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Tag: Haiti

  • What Words Can’t Do

    BY Chris Surber

     
    WordsFor the first time in my life I’ve experienced something bigger than words. I’m writing a section of “A Cup of Cold Water” tonight. Keyboards and computers are inadequate vessels for some things. Even words can only contain so much of an idea. God has reshaped everything for me. How do I tell that story? How do I do it in a way that points to God’s glory more than my story? How do I tell you about God taking my family to Haiti and crushing our heart on the anvil of its poverty and reshaping everything?
    How do I tell you things we need to hear but don’t want to hear in a way that will make you hear them? How do I tell you that in finding Haiti’s poverty, its curse, I’ve come to realize that our lack of poverty is our curse? How do I tell you that the safest place to be is broken in the arms of Christ every day in every way?
    I’m heavy hearted because I know if I could somehow encapsulate the joy of watching my ten year old become genuine friends with an orphan who looks completely different than him, it could speak to you about the reality that God’s love transcends race and language. I think that could help you understand your place in this world as a follower of the King whose Kingdom is comprised of people from every tribe and tongue. (Romans 14:11)[ene_ptp] I’m lost because in finding my way ministering to the incredibly poor in Haiti, I’m not sure I know how to convince you that to whom much is given much is required.  (Luke 12:48) How do I tell you that Jesus wasn’t playing with the rich young ruler when He told him to sell all he owned and give it to the poor? (Luke 18:22) How can I communicate the broken peace of looking into a hungry child’s eyes and seeing Christ staring back at you? (Matthew 25:40)
    I’m broken. I don’t mean in the cliché way that a Christian and a pastor are supposed to say they’re broken. I don’t mean the hip language of a generation that wants to sound deep but not get dirty. I mean I’m broken like a lawn mower that won’t start broken. I can no longer function well in American Church culture where we talk about sacrifice but don’t sacrifice. I can no longer look children in the eye and tell them it’s good enough to memorize Scripture but not live it out.
    Words can’t do some things. Words can’t make you get up and follow Jesus. Words can point the way. Words can shine a light on a path. But words can never ever open the door into the broken, shattered, beautiful, shining experience of letting go of our soul’s grip on this world by giving our heart away to Jesus in giving our lives away in sacrifice to alleviate someone else’s suffering.
    Words not applied are as meaningless as firewood on a cold night if a spark is never struck. Words can’t push you off the cliff into the abyss of grace. Only obedience can do that. Words can never, will never change even one broken life in this shattered world. Only action founded on faith can do that.
    Tonight I’m a writer with no words; a preacher with no sermon; a musician with no tune. Pray for me and I’ll pray for you. Perhaps God can speak a word that will open my eyes and yours. Maybe He’ll give me some words to write and do something in us that goes beyond what words can’t do.
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  • Pray for Rain

    By Chris Surber

     
    [ene_ptp]To say it’s hot in Haiti is a bit like saying its muddy in the swamp. It’s just plain part a’ the deal. Living a year in Haiti was among the hardest things I’ve ever done, but not only because of the commonplace suffering and hardship my eyes endured. I’m built like an arctic polar bear not a Caribbean lizard!
    For me, the heat was almost unbearable. Some days, constant, often  heart-wrenching requests to help truly poor people with real needs that I couldn’t always meet, coupled with the highest temperatures were almost too much to take. On the hottest, hardest days I prayed for rain. Strangely, almost miraculously, on so many of those hard hot days the rain would come to our dry mountainside cinder block home and quench my parched spirit.
    Haiti is in a drought. It’s common for the evening showers to last only a few minutes and hit the mountainsides spottily – only hitting a small tin-roofed neighborhood here and there. It almost always seemed to hit ours. When I needed the rain, when I thought I couldn’t go any further on the dry hot journey of faith my family was on, my sons and I would enjoy a few shirtless refreshing minutes standing arms raised enjoying the cool rain.
    Pray for rain. Pray for God to quench your soul in the trial. Pray for rain. Pray in faith for God to quench your soul with His healing love so that you can keep going on your journey of faith! Pray in faith believing that God can and will answer the petition that is offered consistent with His will and Word. That’s what Elijah did:
    “Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years and six months it did not rain on the earth. Then he prayed again, and heaven gave rain, and the earth bore its fruit.” (James 5:17-18 ESV)
    Elijah was a man with a nature exactly like ours. He was a fellow sufferer and God honored his prayer! He prayed for rain and got it. What are we waiting for to pray for the rain of God to fall in our lives?
    Living a year in a Third World country has shaken my life and my faith to its foundations. It has sharpened or changed me in every way. I have seen incredibly poor people trust God and receive miraculous answers to prayer. I have felt the rain on my skin at just the right time as I prayed for God to refresh my spirit and keep my family strong for just a little while longer.
    Stop praying half-hearted, indistinct prayers. Pray in faith believing God is not a liar but faithful to His Word. Pray like you mean it. When a man prays he must know that whatever comes is ultimately God’s will “But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind. For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.” (James 1:6-8 ESV)
    Friend, the God who separated the waters on the earth from the waters in the heavens is but a prayer away from sending the rain in your life. Cease with the halfhearted desultory prayers of the double minded. Get into God’s Word and unleash the prayer of faith which is that prayer consistent with the promises of God!
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    Click on a book cover to get more information on that book.

