I was the sinful woman.

A friend sent me a text yesterday morning telling me that she had read Luke 7 during her time alone with the Lord. I decided to read it also. Even though I have read Luke many times, these scriptures washed over me anew and stuck with me all day.

Part of this chapter gives the account of the sinful woman who anoints Jesus with her tears mixed with expensive perfume in an extravagant act of worship. All that is said about her is that she had a reputation for her sinful lifestyle. My imagination can fill in the blanks.

I was her. I carried the reputation of the common day 'sinful woman.' My sins were not secret, they were out in the open for everyone to see. Even though I had terrible shame for the lifestyle I lived, I was powerless to live any other way. But then, I met Jesus...

When I was reading about this woman's interaction with the Lord I thought so much of my own first interactions with Him. She was obviously ashamed because she stood behind Him, not even able to look him in the eye. But she was desperate enough that she went right up to Him in the house of those who were 'religious.' Her worshipful weeping at His feet is incredibly beautiful to me. When I first came to Him, I spent days crying, praying, singing, reading His word and writing love letters to Him. I could not contain myself. Though my sins were many, and though I had so much shame, in the middle of my worship He would turn His face toward me and tell me, "Your sins are forgiven."

Jesus, the Son of God, the Lamb who takes away the sins of the world, told me, of all people, 14 years ago that MY SINS ARE FORGIVEN! I had lived as long as my memories started blanketed in shame. As a young girl I started giving myself away hoping to get love in return. As a teenager I ended up dancing in topless clubs for men and addicted to cocaine along with every other drug. I lived that lifestyle for years. But in one desperate act of worship I fell at His feet, and Jesus turned to me and said, "Your sins are forgiven. Your faith has saved you, go in peace." He knew me. He knew better than I did how I ended up at that place. He knew everything that was working against me to destroy my life and in one moment in time, by His powerful will, He stopped it all! He redirected the course of my life. He made me holy and pure though my sins were many and my shame ran deep.

Jesus did more than forgive the sinful woman, he honored her by commending her acts of worship in front of Simon. He pointed out that the one forgiven of the greater debt loves more. He told Simon that because the woman had been forgiven of much she was expressing her great love for Him by her extravagant and unashamed worship.

Oh how I can relate with this woman. Years later, I am still very aware that Jesus paid for my great debt. One I could never pay and that He did not owe. My sins were many and He forgave them all and took away my shame, nailing it to the cross. I love Him for this, SO MUCH! My heart is full of worship for Him, my great Redeemer. What started out as a simple faith in Jesus as the son of God, the only One who could forgive my sins and give me Salvation has grown with experience and knowledge of the scriptures over time. The more I understand the price He paid for my freedom and forgiveness, the more I worship Him. So instead of my love diminishing through the years, it only grows bigger and stronger. I can worship Him boldly and extravagantly without any shame. I can love Him greatly and deeply because of He loved me first.

I know my worship has value to Him. In fact it is all I have to offer Him that noone else can give. He can not get MY love, affection, praise and adoration from anyone else...and may I never hold this back from Him after all He has done for me.

Yes, I was the sinful woman. My sins were many, my debt was great, but Jesus turned to me and said, "Your sins are forgiven. Your faith has saved you, go in peace" and I have never been the same. I will boldly worship Him! I will extravagantly love Him all the days of my life on this earth and into eternity. I wll become even more undignified than this as I live forever more down at His feet!

Going Back to Sierra Leone...

Sweet Family in Christ,

Well, it looks like it is that time again. God is calling me back to Sierra Leone, the land I have grown to love.

As usual I have been waiting until the last minute to send out an email asking for your help. I have been pondering over why I hesitate. I feel it is a burden on the body of Christ financially and have longed to be able to afford my own trips. Then He gently reminds me of the spiritual pride in this. He is God...He could provide our family with more income...but every part of these journey's to Africa have forced me to be totally dependent on Him. In the end this has caused my love and affection for Christ to grow.

Total dependence on Him is the resounding message He has been teaching my heart...particularly where the gospel is concerned. Though the cross is what saved me 14 years ago...today, this minute I need the gospel to be alive and active in me as much as I did then! As I understand the freedom found in Christ's death and resurrection more clearly I can more boldly share it with others. I have been studying scriptures that highlight the gospel and Christ's daily role in our lives...working more at memorization and meditation. I have been reading other materials, listening to podcasts from various teachers and having focused fasting and prayer times dedicated to understanding more of who He is and what He has done for me and for the world.

I am certain He has used my previous trips to Sierra Leone to aid in bringing me to this point. He obviously thinks they are necessary for the personal work He is doing in me which also affects every life connected to mine. I say all this to say, when God uses you to help me go, it is not only for the benefit of our brothers, sisters and the orphans there. It is also for me and those I'm called to minister to here starting with my family.

