chrisbryant

There are no excuses, people.  I know it has been almost three months since my last blog entry, and, yes, I have been traveling, and, yes, it has been the holiday season, and, yes, I did get a nasty staph infection, but while all of these are circumstances that have affected my communication, they are not sufficient reasons for such a prolonged time of silence.  I should have written to you all sooner (that is, all six of you that actually read my blog ).  And so, all I have to say is, I am sorry, and I hope you can forgive my transgression at least long enough to read the words below, since much of what I share is about things I have been unable to talk about until now.

In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.  And have you completely forgotten this word of encouragement that addresses you as a father addresses his son? It says,

“My son, do not make light of the Lord’s discipline,
and do not lose heart when he rebukes you,
because the Lord disciplines the one he loves,
and he chastens everyone he accepts as his son.”

Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as his children. For what children are not disciplined by their father?  If you are not disciplined—and everyone undergoes discipline—then you are not legitimate, not true sons and daughters at all.  Moreover, we have all had human fathers who disciplined us and we respected them for it. How much more should we submit to the Father of spirits and live!  They disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, in order that we may share in his holiness.  No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.  Therefore, strengthen your feeble arms and weak knees.  “Make level paths for your feet,” so that the lame may not be disabled, but rather healed.

I am overwhelmed.  I know it is fashionable in our Christian culture to expound on how unworthy we feel about God’s love and provision, and how grateful we are for his many blessings and unending grace, but it has been my experience that many of us, myself included, engage in this type of talk more out of a sense of Christian propriety than as the natural result of a humble heart that has meditated on or has been confronted by the truths of this life that offer testimony to our pervasive incompetence and God’s limitless mercy and love.  That said, I am overwhelmed.  I do not deserve the life I am living right now.  A year ago I was a broken man.  The why is unimportant, at least for the purposes of this entry.  It is enough to say that I was heart-broken, had lost all direction, and was cloaked once again in a sense of failure and overwhelming loss.  I usually pride myself on my sharp memory, especially when it comes to my interactions with people.  I can remember every word said, every facial expression, every inuendo…pretty much every detail.  But the last year to me seems more like a VHS tape that someone tried to erase…bits and pieces of sound and video, but the majority of it is just black screen and static.  I really just remember pain.  Always present.  Unyielding.  Somewhat deafening.  Pain.

Sometimes circumstances in life are so extraordinary that a person feels the only proper response is payment in kind.  And so, I had to leave Houston.  More than that, I had to leave the country.  Somewhere in that brokenness a beast that had long slept was stirring.  As it began to wake, a hunger began to grow within me.  For far too long I had allowed fear to restrict me to the safe and easy path.  I yearned for the wild, unfettered life that Jesus called me to in our time together, but for so long I had been too scared to run that race, afraid that if I chose that path it would cost too much and be too dangerous.  Ironically, it was by not running that race that I had lost the one thing most precious to me.  And so, with nothing else to lose and a growing loathing for the safe and easy path, I began seeking opportunities to teach overseas and, voilà, I am now in Africa.

Africa, actually, is the one place I did not want to go, for reasons that are my own.  I did not choose Africa.  I was mainly looking in the Middle East and Asia.  But then I stumbled across a brochure for HaMoreh, and on the back page I found out that HaMoreh was started by Jamie Johns, someone I already knew and respected.  And so, I chose Jamie, whose ministry is currently focused in the one place I was reluctant to go.

And now I am overwhelmed.  In my brokenness and despair I could barely function, and yet in the midst of my humiliation and pain God provided a direction and the means to go.  There is nothing about who I was that merited his providence and favor, and yet they were both given in abundant measure.  And now, in this place, I have found the one thing I have been seeking for so many years.  A calling.  I have finally found my purpose, my battlefield.  In Africa.  And as I consider the path that led me here, I am once again confronted with the beautiful and seemingly paradoxical realities of being a child of God.  He had to hurt me so that he could help me.  He had to break me so that He could fix me.  He had to burn me so that I could grow.  He had to beat me to help me find strength.

It is a common philosophy that if you love someone then you give them what they want and you protect them from pain.  I am so thankful that my Father knows better.  Because of taking away the one thing I wanted most, He caused me great pain.  But in this He displayed so much love, because in the midst of that pain I found strength and purpose, two things that I could not have realized if God had coddled and appeased me.

