Cooking or God?

Well, it is October 2nd. Today marks my 66th day in Brasil. Wow, so long, yet so short.

Things here have been pretty good. I have had some really good days where I laughed until I cried and could actually hold a conversation with someone. I feel much more like myself as I get better and better at Portuguese. I still have a ways to go, but I can for sure tell I am getting better. Thank the Lord!

But I still have my days where I just want to go home. I still feel alone here, especially Spiritually. I don’t have Christian fellowship. Ya I have a couple Christian friends. But I don’t have true Christian fellowship. I don’t know how else to describe it than that. I am trying to go to some more churches and youth groups etc. but its still hard to understand because of the language and I have to be so careful with who and what I trust. I don’t know that the church I am going to is teaching Biblically because I cannot understand it all right now. I guess this has to do with everything here really. I cannot trust anything at this moment to be sound, true, stable. Because I have not had time to understand it all. Its draining. I just want something that I know is true that I can trust for sure! I am realizing that the only thing I have is God.

Through this and some other experiences God is starting to show me that He is the only thing that I can always rely on. That He will never fail. Its funny the ways we learn these things. I’ve just recently realized that God is teaching me this while attempting to cook here with Iza. But first I need to give a little background info. For those of you who know me pretty well, you know that I love to cook. Cooking has, for the last few years, been a way that I can de-stress. If I had a bad day at school, I would go home and cook something and listen to some worship music. This always helped me get my thoughts straightened out and calm down. I didn’t only cook when I was stressed however. I also cooked just for the pleasure of cooking. Anyways, today as I was helping Iza cook lunch for everyone. I kept messing up; I kept doing things wrong. The types of food, the way they cook it, the utensils they use, and everything about cooking is just different here. I felt helpless in that kitchen. Well, I came up to me room afterwards, sat on my bed and almost cried. I miss my kitchen so much. I miss the familiarity of it all back in CO. After writing a short email, God revealed to me how He is cutting off all my dependence on these earthly things. Nothing material here is certain. The only thing I can always rely on is God. He is teaching me this slowly but surely, and boy does it hurt. Its like this:
Think of the rivers and ponds all scattered through out the Rocky Mountains. There is always a river flowing into a pond and a river flowing out. This is in order to keep the pond from overflowing or becoming stagnate. My being, my soul, my body is like that pond. The river flowing into it is life; the things I experience here on earth. And the river flowing out of it is what I rely on to keep me from overflowing and growing stagnant. For me, I have a lot of those outlets. Some include cooking, relationships, my own intelligence and knowledge. Those all are pretty big outlets, but my outlet labeled “God” is a trickling flow of water not worthy to be called stream. Well, God is slowly damming up all my other outlets. He has already closed off my reliance on my own intelligence and knowledge by living in a country without knowing the language, customs, bus routs. I cannot yet fully trust in my relationships with people here. I have some good friends, But I don’t know them well enough to take everything they say as the truth. And not I cannot trust my cooking anymore. My pond is filling up and the pressure is tearing apart the earth at the outlet named “God”. It hurts when God suddenly blocks off what keeps us going and slowly tears out what we rely on in order to place it all on Him. I will always struggle with relying full on God. This is a life long battle, a life long lesson. But God is teaching me this in a whole new way right now. Now I do not think that cooking is bad, or trusting in relationships is bad, or that using my knowledge to help me is bad. These are all necessary things! But when I place them in front of my reliance in God, I will always fall.
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2 Chronicles 16:7-9
“At that time Hanani the seer came to Asa king of Judah and said to him: "Because you relied on the king of Aram and not on the LORD your God, the army of the king of Aram has escaped from your hand. Were not the Cushites and Libyans a mighty army with great numbers of chariots and horsemen? Yet when you relied on the LORD, he delivered them into your hand. For the eyes of the LORD range throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him. You have done a foolish thing, and from now on you will be at war."
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Isaiah 31:1
“Woe to those who go down to Egypt for help,
who rely on horses,
who trust in the multitude of their chariots
and in the great strength of their horsemen,
but do not look to the Holy One of Israel,
or seek help from the LORD.”
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2 Corinthians 1:8-12a
“We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about the hardships we suffered in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life. Indeed, in our hearts we felt the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead. He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us, as you help us by your prayers”.