England, India, etc

I stumbled across this letter that I never sent. It is an update from my trip to England last year and what would have been a support letter for my trip to India... I thought I would include it here for those with plenty of time on their hands. ;)

"Dear Friend

I write to tell you of the many things God has done since last summer when you prayed and helped make it possible for me to go and minister to youth in England. Thank you so much. God did so many fantastic things and there are many praise reports!

I apologize that it has taken me such a long time to put it all down on paper. This is in part because I hit the ground running when I got home. I moved out of my parent’s house and into a new apartment in Dallas less than two weeks after I returned, which I thought would be a breeze. Little did I know the packing that awaited me after 10 years in the same room. The last part of high school, all of college and the first few years of my adult life were tightly crammed into every last inch of my shelves, drawers and closet. Why I kept all that stuff, I have no idea. The best part of it all was that the movers were late and my dad, two brothers and three friends had to carry all of my boxes and furniture up three flights of stairs in the heat of a harsh Texas summer. I have to admit I felt guilty watching them sweat to death as I pranced around in the air conditioning and told them where to put things. Sometimes you just don’t know how blessed you really are to have a loving family that pulls together and supports you. Of course, I’m sure the fact that they were so happy to see me finally move out of the house had absolutely nothing to do with it.

Needless to say, I barely had time to process all that I saw and learned on the trip. I was so overwhelmed with new bills, buying groceries and learning to live with a roommate that it seemed only a few weeks flew by before I realized that it had been months since I had been back from England. Not to mention, many new doors had opened up for me in media ministry and I was working the equivalent of two jobs, in addition to trying to keep up with my previous commitments in the areas of youth and prayer ministry.

For lack of a better word, this last season of my life has been a whirlwind. But God in His generous kindness has continued to keep my feet planted in Him, even though at times He has had to rein me in quite forcefully - and I am grateful to Him for it.

Ehem, so anyway, this is not a blog, it is an update letter so…..

First, let me say that it is such a privilege to go to another country with the sole purpose of serving Jesus. In my opinion, it’s the only way to travel.

As we did with Ireland, our team prepared spiritually for the trip to England by praying that God would show us His perspective on the spiritual state of things there and give us a correct vision of what our role would be to play. During one of the prayer times for the trip, a woman in our church who is from New Zealand shared with us what she believed the Lord had laid on her heart about our trip. She said, “England is a land of deep [spiritual] roots. [As you go] remember that there have been many moves of God in England [referring to the various spiritual awakenings recorded in history]. It is a great privilege [for you] to go and call the roots back. [God] is calling [England] back to Himself.” Then she read a passage of Scripture from Job 14:7-10 which says,

“For there is hope for a tree, if it cut down, that it will sprout again, and that its tender shoots will not cease. Though its root may grow old in the earth, and its stump may die in the ground, yet at the scent of water it will bud and bring forth branches like a plant.”
Job 14:7-10 NKJV

From this we determined that our goal on the trip would be to bring “the scent of water” with us to England, a fresh passion and the life of God that would cause those we came in contact with to awake and thirst for the water of Life. This insight proved to be more true than we realized at the time. We had heard that England – along with the rest of Europe – had become “post Christian,” meaning it had survived the Christian era and become a society in which Christian faith and belief are considered things of the past. We had no idea what this really meant until we observed it firsthand.

When we arrived, our host church gave us a brief history lesson. Apparently, toward the end of WWII, Christianity came under open intimidation and scrutiny in English society. Tolerance became the norm and Christian influence began to wane. In the words of our host church, “The Church started letting the world tell them how to be Christian.” If you stop right there, you can easily see that this in itself is a preposterous idea. How can the spiritually dead give any advice on living a new life in Christ? They can only advise on how to properly conduct oneself in a manner appropriate among the spiritually dead. So why then, would any thinking person listen to them? The sad part is that the majority of the Church did listen. And therefore, Christianity was all but wiped out in open society. Churches are considered places to go for christenings, weddings and funerals, only regularly attended by those in their eighties and above. A whole generation has grown up in a spiritual vacuum, with most people forty and under having never heard the Gospel. Christianity is one of many religions children learn about in school, alongside Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism and others.

In one of the schools we visited, there were posters about the many religions of the world on the walls in one of the classrooms. I was shocked to see the lifeless depiction of Christianity in one of the posters. While many of the other posters showed religious ceremonies with bright colors and pictures of celebrations, the one explaining the Christian faith showed the brown drab inside of an old church and an old priest administering the sacraments to a couple getting married. They all looked very pious. As I stared at it I thought, No teenager in their right mind would be even remotely interested in such a somber looking scene – I’m a Christian and it bores me!

