A new bar has been set here in Haiti, and a new temple (church) is being built. The bar of expectations is steadily rising due to the invasion of the Holy Spirit here in Haiti. The faithfulness of our participants and staff in God’s ability to accomplish great things adds to the rapid onset. Honestly, after the consistency of seeing God do mighty things every week a dangerous expectation starts to brew to recreate God in the following week. It’s not possible, trust me. And it’s irresponsible to try and do so. The thought was alarming to me and troubled me greatly leading into this past week’s mission. But, thanks be to God that we didn’t have to do anything to make Him come down. Sometimes I’m good about relinquishing control. Too good, to a fault, because I say in laziness, “yeah, someone else we’ll do it” – Tuscaloosa style. This was a more faithful letting go. God went before us, and prepared the way for us to be small vessels in His redemptive work this week. I can’t imagine what the result would have been if we had done our own thing and tried to drag God along behind us. Here’s how He showed up to our surprise when we wanted to build with our own hands the things of man… This is Pastor Cornet’s church we’re working on: 
A huge need here is reconstruction. Almost every building two stories or higher was easily shaken by the earthquake 6 months ago. Easily. That really means every church, school/university, government building or really any important structure came crashing down. The churches here need rebuilding. The tarps and tents only last like a month or so. Our pastors always stress their hope for a new building, better and stronger than before.
I’ll tell you what’s awesome about that idea. In the Old Testament, God’s people were commanded to build majestic, impressive, physical temples to the Lord where His name would reside and where He would be honored and worshiped. A wonderful, beautiful house to the Lord where He would receive the praise and glory He deserves. But no longer are we commanded to build such things. Instead we are commanded to build a new temple, His Body. It says in John 2… “Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.” The Jews replied, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?” But the temple he had spoken of was his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said. Then they believed the Scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken.” The new temple is His body! I think it’s also interesting to note that we still use the same verbiage to build the church, His body, and relationships like we use to build buildings and temples. When we put up walls, or put in pews, or add windows, instruments, microphones, and whatever else we’re not making the church. Believers are the church. 1 Cor 12:27 says, “Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.” The people down here get that, and it allows for a humble beginning as we make small efforts to physically rebuild their churches. But, the church is already thriving and being rebuilt by the amount of people coming in, not walls being put up. There is an awesome line from a poem that warns, “…having fallen in love with life, we have ceased to dream of eternity, and in our efforts to build a new earth, we have allowed our vision of the new Heaven to dim.” We saw the new temple clearly this week. Furthermore, I must say it again… if we rebuild a community, a church, a country spiritually, then it cannot help but be rebuilt physically.
I like the new layout scheme bro! Keep up the hard work! It is great reading your blogs and seeing Christ working though you man.