Good Work

Don’t Let Him Shake Your Tree.

/ Erin Kirk / 2 Comments

My husband Sam loves the word addled. Truly, it’s a pretty good word with great synonyms like muzzy, woozy and befuddled.

He doesn’t apply it to me very often, because I’m usually steady. But in preparing to spend all this week serving the urban poor at the LA Dream Center, I was shilly-shallying and futzing around so badly, I thought I might have dementia. I even threw my wallet in the kitchen garbage and walked away with a soggy paper towel in hand. I worried about it to Sam.

“It’s because you’re going to LA to do something you’ve never done and you’re scared,” he said.

He’s right. I’ve never wandered under a bridge to hand out hot food to a homeless person. I’ve never played with neglected kids in a gang-infested urban neighborhood. What am I doing?

I’ll tell you what I’m doing, I’m climbing out on a limb, because that’s where the fruit is, and when you’re a new climber, like me, it’s good to follow the professional climbers. The LA Dream Center, which is the single largest food bank in LA County and serves 40,000 people every month in its 273 ministries, not only climbs to the best fruit, but they pick it and toss it down to everyone else.

The Apostle Paul said, the promises of God all find their yes in Jesus, and I’ve decided there are too many people (Bob Goff, Katie Davis, Matthew Barnett) doing impossible, God-promised things to doubt Jesus’ extravagant yes.

But I don’t want to just pig out on the grace of God until I’m bloated from hoarding it. It’s designed for sharing. Jesus wants me on my feet, darting nimbly through the world as his little cracked-pot, ambassador. As Katie Davis says in her lovely memoir from Uganda, where by age 19 she’d adopted the first six of her 14 orphans, we don’t have to be talented, we just have to be available.

The problem with shouting this manifesto is, the enemy hears it. And when you get halfway out your limb, he starts shaking your tree, hoping you’ll turn back. The devil doesn’t want me learning to serve people like Jesus did, and he sure doesn’t want me telling you how to do it. So he opposes me using the only things he has, anxiety, fear, confusion, rejection etc. The Apostle Paul explains it like this:

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Eph 6:12.

Yes, it’s tempting to bail out when I’m anxious and shaky, and can’t hold a coherent thought or keep my wallet out of the trash, but then I think, “bail out to where?” Jesus blew up all the bridges behind me. The only way left is forward.

And in this case, it goes through LA.

Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is.

/ Erin Kirk / Leave a comment

I think God sometimes uses the completely inexplicable events in our lives to point us toward Him. – Bob Goff, Love Does.

I blog in a time warp.

The book I’m finishing, Going to The Sea – A Sassy Liberal Wades In With Jesus, follows a cynical, selfish but well-intentioned Left Coast girl, who submits to Jesus on a West Texas gravel road.

But Going to the Sea – The Blog lives three years down that road, where the inexplicable things of God happen all the time, in present tense.

Inexplicable things, like my decision to fly to LA next week to embed with the Los Angeles Dream Center‘s missionary teams.

Me, a Christian missionary? Come on. Yah, I don’t really get it either.

Photo Credit: Wikipedia

I’ve blogged about The Dream Center before, but on Monday, I’ll put some actual skin in the game, in Watts, South Central, Compton, Imperial Courts, Crenshaw and Downtown L.A. This is inexplicable apart from God. This is what happens when you follow Jesus like you mean it. He messes with who you think you are and has you doing things you cannot imagine.

Here’s how the Dream Center explains what I’ll be up to next week:

If you made a mission trip to the LA Dream Center, playing with
neglected and abused kids in gang infested neighborhoods, busing
people to church from crack houses and cardboard boxes, handing
out warm plates of food to homeless people living on Skid Row,
would be a few evangelistic opportunities your team would take
part in…

With us you would be working hard, praying loud and returning
home exhausted. With us, you would be an important part of the
miracle for which we ourselves can take absolutely no credit.

Pay close attention, The Dream Center deals in the inexplicable things of God, like banks deal in money. God willing, I’m going to show you some of them, right here in real time.

Oh, and if you’re the praying kind, let ‘er rip, I need all the help I can get.

Chatting With NYT Bestselling Author Bob Goff

/ Erin Kirk / 3 Comments

I’ve been crowing all week about my new favorite book Love Does – Discover a Secretly Incredible Life in an Ordinary World. Do yourself a favor and buy this book, if for no other reason than the proceeds go to build schools in Uganda.

Love Does made it to somewhere around #12 on the New York Times Bestseller list and in keeping of the book’s spirit of whimsy and adventure, the author, Bob Goff, put his cell phone number in the back. That’s crazy. Do you know what’s even crazier? He answers it.

“Hi, This is Bob Goff.”

“Wow, you answered! Hi Bob, this is Erin from Texas. I just wanted to call and tell you how much I loved your book.”

“That is so sweet, thank you.”

“I can’t believe you answer your cell phone, I barely answer mine.”

“Don’t you think we all need to be more connected, instead of less connected” he said.

Bob had just stepped off a 27-hour flight from Uganda. He turned his phone on moments before I called. I asked how many people have called since the book came out and if I heard correctly, he said at least a thousand.

“It’s the best thing I ever did,” he said.

I’m going to Los Angeles next week (more on why later) and I asked if I could bring him a cup of coffee on Tom Sawyer Island. He gave me his email, so we can set it up. He said to make sure and email him because, after three weeks in Uganda, he’ll be walking into a wall of stuff when he gets home and doesn’t want to forget.

Love Does is the reason I decided to go to LA, where I’m going after my own secretly incredible life by doing something new, something that’s a leap of faith for me – or as Bob would put it, a caper.

I told Bob, I had blogged about Love Does (here and here) and he said he was really happy to talk to me. He reiterated how surprising or lucky it was I caught him. But I don’t think luck has anything to do with it.

“When you write your book, you should put your phone number in the back,” he said.

That’s funny, I didn’t tell Bob I was writing a book.