to share with you guys in more detail what I learned over the course of the next few weeks, cuz honestly if I fit all I learned in one blog post I will make your eyes tired!

So today I will focus on one thing: Family.

Most of you probably read a lot of stuff in the past year's blog posts about my family. I know I have not been giving out the best of attitude in my family, and at first I was really prideful in thinking that I was entitled to be so angry and criticize them. It's true that I have a reason to be angry but I think staying angry and bitter isn't going to help me or my family at all.

In our Urbana handbook there was a section talking about the prayer rooms and what the theme of the prayer rooms were going to be for each day. I decided that I had to go to the Thursday one cuz it had the title of something along the lines of "brokenness, sexual sin, and family". So I went and the prayer leader gave us Bible verses to reflect and pray about, and also songs to guide our prayer time.

She named out one by one some sins mentioned in Galatians (see below):

Galatians 5:19-21 (New International Version)

¹⁹The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; ²⁰idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions ²¹and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.

I realized that I had the sins of pride, of discord, of fits of rage, and dissensions, sins that I didn't even know I had before. I started crying to God and asking for forgiveness, because although many of you think of me as a gentle person, sometimes when I am really angry at home, I yell a lot and there is a rift between me and a family member.

If you look at the Bible verse, you will see that most of the sins are pretty related. Like for me, discord, fits of rage, jealousy, dissensions, etc. are pretty related. And it shows how much God values unity and harmony in a family or in the world in general.

And although as a person striving for independence I do not like the word "submission" (the S-word!), at Urbana I learned that it is only through submitting to God's desires and submitting to my family that I will find peace. It doesn't mean I will be a slave, it just means I will be more agreeable (although I am tempted to shiver at this A-word as well).

I told my family about what I learned and I think they were really happy. I also think that without me first getting rid of my sin, I will never be able to shine God's light in my home. It is my toughest mission field, to be Jesus in my home.

Sometimes people don't like to talk about sin, but truth is, whether we know it or not, we have them, and if we realized that we were sinful and tried to change it, it would improve your life and others' lives as well... and usually our lives would be at least a bit more happy!

Take care and God bless,
from Martine