I will be travelling with Shana Rutz who is president of Komeo International Ministries. It has been a joy to help start this new non-profit organization. We hope to give the body of Christ in America an opportunity to care for orphans as well as the poor and needy in Africa. We also want to be a part of spreading the gospel in the primary Muslim nation of Sierra Leone. By God's grace we see the effects of this happening when we are there. We are incredibly humbled to be a part of what God has already been doing in Sierra Leone for many years. We are asking for the courage and strength to stay the course in the small part we have been called to.

Our trip dates are March 17-April 1. The first week of our time there will be focused on joining efforts with a team from OSU. I had the joy of serving in SL a few years ago with Dr. Mike Dicks who is an agricultural professor at Oklahoma State University. He, another professor, some students and a good friend of mine, Stephani, will be helping farm some land that will potentially be a food source as well as income for the Wellington Orphanage. Some of our kids from the orphanage will be helping with this project. This should be ALOT of fun! After the OSU team leaves, Shana Rutz and I will stay one more week. We will focus on gathering information needed for the sponsorship program to create a monthly budget. We will be able to meet with our American Helper on the ground to assist us with this. We hope to visit the 3 campuses of the 5 boys from the orphanage who are in college. Our main goal that second week will be to disciple and encourage the children through bible studies, prayer and worship times together. They each have great tasks ahead of them in the rebuilding of their nation, each assigned by the Lord. We want to empower them to walk in the fullness of all God has for them. We are also praying that we can take some of the children to evangelize the community and/or surrounding villages. Our list of to-do's while in country is daily growing. Pray God would show us HIS agenda and itinerary. We have many plans in our hearts but we desire the Lord's plans to prevail!

If you feel the Lord leading you to give, may it be worshipful, may it bring you joy and most of all may it bring you closer to Christ! I have been studying 2 Corinthians 8 and 9. I am asking God that all giving in the body of Christ reflect what I see in these 2 chapters. And may you know that any offering made towards my trip will result in much thanksgiving to God from me and those in Sierra Leone that I am going to minister to.

The cost of my trip is $2,900. Any amount donated will be a great blessing. You can mail donations to my address at:



Shanna Crawford

1700 Godhania Rd.

Edmond, OK 73003



Please make all checks payable to Komeo International Ministries for tax credit.



Here are some specific areas you can pray for us:



*That we would be emptied of ourselves and prepared spiritually for our time in country.

*That we would make the gospel our chief goal in all we do while we are there.

*That His plans would supersede our plans and His will would be done.

*That He would be glorified and lifted high through us.

*That we would grow a closer bond in our relationship with the children and staff through His Spirit.

*That we would hear His still small Voice and experience His Presence.

*That HIS ministry would be established through us.



I love you all so much my heart could burst. I am in awe that He has used you time and time again to help me visit and encourage those He has given me such a deep love for. May you know how much of a difference you are making in my life and theirs!



In our busy culture it means so much to me that you have taken the time to read this!!!



In His Love,

Shanna Crawford



www.komeo.org

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Komeo-International-Ministries/131737380225758

Made Perfect Through Suffering

I have had a rough day.

I have been asking the Lord to help me understand more of who He is. I have also been asking to be stripped of anything keeping me from coming closer to Him. Well, prayers like these leave me crying on my bed half way through the day :)

I do not want to turn to any thing or anyone (not even myself) but Him in my struggle to maintain day to day...in my discouragement...in my rejection...in my hunger...in my tiredness...in my emotional weakness. You get the point.

I want Him to be my ALL.

I also want to practice what I preach. I really don't want to be a pharisee, pretending everything is perfect on the outside to only be filled with spiritual pride on the inside. So to make sure that does not happen, I struggle with my flesh to gain mastery over it through the power of His Spirit. I fight with all of His energy inside of me to be less like me and more like Him.

Some days it is SO hard. I just want to give into my flesh. I want to be like the normal, luke-warm church member. I want to only give Him reign in the areas I choose. I want to just be human. But then I remember, He created me to be super-human. This world is not my home and it's ways are not my ways. I am called to be like Him.

As I wept on my bed I asked Him to forgive me for the places I have not been trusting Him. As I cried the most precious thing happened, I felt the freedom that comes with His forgiveness. I came to His throne for grace and mercy in my time of need and he freely gave it to me.

I wish I could say everything was perfect after that. Nope. Since then I have been tired, hungry, emotionally needy, sick...and in the struggle of these 'feelings' and circumstances I had to choose Him over coffee, Taco Mayo, facebook, self-pity...

Now that the day is ending I am so glad that I chose to memorize Hebrews 2:10 this morning. I have found great comfort today in knowing that the author of my salvation was made perfect through suffering.