For many years I have not understood or accepted the fact that God loves me, because I could not understand an affection that I did not somehow merit.  Today I still don’t understand it, but I think I am finally beginning to accept it.  More than that, I feel like I am finally learning to trust it.  My Father loves me, more than anyone else.  He proves it in so many ways.  He proves it in the beautiful people he places in my life.  He proves it in the sun and its heat, the wind and its comforting breeze, and the bird that arrests my attention with its myriad colors and entertaining disposition.  He proves it in all the beauty that he displays before me and all the joy that he puts in my heart through my interactions with the world around me.  But more than all of this, he proves He loves me in His willingness to hurt me, in His willingness to cause me great pain.  That is where He proves He is truly my Father.  Thank you, Heavenly Father, for loving me so much.  Thank you for overwhelming me with your love.

Dear friends,

Today marks the end of my first week in Kenya, and I thank you for your patience as I have not updated many of you until now.  I arrived last Tuesday via KLM, and apparently the Dutch fancy their plane seats to be even smaller than we Americans.  That’s all I have to say about the flights.

After passing through customs I was greeted by Grace, who works in the office here @ KBTC, and Alex, a fellow Texan and teacher finishing up his 3-month stint here in Kenya.  They both have proved to be a great blessing this last week, and are my first and best friends here at the college.  Alex will be leaving in a few weeks to return to the states, so please pray for him as he wraps up his time here.

My first day here Alex and I were invited to have dinner with Principle Weswah and his family, a great joy that we have repeated almost every night since.  As highly as Jamie praises Brother Enos, I was surprised to find the man far surpassed the kind words spoken about him.  Enos is a beautiful soul, a man of great learning, generous in both grace and love, humble, kind, and passionately in love with his Savior.  Knowing that in the coming months I will have the privilege of serving him is a source of great joy and great focus.  The work he and his staff are doing here in Kenya is both encouraging and humbling.  Please pray that I will be discerning and diligent as I seek to serve them and our students.

Please know that I am well, and greatly encouraged.  I am always surprised at how the Lord chooses to bless me when I feel so undeserving, and the love and kindness I have received here is just another example of that.  In the last few days the reality that I live in Africa now has started to set in, and I begin to realize how drastically different my life will be in the coming months.  Much of this change I not only anticipated, but also welcomed.  However, my people are where my heart often finds itself, and while I deeply enjoy my brothers and sisters here in Kenya, they are not my people.  If you are reading this, then it probably means you are one of my people.  The thing is, I have great people.  Friendships rich with love, affection, and spiritual depth.  I know now that I will miss all of you very much, and while technology affords us many ways to connect, it will never replace the warm embrace of a hug or the rhythmic pulse of shared laughter amongst friends.  You are my people, and I love you dearly, but please know that as I came to this realization I also understood even more clearly than before that this season is very necessary, and because of that I rejoice in the distance between us.  Our God is at work, not only in our hearts but in the world around us.  I cannot wait to see you after this great journey and rejoice in person over what the Lord has done in our time apart, but I also know that much has to happen before that blessed day comes.  Please pray that my heart will be present here in Kenya.  And please be faithful in writing, as some have already done.  Bwana asifiwe, and God bless!

First of all, if you are reading this, thank you.  It probably means that we are friends, and I appreciate the fact that I have friends who care enough about me to read my blog.  Second, I have a date.  No, not that kind of date (although if I did that would probably be blog-worthy as well).  On November 8th I will be flying out of this blessed country for the first time ever bound for Nairobi, Kenya.  When I started this journey it felt like what I was telling people was make-believe.  I am going to Africa.  To live.  For a year.  It was the most intangible thing I have ever pursued, and what made it harder was I had to ask people to pay for it.  The last 5 months has been one of the most uncomfortable seasons of my life.  Why would people give money to send me to Africa?  What makes me think I can even ask them to do so?  This has been a season full of fear and insecurity.  But I have been blessed with such generous and loving friends, and the fact that I have the financial support I need tells me that this road that seemed so abstract and make-believe is the very real and tangible road that the Lord has me on.  I love you all and hope in the months ahead to be able to share with you the great works our Father is doing in the hearts of our brethren in Africa.  Bwana asifiwe, and God bless!

It’s funny that I find myself writing my first real blog entry while I am in Los Angeles, but this is the first time I have felt like I had something to share, so here it goes.  First of all, support raising is going well, thanks to my gracious Lord and the wonderful people he has put in my life.  Jamie is back from Africa, and I am hoping that after I meet with him I will have a green light for purchasing airfare, so please pray for me, because I am anxious to go.  Secondly, I still have several thousand left to raise, so please continue to pray for me as I seek people who desire to partner with me in this mission.

