God loves me more than the birds!

"Therefore, I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?" Matthew 6:25-26

It's amazing what a little "home culture" can do for you once in a while. We have been enjoying Nairobi for a month now and all the western culture that comes along with it, but today we had an extra dose of American culture. We attended a church this morning which can only be described as 0% African. It was full of ex-pats, in the theatre of an international school. Praise was led by a group of the students and we sang songs straight from America (in English!) and there was a praise band too! As we sang one of me and Nate's favorite "Hillsong" songs, I looked around the auditorium, full of people with their hands raised in praise to God, I realized I had not worshipped the Lord in "my way" in over a year. Don't get me wrong--there is something extremely special about worshipping with Africans, feeling free to dance around the room and singing praise to God in another language. But, today was special for us.

We watched a video sermon from Andy Stanley on worry...which for me, was VERY much needed. I'm that person who worries so much that when Nate doesn't worry, I worry because he needs to be worrying about something and I worry that he isn't worried! But he talked a lot about how the things we worry about are the things that we are most devoted to. But really when we worry about anything...putting our devotion in that, we are placing that thing above God. And why? Because we believe that God CAN take care of whatever situation we are worried about, but we don't believe he WILL take care of it. We believe we can do more ourselves through the process of worrying about it. But the Lord takes care of the birds and flowers and He made us in HIS OWN image...why do we believe He won't take care of us?!

This afternoon we had lunch with some of our favorite people and played Mario Kart on their Wii...then we went over to have dinner with some more of our favorite people. We ate waffles and pancakes (which were amazing!) and we just hung out all night with friends, talking, laughing, and playing games. It was a wonderful day and I know the Lord had it planned especially for me.

When we got home tonight, I checked my email and it was the first test of whether I had truly learned anything from the service this morning. Let's just say an email that I have been waiting on the past few days had arrived. I'm not an angry person usually, but immediately I started having feelings of anger and worry (reading aloud my email to Nate and ranting and raving). But God reminded me of the verses from this morning...he reminded me that He loves me more than the birds and HE will take care of the situation. I just have to trust.