This makes my American suffering a bit more bearable ;)

Hebrews 2:10
In bringing many sons and daughters to glory, it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through what he suffered.

The Radiance of God's Glory

I have been intentionally making more time to spend with the Lord in the last week. I have been asking Him to help me understand more of who He is. He is so much more than Savior. And Savior would be more than enough.

I am going to blog over the next few weeks what He shows me.

As for now, I am blown away that this God who always was, always is and always will be is not ashamed to call us brothers and sisters. He is our faithful and merciful High Priest. He is our Intercessor. He chooses to dwell inside of us: sinful, weak, human beings who were at one time His enemies. He left heaven to come and live among us so that He could experience every temptation that we face. Instead of giving us the wrath we deserve, He says that we can find mercy and grace at His throne in our time of need.

He is so much more than my mind can conceive and He has given me my whole life to seek Him out in all of His mystery. I really want to KNOW Him, not know about Him, not learn stories that make me feel good. I want to KNOW Him. I want to know the power of His resurrected life living inside of me. I want to know and experience Him by sharing in His sufferings. I want to KNOW Him in His fullness, through the scriptures and through my daily experience with Him.

He has taken me on a journey in the last year to really understand what the gospel means for me and humanity. To understand the importance of the good news of Jesus Christ and to radically share it with others. As I am carrying out this conviction I feel I must understand who Jesus Christ is more fully. I want to build every part of my life on the foundation of who He is.

Please pray for me as I seek to know the Risen One in deeper ways...ways that will change my thinking and my life.

Hebrews 1:3 The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven.

There is Only One

This was the last line I read this morning in My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers...

There is only one relationship that matters, and that is your personal relationship to a personal Redeemer and Lord. Let everything else go, but maintain that at all costs, and God will fulfil His purpose through your life. One individual life may be of priceless value to God's purposes, and yours may be that life.

When I am not maintaining my relationship with the Lord by spending time with Him, nothing else is in sync...the rythm of my life is off...because He is my life. If I am not allowing Him to fill me day after day, what do I have to pour into any other relationship that has any True worth and value? I can not count on any other relationship to provide what only He can. I should not look to others to satisfy me the way only God is suppose to. I should not give my highest affections to anyone except the One I was created to worship for all of my days. If I believe that He is the One who gives me my very next breath...and holds my very life together by His power, then why would I not make my relationship with Him my very, highest priority?

Even though spending time with Him may cost me sleep, time with my kids, comfort or even popularity...I must choose to maintain this precious relationship between me and my Lord. I must choose, at times, to let everything else go and just sit in His Presence! Nothing compares, NOTHING!

By His grace, I have made spending time with Him a habitual practice over my years of being a Christian. My life is a living testimony that He fulfills His purposes through our lives when we make Him our highest Treasure. As we spend time with Him, He reveals to us the desires of His heart...and they become our own desires. He reveals to us His plans and purposes and then allows us to walk in them. The great and mighty One accomplishes His will through our weak and broken lives simply because we lay ourselves before Him day after day.

One day, we will cast aside all other relationships as we live for all of eternity in the only One that really matters!!!

Watch and Wait

I have been feeling discontent and disconnected from God recently. I can't go on very long like this because I become miserable. I have become so addicted to Him, so dependant on Him to sustain me emotionally that even when I try to find satisfaction outside of Him I just end up running right back.

The last few words in My Utmost for His Highest this morning was this: Wherever there is a spiritual drain in your life, correct it immediately. Realize that something has been coming in between you and God, and change or remove it at once.

With that thought resonating with me...I read through a few chapters of Proverbs and landed here: Blessed is the man who listens to me, watching daily at my doors, waiting at my doorway. Proverbs 8:34

I had to ask myself, am I DAILY watching at his doors and waiting at His doorway for Him to satisfy the longings of my soul, or am I watching at the doors of the world and waiting at the doorway of our culture for my satisfaction?

I humbled myself and chose to worship Him. I literally got on my knees and turned up the volume on my ipod and sang out to Him as loud as I needed to drown out my own pestering thoughts! His Presence became life to me, I found freedom and joy down there on my knees. Now, it doesn't always happen this way, but today I it did and I am rejoicing.

He is all we need! If we believe this is true then our greatest desire should be more of Him! To have more of Him we need less of us. To have less of us we must allow Him to strip us of our little gods and tear down the alters left up by our forefathers. We must choose to go against the grain of our culture and press into Him. We must DAILY listen to His Voice, not the voice of the world. We must DAILY watch at His doors! Not the doors of our culture. He has fullness of joy and freedom waiting at His doorway for us!