As far as L.A. goes, this has been such a great trip.  My friend Jourdan has been a dedicated and skilled tour guide, which is a must when visiting a city like this one.  Thanks to her, I have done everything from bike Venice Beach and walk Hollywood Blvd. (Take a look at my star pics) to drive down Rodeo and Mulholland Drives to eat at In & Out Burger and Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffles (both of which lived up to the hype).  She also got us tickets to see Harry Connick, Jr. and the L.A. Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl.  Today I have driven through the mountains, visited the beaches in Malibu and Santa Monica, and am currently eating some pretty great pizza at D’amores in Malibu.  Tomorrow I fly back home to Houston, and I can’t wait to get back, but this trip has been such a blessing.

Before I hit the road again, I would like to share an experience I had today.  I was sitting on the beach in Santa Monica watching the tide, mentally comparing it to that of Galveston, which was just cruel of me, when a mother and her son strolled up and began to play in the surf.  Scenes such as these are moments of great joy for me, and even though I always feel self-conscious staring at families, I ended up watching them for a while, because the way they played was just so appealing.  The boy, who was about 5 or 6, was standing at the edge of the surf, watching with great fascination as the waves came and went.  Every few seconds, he would break his trance to look back at his mother, clearly hoping to see if she too found this so enthralling.  Seeing that her face communicated a similar expression, the boy would smile even bigger and return his gaze to the mesmerizing surf.

As I watched this, my mind began to follow the familiar currents of thought that usually flow when I watch children with their parents…thoughts of what this teaches us about our relationship with God, what it really means to be child-like in relation to God, what it would look like for me as an adult to display these qualities in a practical way, and so on.  One thing that stuck out in this particular instance was how the child wanted this new discovery to be a shared experience.  The boy was always checking with his mom to see if this was as neat to her as it was to him.  After a while he went to her and took her hand and led her out into the waves to walk through the splash together, laughing and looking back at her, and laughing more as she reciprocated his joy.

Being an adult and having a niece and two nephews of my own, I know that the surf was not what the mother found so wonderful, but how her child enjoyed the experience.  It was moving, watching them share the moment, the boy enjoying the world and the mother enjoying the boy.  At 31, almost 32, there are two great pulls that occur within me as I think about this scene.  As a man, I long to be a husband and a father and one day be able to share moments like these with my own children.  While this may never be realized, it is still ever present, and at times like these my heart aches for that uncertain but always hoped-for future.

The second pull is that of the child within me, the one that knows God as a father by title, but yearns to know him as father by intimate experience.  As a child of God, I cannot recall any time in my life that even remotely resembles the time that the boy and his mother had this morning.  After realizing this, I began to try to pinpoint the difference between me and that boy.  Why could he so freely invite his mom into his experience, and why do I struggle so much to invite God into mine?  Why was he so insistent on involving his mom in the experience and why am I so reluctant to involve God in mine?  While I will continue to ponder these questions, I believe the answer to both can be found by comparing our faith that we are loved.  You could tell the boy knew his mom loved him.  Its the type of look that says her possibly not loving him isn’t even on his radar.  He was confident in his mothers love, and because of that I believe he felt the freedom to share his joy and look to her for mutual enjoyment.  I, however, can quote several scriptures that clearly articulate God’s love for me, which is described as much more than the love that mother had for her son, but in my heart I call God a liar because I fervently believe that I am unloveable.  Its funny how arrogance manifests itself, isn’t it.  How arrogant of me to believe that I can be something that not even God can overcome.  How amazingly stupid of me to believe that my ugliness and failure is so great that not even God can love me through it.  I can hear God now…”Wow Chris, I made those statements in the Bible thousands of years ago about my love never failing, but I really didn’t see you coming…you really stumped me!”

I wonder what it would be like to walk through life the way that boy walked the beach with his mom.  What would it be like to share things with God, to know what mutual enjoyment feels like?  What would it be like to be that secure in Him, to be that free?  I may never be a father, but I am and will always be a child.  I think I’m gonna go walk the beach with my Father…who knows, maybe he can help me find a few of these answers.

Hey, everyone!  Welcome to my website.  Right now it will serve predominantly as a blog, but once I am over in Kenya I plan on adding much more, so please check in from time to time.

For those of you that don’t know, I am leaving for Kenya soon to serve with Hamoreh.  I plan on staying for 1 year, so needless to say I have quite an adventure awaiting me in Africa.  If you would like more information on my trip, simply click this link.

Right now I am in the process of raising financial support for the trip, so please pray for me, and if you can, please consider supporting me.  Thanks for stopping by, and God bless!