     

  • A Cup of Cold Water

    by Chris Surber

     
    [ene_ptp]I never imagined God would lead me to live in a place like Haiti. My first mission trip to Haiti was less than 3 years ago and it was my first mission trip anywhere. For years I’d ministered to what we would call the “least of these” in America. It was meaningful ministry but it was nothing like this.
    My wife went to Haiti a few months before my first trip. God broke her heart there. She subsequently dragged me to Haiti and He broke my heart too. On that first trip nearly three years ago I met a little girl with a big smile that is now a part of my family. I met Carmelie on a dusty, dirty, scorching hot hill in Haiti. Christina met her on her first trip. She was thirsty and asking Christina for water. I met her a few months later when my wife dragged me to Haiti. She asked us for water and in my mind all I could think was that poor little kid was still thirsty.
    I took her around the corner, emptied my water pack into a cup. I gave it to her. She drank every drop of that ice cold water. I was as shaken as uncertain as to why I was so struck by the simple act of giving this little girl some water. I thought I must be the most prideful person to want to pat my own back as to the kind deed I had done. Maybe I was just congratulating myself on the inside for being such a benevolent man. Maybe I was just losing my mind at the sight of the most immense poverty. It was lack on a scale I didn’t really know existed.
    Later that day I was sitting with my wife in the bed of a little barely running truck when it hit me. God brought Matthew 10:42 to my mind. “And whoever gives one of these little ones even a cup of cold water because he is a disciple, truly, I say to you, he will by no means lose his reward.” I’ve ministered in all kinds of contexts but this was the first time all of the trappings and veneer that had been unknowingly cluttering my understanding of what it means to just be obedient to God’s call to the poor were stripped away. It was just me, a poor little girl, and a cup of cold water.
    God moved Christina and me so much in Haiti that we decided to spend 2015 living there as a family. She and I and four kids packed up and went on mission. We founded “Supply and Multiply” as a kind of family project to make a difference in Haiti. In barely two years it has grown to be an impactful presence in Montrouis, Haiti. We have done and are doing more things than can easily be mentioned here. From an Elderly Care Home with several full time staff and residents, to bringing scores of mission teams to Haiti, to ministering to children, to opening our lives and hearts up to the poor, and walking alongside so many people as simple fellow pilgrims on this journey, God is using our simple offering of obedience and growing it in every way.
    We’ve recently moved back to Virginia to Pastor a church as we continue to nurture the ministries we established in Haiti through our Haitian staff, and leading mission teams there several times a year. We all came back speaking a second language (Haitian Creole). That little Haitian girl came back with us too. Living in Haiti has changed our family in nearly every way. It has sharpened our sense of God’s heart for Christians to live simple lives on mission for Him. It trimmed a lot of fat off of how we think about stuff and possessions. It has made Christian and me stronger leaders in the local Church.
    Most of all, it has given us a crystal clear view of what it means to live a life on mission for Christ in this world. I’m presently writing a book entitled “A Cup of Cold Water” to be published with Energion. It’s a discussion based on Matthew 10:42, where Jesus says, “And whoever gives one of these little ones even a cup of cold water because he is a disciple, truly, I say to you, he will by no means lose his reward.”(ESV) The central theme of the book addresses how to do that in real terms in the real world in our lives.
    The book examines how we are to live as those called to fulfill the Great Commission: to lead people to Christ for eternal life, and obey the Great Commandment to love people in this world. Jesus calls His disciples – us – to preach the Cross and live like people dying in light of the Cross. Shout salvation and live compassion.
    Jesus commands us, His disciples, to preach the good news, the good news that He died for sinners and rose again; that He defeated death and the grave, and we can have new life in Him. Jesus also tells us to feed, clothe, care for, and love the least of these. God is calling us to abandon ourselves to lives of Christ-centered compassion. When we do the world sees Jesus on the Cross in us.
    What if He’s calling us to life on mission – and what if we lived on purpose. Go therefore and make disciples and as you go, be a living witness to the power of the Gospel. What if we preached it and lived it. What if it’s simple and what if we simply lived it out? A couple of times a month for the next few months I’ll be sharing the thoughts that are driving this book here. I’ll be asking some “What if” questions about discipleship and service.
    What if we just took the attitude that where people are starving we should feed them? Where they are hurting we are called to help them? All people are spiritually poor. We must preach the saving Gospel that saves souls. What if we started seeing our call in this world to simply and directly be the incarnation of Christ to a hurting broken world in every area of our life? What if we made our Christian walk about sharing a cup of cold water with people in need as an expression of the Gospel having taken up residence in our lives?
    What if it’s simple? What if we simply lived like people God has changed? Is it possible that would change some things? What if?

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    For more information about any of this author’s books, click on a book cover.

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