Week 4 - Mere Christianity and the border *dun dun dun!

I am continuously delighted with how every week there is more and more amazing work going on with God in my life. And on top of which, the classes we're doing never cease to stretch my mind and call up things I had never even thought about.

This week was Mere Christianity with Brenda Lewis. She's a co-director and speaker here at Axiom as well as one of the most charismatic and lovely individuals I've ever met. She went on to interpret Justice and Mercy and describe what Christianity really means. What I discovered was eye opening but at the same time rang within me something I knew all along, if that at all makes sense.
We listened to a recording of Paris Reidhead called "Ten Shekels and a Shirt." For those of you who don't know him, Paris was born in 1919 in a Minnesota farming community. In is late teens he committed himself to a life of Christ and by the 40's he was a preacher, missionary and advocate of economic development in impoverished nations. He took a position as pastor at New York City's Gospel Tabernacle in 1956 and while in New York, he drew on informational resources at the United Nations to pioneer a program through which government and private funds were used for economic development in the Third World. His efforts to implement local programs on this model took him to mission fields in Africa, Asia and South America. A spiritual crisis led him to describe what is probably the best known recorded teaching "Ten Shekels and a Shirt" in the 1960's. He was convicted that much of evangelicalism had adopted utilitarian ("if it works, it's true") and humanistic ("the end of being is the happiness of man") philosophies contradictory to Biblical teaching. The end of all being, he came to believe, was not the happiness of man, but the glorification of God. That we make Him happy through relationship and trust in his son and that's all there needs to be.
It was an amazing sermon and if any one's interested in reading it, just click on the link: http://www.parisreidheadbibleteachingministries.org/tenshekels.shtml

After hearing all this it just made so much sense. We don't want to not sin because it's wrong, we don't want to sin because it makes God unhappy and we would never want that. We love Him so much, that not sinning is simply something we're happy to commit to. Because when He is happy, we're happy. For the glory of God.
She also went in to describe how all the other religions of the world are all working towards God. Constantly working towards getting closer to God whereas Christianity is the only religion where God gave us a human being to relate to and bring us to God himself. Jesus. And Satan tries to make us believe that we still need to work, when we don't.
All God wants from us is Relationship. He wants us in our brokenness, in our failing humanity because he loves us just the way we are. To be in a loving relationship with his son is the highest form of gratitude and justice in which his mercy will be carried out. And so we give justice to God, he gives us mercy and grace with which we give unto each other. Interesting cycle, eh?

This Saturday was the dreaded border trip. Because I only have my weekends off and only till the 30th of the month we decided to take off on Saturday. We consulted with a friend as what the best route would be concerning what to say and bring and at 7am we were driving North. By 3:30 we were in downtown Buffalo when we saw a sign "Bridge to Canada." That must be it, we thought and drove right up to the Canadian crossing which was not at all where we wanted to go. We got up to the gates and tried explaining our situation to the officer, that we really needed to get to the American side and extend my passport. He had us park the car and wait while 5 officers searched the vehicle. Apparently missionaries need just need that many officers. But the funny thing is they didn't even seem concerned with me. Dan, one of the staff members who came with us (because we thought 3 people was better then 2 and everyone else wasn't able to come) is pretty tattoo'd which was like having a target on your forehead. He was asked if they were gang related, how he was able to support himself while doing volunteer work, who's car we had and why. And Rebecca, who didn't have her passport with her (and why not, we weren't going to Canada) was criticized and questioned as well. Finally they gave us this paper stating that we had not gone into Canada (more for Rebecca's purpose) and we would need to show this to the American border (which was right next door but on the other side of the highway *sigh).
Well once there they saw this paper as a denial into the Canada and took us into a huge room with tuns of people to talk to an officer. We waited over an hour and a half to get called and once we came up they were more concerned with Rebecca's nationality then why I was there in the first place. Finally the officer tells me that I need to actually go over to Canada and come back to be processed. I ask if there's a time limit and she says no, I can loop right around but I must be back in my own country to be considered. It was that or try filing paper work with immigration which could take god knows how long. So we ran back into town to have a coffee and decide what to do. We figured it was probably the best thing to leave Rebecca and Dan in town and go myself as there was no way Rebecca was getting over the border anyway and Dan has had way more issues actually getting back into his own country then getting out.
So I drove back over to the Canadian border and explained my story. No problems, got right through. *Whew! Easy-peezy. Once in Canada I drive up on the highway to turn around except it goes on. Forever. I think I was in Canada for about 20 minutes before I decided to take an exit and get back on the highway to the US. The whole time I'm in the car praying for soft hearts, Rebecca and Dan are praying, the folks at YWAM are praying, every one of my Christian friends back home are praying. I get up to the American border and they get me to park the car and go back into the original building I'd waited in for an hour and a half previously except this time it was nearly empty. Thank goodness! They call my name and at first they started giving me the third degree;
"Where are you living in the US?"
"In New Haven."
"Do you have a green card?"
"No..."
"Well you can't legally live in the US without one."
It kept like this until they asked me when the last time I was in the states and I tell them I've never been to America. "WHAT!?" they say and I start joking around. Soft hearts, soft hearts, soft hearts I'm chanting like a mantra in my head. Well, these guys turned out to be super nice. Finally he goes off to talk to his supervisor and comes back with, "We're going to hook you up." I exhaled the longest breathe ever. So he's typing away when he sees that I'm going to India. I tell him all about the orphanage we're working in and then he says he's going to type in more information so the border doesn't give me trouble coming back into America in February. Miracle?
I walked out of their office on cloud 9. I drove back into downtown Buffalo and we saw a movie in town in this very cute theatre and were back on the road by 9pm.
By five in the morning I was in my bed and legally sleeping in America.