Kisses from Katie

Do you want to see what it looks like when someone follows God with all their heart? What it really looks like to be a disciple? Then you're going to want to meet Katie.

Before I send you off to her blog (and you're going to want to read it) you should know that she's only 21. She's 21 and the adoptive mother of fourteen Ugandan girls...in Uganda. She moved there when she was 18 after "quitting her life" because Jesus said to sell everything and give it to the poor. Then she became the mother of three at 19 because that's what Jesus asked her to do. He knew He could ask her to do big things because He knew her heart and that she loved Him. She also works with several orphanages around the country, has helped build a school for kids without one, and started a non-profit to help feed and educate the poor and the orphans. No college education, no five year plan, no timeline of how she thought her life should work out. Just a simple call from Jesus to "follow me" and she was off.

In case you're wondering, here are the rules for following Jesus, straight from His own mouth:

"Anyone who comes to me but refuses to let go of father, mother, spouse, children, brothers, sisters—yes, even one's own self!—can't be my disciple. Anyone who won't shoulder his own cross and follow behind me can't be my disciple."

And then there's this:

"Anyone who intends to come with me has to let me lead. You're not in the driver's seat; I am. Don't run from suffering; embrace it. Follow me and I'll show you how. Self-help is no help at all. Self-sacrifice is the way, my way, to finding yourself, your true self. What kind of deal is it to get everything you want but lose yourself?" - Matthew 16

What He wants is all of us; nothing held back. He asks us to love Him so completely that we trust Him with this life He's given us instead of selfishly holding onto it and trying to make it what we want it to be. His expectation is that our love for Him makes our affection for others look like hate and that we be willing to give everything up, even the things we cherish most, in order to follow Him. I know that doesn't sound so appealing when you just read it...but when you see it in action, like in Katie's life, you'll get so jealous for the relationship she has with Jesus, and for the adventure she's on, that you might just start thinking about really following Jesus on His terms instead of your own.

We are so blessed in this country, but instead of being thankful and offering everything back to the Lord for His purposes we have become dependent all we have, and it has become our greatest handicap. We have traded a life of trusting in God for what seems to us a safer life of trusting in people and money and power and things and our own abilities. What we seem to forget is that God loves to use the inadequate and unfit. God can accomplish the impossible with the least qualified people because those people tend to be the most humble, realizing that they have nothing to offer and praying desperately for Him to do His thing. He chose a murderer to lead His people out of Egypt, a prostitute to welcome His people into the promised land, and an unmarried young girl to mother His Son. All He's looking for is a heart that is totally His - "For the eyes of the LORD move to and fro throughout the earth that He may strongly support those whose heart is completely His" - 2 Chron 16:9.

My hope in sharing this with you is that you'll see that God can use anyone who truly loves Him, regardless of age, to do some beautiful, incredible things. Your life won't look like Katie's because God has so many wonderful stories up His sleeve, but imagine getting to be part of just one of them. I'm also hoping that if you're hung up on boys, or your appearance, or the stuff you have...or want, or any of the things that tend to sideline us and keep us from being useful to God on this earth - that this will encourage you and be a wake-up call of sorts. That you'll see what's possible for those who trust in the Lord. That you'll be humbled and inspired. I have been. Look at what God can do with just one of His girls who loves Him more than anything else.

Click here to read The Journey, Katie's online journal. Go back to the early entries in 2007 and read all the way through, because if you don't you'll miss important bits of the beautiful journey the Lord has her on. I pray that each of us loves Jesus so much that we hand our whole lives to Him and say "I'm all yours. Do whatever you can with me. Help my life scream to the world how amazingly glorious You are!"

As Katie says at the end of her July 28, 2008 blog "LIFE TO THE FULLEST - it exists. The choice is yours."