This morning I realized the things that are a spiritual drain in my life, and by the power of the Holy Spirit was able to correct it immediately. I realized the thoughts that were coming between me and God and I removed them at once by getting on my knees and focusing my thoughts on the greatness of God in worship. (Your spiritual drain and distractions are likely different from mine, but I am certain if you are reading this you have the same common struggle.)

It doesn't always happen this way. I am not always obedient. I do not always do what I know to do to be closer to God. But today I did, by His power at work within me...so I am rejoicing! I am also sharing with you so you might seek Him out to and experience the sweetness only His Presence can bring!

Just as He calls us to listen for His Voice, watch and wait for Him, I believe He also waits and watches DAILY for us to wake up and lift our voices to Him before we do to anyone else.

As I was typing this, our 5 year old came into our bedroom. Right after I prayed for him and tucked him into bed last night, I told him I would miss him while he was sleeping. I also told him as soon as he woke up I wanted him to come straight to my room so we could snuggle. He did just that. He came stumbling in, half asleep, crawled into bed with me and snuggled. I told him that I missed him so much while he was sleeping. I told him that he is so precious to me. I couldn't help but think that if I feel this way about my son as an evil parent in comparison to God, how much more does God feel this way about me....and you as our Perfect parent!

CHRIST IS ALL!

My morning so far has been spent taking care of children. My neice and nephew are visiting for the day :)

My morning has also been spent worshipping Him...

I am determined to worship Him in everything. Oh I fail SO much!! But this is my chief goal...in all things to give Him praise. Wether well fed or hungry, in sickness or in health, in chaos or in quiet. I want to worship Him. Cleaning dishes, folding laundry, reading a book to our boys, talking to a hurting friend, driving in my car, laying in my bed, returning emails, raising money for my African children, grocery shopping, cooking dinner, ironing Jerome's shirts, disciplining fighting kids...you get the picture :)

The more I choose to worship Him in the mundane tasks of life as well as the things that bring me great joy, the less content I am with this world and it's system...the more I long to be united fully with Christ! I want my whole life to have a flovor of worship and true devotion to the One worthy of all my praise!

I daily face the struggle between my flesh and spirit. Somedays my flesh wins, but oh the days that it doesn't and I give Christ complete reign!!! There is life and freedom found only in Him. Christ is ALL!

Sometimes I feel like Job before the Lord allowed Satan to strip him of everything. I feel so blessed. I am able to stay home with our boys and listen to worship music all day. I am able to pour into the lives of people all over the world. I am able to mother many children that I did not carry in my womb. I am able to be a part of a biblical community and wide circle of believers that stretches across continents. I have people who faithfully pray for me and encourage me. I get to see people's lives transformed by the power of Christ all the time. I have a husband that literally, daily, lays down his life for me and loves God more than anyone I have ever known. But what I often tell the Lord is that I want to know that I would still praise Him if He were to strip all of that from me...if He were to give me poverty, sickness and take away my family and friends. Would I still worship Him? Would I still give Him the glory due to His Name? I want to position my life and heart in such a way that when my circumstances fail, I know that Christ has not changed and therefore I can stand firm! So today, I am praising Him while everything is 'running smoothly' so that tomorrow, when everything likely won't be, I have a firm foundation to stand on.

My heart is longing for every follower of Christ to press into Him with me. If your day, month or year is good or bad, praise Him! Through laughter or tears, praise Him! Let your soul find complete satisfaction in Christ alone. He is worthy! He is SO worthy!

I am burdened, yet hopeful for MANY people I personally know who are hurting right now. I am honored to be intimately acquainted with these precious ones so that I can pray and help carry their burden in this way. My prayer for each of them today is that they would lift their hands, hearts and lives in worship to Him right where they are at....right in the middle of the chaos. Because one day soon, oh that glorious day, we will no longer be seperated, even for a second from the One we love most...not by our circumstances, our trials, our sin, or our flesh. We will be one with our sweet Saviour! That alone is reason enough to confess His goodness no matter what we feel at this moment.

So, today in my joy, with worship music playing in the back ground and the breeze blowing through open windows and the sweet sound of children's voices who I love so much playing in the back yard...I choose to praise Him!

Tomorrow, if my day starts with whiny children who interrupt my Treasure Time and I have a head ache and my boys refuse to obey me and Jerome comes home in a grumpy mood I want to choose to praise Him. If the next day, Jerome and the boys never come home because they die in a car wreck, oh Lord, let me still praise you! If the next day I find out I have a terminal ilness, let my very last breath, as I slip from this earth into Your eternal Presence, be in praise to you! Please make us this kind of Church so the world will look on and desire You!!!

Tomorrow the earth itself falls into the sea, let us praise Him because the reality is not this earth that we live on for a few short years, the Reality is that CHRIST IS ALL!