The truth is, most of the young people in the schools we visited had never heard the whole story about Jesus. Oh, they may have heard the Name – but only as they have heard the name of Mohammed, or Buddha. They have not heard that there is a God who loves them, Who sent His Son to come and die for all the wrong things they have done and that they can be completely forgiven.

As I spoke to one girl after an evangelistic outreach one evening, she stared at me wide-eyed as I explained this to her. It hit her so hard that I could see her eyes filling up and could tell that she was swallowing hard desperately trying to fight back the tears. It was so beautiful that it almost broke my heart. I have never in my life seen someone so visibly impacted by the truth of the Gospel. It proves to me that the Gospel is so true and it strikes such a chord in the human heart, that when the Holy Spirit is revealing Jesus to someone you don’t have to say a lot. You don’t have to run to your apologetics book to prove that God created the world in six days and you don’t have to be a great preacher. You just have to open your mouth and tell someone the plain truth of what you know, and though it may sound simple to you, it will come to them with such a power that it will evoke something inside them that they never knew existed.

With many of the English people, we saw an intense hunger covered by a fierce reservation. They wanted to hear what we had to say, and yet many of them stopped short of the “evangelical” commitment that we wanted them to make. Part of it was that we were Americans telling them something that they didn’t know, which although novel, was a little hard on the ego. Another part of it was that this information was literally so new to them that you could tell many of them needed time to process it and take it all in. Finding out that there is a hell and you deserve to go there is a hard thing to swallow.

One of the major differences in the evangelical way of the English church versus our American mindset, is that in America we tend to be driven by the “big.” Big events, big numbers, big moments, big emotion, big everything. We often equate “big” with success. In a conversation with a youth worker named Jaya, a young woman close to my age from our host church, she shared with me her personal paradigm for evangelism, which I think parallels closely the larger approach in the English church. She said that she looks for “big” in the small things. That miraculous things happen in the moments we might easily overlook, and that any move against the “norm” is revolutionary. This literally blew my mind. I sat there speechless and totally humbled. Out of all the big crowds that followed Jesus and the big things that happened during His ministry, He never failed to draw attention to the widow who put in two mites, the sparrow that falls to the ground, the small Zaccheus who climbed a tree, or every “jot and tittle” of the Law. God sees grandeur in the small things, and so many times we miss what He is doing because we only want to see the outcome that we have dreamed up larger than life in our heads.

There is more that I could share about our trip – that we organized youth events, did dramas, survived on next to no sleep, sang with children, danced in goofy superhero costumes, and fell absolutely in love with the Brits, or I could tell you how I got to preach on the last night to a roomful of young people who had never heard the Gospel – but the main thing that I would like to share with you here is my heart. What was put into my heart during this trip, I hope that I have been able to share with you in some small way. A glimpse of the English people, of what God is doing there and how He is doing it. They are such precious people, their hearts are open and capable of deep resonance with the Gospel. Please pray for them.

And please take heed to their situation. Our nation now stands in the place they once stood. Will we allow the world to tell us how to be Christians? If we do, then our great-grandchildren may grow up without ever hearing the Gospel.

The Mission Continues…
Well, it seems that I have acquired a taste for travel. The funny part of this story is that I came back from Northern Ireland a year and a half ago with an incredible desire to go to India… Northern Ireland of all places, was where I first tried Indian cuisine – and loved it! I thought, Wow, this food is really good…Indian people must be really cool. God uses the funniest things sometimes. So, when I came back to Dallas, I scouted out some Indian restaurants and even learned to cook a few curry dishes. So when Elaine, my friend and mentor, said, “I’m planning a trip to India – and you’re going with me!” I was like, “Let’s go!”

Elaine leads a prayer gathering on Thursday nights called Eagles. The goal of the prayer meetings is to pray for the nations of the world and to provide prayer coverage for missionaries and pastors in different locations. At the beginning of each meeting, we set out maps and go through a list of prayer requests that Elaine has received throughout the week. It is very fun, and it causes the nations of the world to come closer to home as we pray for specific needs and people. It’s helped a lot with my geography skills, too!

Our mission to India will be one of prayer. We are going in order to set up a prayer room at a Christian conference center in Siliguri, West Bengal in the northeast part of India near Tibet. We will bring maps and various materials on prayer, as well as banners and other visual aids to help decorate the prayer room. Elaine will conduct teachings on prayer and we will spend a lot of time prayer walking the campus and local areas near the conference center. Several local pastors who have learned that we are coming have already asked that we come and pray around their church grounds. Our main focus will be to pray for God’s purposes to come about in the land of India, in addition to praying specifically for the needs of the local pastors and ministries in West Bengal.

I am very excited about this trip. I know that God has some incredible things in store. One of my personal goals for the trip is that God would open my heart even more to the nations and give me a greater vision of what He is doing, including how He wants to build His kingdom across the world and what I can do to be a bigger part of that. I would also like to receive a greater heart for the Indian people, specifically for the women of India.

