by Stephanie Wheeler (Burn Cambodia)
It's night, but it is so hot that, even with two fans pointed onto me, the idea of sleeping feels far off (and thoughts of what the heat will be like when it actually becomes the hot season are not comforting!) ... so, instead, I'm going to try to articulate what on earth God is doing here in Cambodia, the heart of South-East Asia... it's big and beautiful, grand and glorious; but also simple and sweet, humbling and holy.
This bizarre (seeming) dichotomy has been keeping the wheels of my heart turning this week and is causing wings to grow on the vision that God has long showed me for Cambodia: it's going to touch every one of the 14 million Khmer hearts aching for Love...and this grand vision of an entire nation transformed? It doesn't look like stadiums... It looks like one. And, like the loaves and fishes, and like the leaven... one can go a long way.
The Father told me to come here and to Love Him and then Love His Children in the slums and dumps and hospitals and orphanages out of that filled-up place... but this was Jehovah Sneaky at His best! Because it turns out I had - and still have - a lot to learn about this thing called Love... and He set me up to learn how to Love from the people who have every excuse in the world not to believe in it. I thought I knew what it was to Love the poor. What it was to give of myself, to live laid-down, to look into the eyes of a beggar and see a son... but it turns out that I hadn't lingered in his eyes long enough to see the Son looking back at me.
Holy Spirit is re-converting my heart, daily, to the Simple Gospel; the Gospel that says, "just Love somebody already". The one that has given up trying to work out details and trying to establish 3-step strategies to guaranteed evangelistic success... the bottom-line of this Simple Gospel: is Love really enough or not?
We have seen and are continuing to see incredible, supernatural things here in Cambodia! A boy has come out of a coma (and a death-sentence) and has been granted Life! Broken bones and internal injuries have been healed on the spot! Ears have been opened! People in chronic pain have been set free, instantly! Fevers have subsided at the touch of our hands! Demons have gone! An angel came to worship with us on his piano at about 1am in our Burn last night! Murderers, rapists and thieves have had their destinies prophetically declared over them! Lady-boys are giving their hearts to Jesus and wanting to be boys again! And I have spent the week with a few thousand red-faced, wildly dancing, roaring-in-celebration Khmer people at a Randy Clark conference here in Phnom Penh where hundreds got healed without anyone laying hands on them! God is here and He is moving radically, unlike I've ever experienced. Randy was sharing one story about a man who had screws and bars in his body from surgery following a pretty terrible accident and before he could even get to the part of him being healed, this old grandma races up on stage, shaking her arms in the air! She has had metal screws in her wrists that have given her pain and restricted her movement for years and, as Randy was speaking... they dissolved! She was ecstatic, rolling her wrists, pain-free, for all to see! Ah Jesus is so kind!
And I Love this stuff! The Gospel must go out with power! Everywhere Jesus went, "He preached the good news of the Kingdom, and He healed people, ridding their bodies of sickness and disease" (Matthew 4:23) and I know that there is no other way. In fact, Cambodia's tourism slogan is "Kingdom of Wonder"... and we agree!! I Love getting my hands on people dying of AIDS and prisoners and orphans and prostitutes and seeing them encounter Him and be healed... I feel like I get Jesus so much when I do; these are the same people He hung out with when He walked dusty streets like these. But while the Kingdom of Heaven is busting open in the Kingdom of Cambodia in huge ways, it's in the moments that no one else has seen that I have been doubled-over in awe of Who God is... and seen the clearest vision of what it looks like for Heaven to invade this place.
Later that night of the conference, I was out on the street buying noodles from a vendor. Grandma was ahead of me in the queue with her 500 riel note (12c)... but it wasn't enough. This dish was 2000 riel (50c). Reluctantly, the young girl told grandma that she couldn't give it to her for 500 riel... and off she went to another vendor to get the only thing that she could afford with her 12c: half a baguette with pickles. While she waited for her food, I just allowed the Father to wreck me. If that was Jesus, would I for even a moment think of not helping Him out? Of course not. And this was Jesus. As Mother Teresa said (from Matthew 25):
"Hungry for love, He looks at you. Thirsty for kindness, He begs from you. Naked for loyalty, He hopes in you. Sick and imprisoned for friendship, He wants from you. Homeless for shelter in your heart, He asks for you. Will you be that one to Him?"
I walked over to her and, in Khmer, told her that I had some food for her. Her eyes lit up. Her beautiful, wrinkly, seen-so-much hand in mine, she walked across the street with me to her hot dinner. When I handed it to her, she looked deep into my eyes and told me that she loved me and embraced me for the longest time, right there in the middle of the street. She held my face in her hands and smiled the widest smile and just went on how she loved me and thank you thank you thank you... and off she went, to fill her belly.
I got onto the back of my motorbike home and felt an impartation into my heart from my sweet grandma. I'd come for impartation from this most wonderful Apostolic leader, who gave and gave and gave this week... Cambodia has received much from his coming! But when she hugged me? She really hugged me. If Jesus is in the poor, amongst the poor, like He says that He is... then He was surely in this woman, holding me, showing me what real Love looks like. I thought it was the one demonstrating Love by buying a hungry lady a 50c meal. But here He was, showing me the uncountable value of Love. That the real Love was not in the giving of money or food... but the real demonstration of Love here was in the one who knew she had nothing, but gave all of her heart to a stranger on the street.
And this is what revival is going to look like in Cambodia (and everywhere): Love. It's the Simple Gospel. And it is more than enough. It's not Love plus something... Love plus anything means that Love is not enough. And Love is more than enough! And this revival is going to be fully miraculous; the deaf will hear, the blind will see, the lame will walk, the dead will be raised! It's been prophesied, and it's beginning to happen! (We have stories of the dead being raised here without anybody even praying for them!) But, even more than that? It's going to be the turning of dumps into playgrounds and of prisons into schools. Of fear into Peace and mourning into Joy. And every mama and papa, every girl and boy knowing that they are severely Loved. This is not a Love to merely be described... and I'd never want to think I could ever have enough words... but this is a Love to be encountered, to become possessed by! As we fall in Love with Him in the Garden of His Heart, we then have the privilege of looking into His Eyes through the eyes of the poor, our family, our friends and enemies and infecting them with a life-altering encounter with True Love.
As the beautiful, Loved-up Heidi Baker says:
"Love will cost you everything: laying down your life, living a life of passion and compassion, giving without expecting, feeling God's very heartbeat, surrendering to His rhythm, and following the Lamb wherever He goes, even to the ends of the earth. Why go to the ends of the earth if you have nothing to give? The only currency that will heal every culture is ceaseless love. To be a minister, we must walk like Jesus, talk like Jesus, and be like Jesus for a broken and dying world. Ministry looks like servanthood manifested through love. Your job description is to be the fragrance of Christ, the beauty of Jesus, the very anointing of Him on Earth."
Enjoy, live out of, be wrecked by, and impart the Simple Gospel.
