I will bring praise

As I was drinking a doppio espresso yesterday at Starbucks, I was reminded of Cambodia and their wonderful espresso at the FCC. I realized if all I did was reminise about the great coffee I had in Phnom Penn and not the people that I met, or the encounters that I had with the living God, then my entire trip was a waste. I came home and spent the next few hours asking my self the same question "What's next?" Would I walk away from this experience with a fresh perspective, or allow myself to be unchanged? I'm striving for the first option.

The people at New Life Church in Phnom Penh flipped my world upside down. They showed me how to love our God passionately, how to worship with out any reservation and how to share my love for Christ in all that I do. The majority of the church is 18-35 year olds, and are proudly 1st generation Christians. (Christianity wasn't introduced to Cambodia until about 1997, and is still not completely known in the Cambodian culture.) So needless to say, the church has some energy! Every person I met at New Life wanted to know my name, where I was from, and if I knew Jesus. I was shocked by that! They want everyone they know to experience Jesus Christ in the same way they do, so they tell them about Him! It seems so simple. The bible tells us to share Christ with everyone we meet- so they do! They have no example of what a church should look like, what a Christian should look like, and they got this crazy idea to read the bible, God's living Word, and DO WHAT IT SAYS. Such a strange concept huh?

One of the coolest experiences I had in Cambodia was in the Krangtinon Province, where New Life has a church plant. We got to do a program with their youth 16-20 somethings and spent sometime in worship. We sang songs that both churches knew and sand out loud, them in Khmer and us in English. We were all singing and dancing and having this amazing time of Worship, when suddenly, a thunderstorm hits the village and the generator blows. We have no lights, no sound, and the Khmer people KEEP SINGING. Our team kind of stopped, looked around, like what do we do?? We followed their lead and continued to praise God with everything that's in us! My eyes welled up with tears at that very moment, because I knew our team finally got it.

The bible gives us story after story of people who were passionate worshippers and followers of Jesus Christ. What if we, as a generation, decided to open up our bibles and do what the Word tells us to do? It would be a radical change. What if we stopped listening to what our culture says "church" should look like, what "worship" should like, and took the bible literally. Could you imagine what our services would look like? I've seen it!! Christians dancing, singing, raising their hands, speaking in tongues, on their knees worshipping God- because that's what they read in the Word! Christians praying bolding for their friends, family, schools, and everyone they know- that they would come to know this God that they have fallen so passionately in love with! Can you imagine?



God, I humbly come before you and thank you for the experience in Krangtinon. Thank you for opening my eyes, for waking me up and allowing me to see what it means to be passionate about you, Father! My prayer today is that, our generation would be woken up. That we would dig into your Word, and experience You in new ways. That our times of worship would be forever changed. That the people we encounter everyday, would know of Your love, because we told them. I pray that we would be a generation that is CLEARLY in love with You.