12-4-06

Dear Friends,

Thank you all so much for caring about Rahab's Rope. This is an exciting week as we are preparing to leave for India this Friday, Dec. 8. There are 12 of us traveling for the Christmas Celebration in Bangalore. Please remember us in prayer as we travel and be praying for the women we will be ministering to. Pray that many women will receive the HOPE of this Christmas season that we are all so familiar with. I will be looking forward to sharing all the exciting news when we return.

I preparation for this trip an excerpt from the Beth Moore Bible Study "Breaking Free" was brought to my attention and I would like to share it with you. I know it is a little lengthy but it captures such a picture of
India. I pray it touches your heart and motivates you to listen to God and ask, "What can I do?" Please read all of Isaiah 58:6-12; this is in part."v.6 - Is this not the fast that I have chosen; to loose the bonds of
wickedness, to undo the heavey burdens, to let the oppressed go free... v.10 - If you extend your soul to the hungry and satisfy the afflicted soul then your light shall dawn in the darkness... v.11 - The Lord will guide you continually and satisfy your soul in drought and strengthen your bones..."

Beth Moore writes, "While fasting speaks of emptiness, satisfaction speaks of fullness. God promises that those who empty themselves of other pleasures will have themselves filled by something only He can give. God took me to the other side of the world to supply a few answers to these questions. In my two-week stay in India, these verses came to my mind more than any others. If you're looking for a fun little mission trip, keep India out of your travel plans. I'm not sure any other nation is quite like India. You never get away from its suffering. Pain follows you down the streets in the form of orpahned, filthy beggars. It penetrates your hotel room with the eerie sound of Hindu music played to appease at least 300 million gods.  Agony stings your eyes as you stare at the sea of poverty. It wretches in your throat when you smell the rotting flesh blocks away from the leper colony. When I returned, people asked me if I had a good time. No. Actually,
I didn't have a good time. I had a profound time. I will never be the same.  I can't forget what I saw.

What kind of fast did God require of me as He sent me to minister one-on-one to the oppressed? A fast from comfort. A fast from my pretty little world. A fast from rose-colored glasses. The fast I enjoy in Houston,
as freeways loop around the inner city to keep me from facing the poor. I can live days on end here, stay in my very own neighborhood, and choose to deal only with pretty problems that smell better. I can choose to fast from poverty and oppression. But if I do, I'll never have a heart like God's.

One of the purposes of a fast is for the emptiness to prompt us to a spiritual response. The emptiness in the people of India brought back vivid memories of my own at one time. So many things tore at my heart. The faces most engraved on my heart are those of the women. Heads covered. Meek. Many to the point of seeming shamed. I stood in a village with raw sewage running only a few feet from me and spoke to four women through an interpreter. I wasn't planning to. The Spirit just come over me. I touched their faces and
told them they were so beautiful. I told them that God saw them with great dignity and honor. Like princesses. Withing a few moments four women turned into many. I still can't think about it without crying. They wept, held on to me, and were willing to do anything to receive such a Savior. They knew their curcumstances might never change, but one day they would lay down this life and wake up in the splendor of God's presence. Do you know what God used to provoke a bond between those women and me? A very acute memory of my own former emptiness and oppression.

Beloved, we don't have to go to the other side of the world to reach out to the oppressed. Oh, how I pray we will each discover glorious satisfaction in Christ; but when it's the real thing, we must find a place to pour the overflow of our lives. Captives truly set free are the most compassionate people in the world. They don't see others as less than themselves, because they've lived a little of their own lives in the gutter, too.

Our motivations for reaching out and serving others aren't always pure. My dear friend Kathy Troccoli asked a critical question: "Am I ministering out of my need or out of the overflow of my own relationship with God?" We would be wise to ask ourselves the same question. Do we crave the affirmation of those we serve and do they help us feel important? Or do we serve because Jesus has so filled our hearts that we must find a place to pour the overflow? A ministry to the truly oppressed helps purify our serving motives. You see, they don't have much to give back. The satisfied soul is never a more beautiful display of God's splendor than when willing to empty self for the lives of others."

MAY GOD BLESS YOU AS YOU BLESS OTHERS DURING THIS HOLIDAY SEASON!

In His Glad Service,
Vicki

Rahab's Rope, Inc.
PO Box 907308
Gainesville, Ga 30501
770-287-5218