If you would again join me in prayer for this exciting opportunity, I would be so thankful. I felt your prayers in England so strongly and I know that God was giving our team a special measure of grace and protection in response to your prayer coverage. Please consider becoming a part of my prayer team as I venture across the world even further this time.


If you would like to contribute financially, please make checks payable to Eagles World Intercessory Network. The total cost of the trip is _________. Please pray that the Lord will give our team creative ideas and ways to fundraise. In addition to our own travel expenses, we are also bringing all of the maps and prayer materials as a gift to the believers in Siliguri.

A story comes to mind that I feel I must share with you in closing: When I was a little girl, my mom used to read many books to me. Being the parents that they were, my mom and dad made sure that all of the information I took in as a child included solid Christian examples for my little young mind to absorb. One of my favorite books was called “Around the World In My Red Balloon.” It was a book about children with a giant red hot air balloon who would travel to different places all over the world and meet children of different countries. The children with the red balloon would learn about the lands and cultures of the places they would visit such as the islands, South America and Asia. I remember that there were many bright pictures in the book with children in all different types of native dress. At the very end of the book on the last page, the children with the red balloon said that before they would leave each place, they would tell the other children about God’s love. That page showed a bunch of happy faces from all the different nations, waving goodbye to the children in the red balloon. I always loved that part at the end. I think about that book now and I think about the simple excitement and joy I felt as a child at the thought of sharing God’s love with people so far away.

I want to encourage you to plant seeds in the hearts of the children in your life – seeds of the love of Jesus and the joy of sharing His love with others. It can become so complicated to us, but really it’s very simple. Who knows what God will do with that seed that you plant. I wonder how many other children read that same book and caught a vision for missions…


With joy,
Tabitha "

It's funny that this letter mentions the Red Balloon. I think that was the first time I had thought about it in years. Upon returning home, my friends at work had decorated my desk with red balloons and a welcome back card... seems the theme is catching on.

Not knowing about the book, someone near and dear was praying for me before I left for India and they said, "I see that it's like you are going there in a balloon, a balloon of God's presence. You are in His presence and you will carry His presence to the people." Upon which I gasped and told her about the developing theme...and about how I had been praying about what it meant. Spooky? No. It's God. Don't put Him in a box. He does what He wants. and He can ride in a balloon or be a balloon or make me a balloon, whatever, I don't care... I just want God. the real God, the Living Alive not stuck in a religious moth ball God. the One Who still speaks today.... don't you?

...not that you wanted to know this but...

i'm not feeling so good. everything i eat seems to give my stomach a whirl. it's off and on and is mostly determined by whether i eat or not. my mom and dad say i should visit the doc... so i guess i will. it's sunday now and this has been going on for several days since we got back. i ate indian food pretty much every meal, i love indian food and i could not resist! i have a feeling it was either our last meal in the airport or one of the meals on the plane... too much information, sorry!

i have been meaning to update my blog since i got back, but i have been working and have not had a chance to get to the computer. and now that i am finally at the computer, i don't have my journal! for now i will just mention a few things.

one, i think i may have convinced my brother to come with me to india next time. so many times while i was there, i was thinking "my brother has to come here, he has to see this." so we'll see what God does there.

two, thank you so much to all of you who prayed for me while i was gone. please pray that God will clear up whatever leftover sickness i am having.

three. culture shock was killer. i felt like i left my heart in india. i was not happy to be back. i hated all of the controlled environments, the lines in the roads, the hyper organized systems, and most of all, the spirits i felt. i was coming from a place where we were super-sensitive to the spiritual environment around us, and i have to tell the truth. there are spirits here. they are sneaky. they are so sneaky. i felt them the moment our plane landed. they want to control and they do. there are means of control that they use - money, religion, image. we think of other countries as having territorial spirits. but we are so oblivious to the ones that rule over our own neighborhoods. even when i say this you are probably like, "oh yeah we know about those things." really? then what are you doing about it? i am so struck with the fact that we are to declare war against the principalities. we are not to live like everyone else and let them so subtly make us complacent.

Jesus turned over tables in the temple. He was violent. i'm ready to see some violence against the things we have put up with for so long. we have church and there is no presence of God and we are ok with that. we act like if we feel a little goosebumps then that is what we came for. i want JESUS. what does that look like? i don't know. all i know is i'm tired of the status quo. i am so tired of the religion that lulls us to sleep so that we continually miss the power of God. even the name of JESUS has been cloaked with religion in people's minds.

the JESUS i saw in india is not the jesus that i have seen in so many religious corners of this area. i have to tell you, i am so tired of it. i am exhausted, i feel no patience anymore.

God awaken us! Deliver us! and let us know Your true power and presence in this generation.