Hey Roadies.

I will be rotating back to the states this week! As you can imagine I am very excited.

Looking back of the past 90 or so days I can remember so many different challenges. It seems like everything is a Leader Reaction Course (LRC) drill. I am sure most of you have done this type of thing. In military training you are given a challenge with a task to solve a problem, of which, there may or may not be a solution. It seems as if my time in Afghanistan is one impossible challenge after the next. These LRC type events seem to have littered the past 10 weeks; one challenge after the next with each challenge having completely unique characteristics from the previous one. I seriously think I might lose my hair……too late-).

In the middle of all the chaos I have also had some wonderful personal experiences. Each personal experience seemed to impact me in a great way. I am sure the depth of emotion I felt from each experience was due to the other chaotic things going on around me, and in many cases it was a shared experience with someone else. Here are a few.

In the middle of very challenging times; I along with a colleague had been having a rough few days. In the midst of our rough times the topic of God and the Lord came up several times. One evening as I was finishing a long day he asked me a question about God as I was walking out the door to the office. He knows I love and know the Lord, and it was almost as if he had been lacking the courage to ask me right up until I was leaving. We talked about God for two hours. We talked about who Christ really was and what faith in him really meant. Our talk ended in a prayer of praise and humbling acceptance of the forgiveness that is offered by having faith in Christ. After a bit more talking we both went in for the night. I walked into my room exhausted; fell to the floor and wept. Crying out praises to God, I felt so humbled and exhausted and the same time. Any person that has had the Holy Spirit moving inside them before knows how exhausted you feel when it’s over. That’s how I felt. Praise God. This was a great day in heaven and earth!!!

Another experience dealt with a friendship I have established with a man named Joia Aziz. He is the head of the Afghan security forces that provide us protection. I had met him several times due to several security things that have gone on here. He doesn’t speak any English and always has several men sitting around him in his office. I went into his office one day to discuss a routine security concern and we ended up talking for a couple of hours. We drank tea, and talked about our families and our faiths. I very much enjoy my relationship with this man and look forward to seeing him when I get back. A couple of days later I went into his office and he gave me a bag full of wonderful gifts. His wife, and their 7 children, had each given me a gift for me and my family. This was very humbling and will be something I remember forever.

Another experience deals with a new friend I have made in the past couple of weeks. The program I am on in Northrop Grumman is designed so that I will rotate in and out of Kabul with another program manager every couple of months. That way each of us will not get burnt out on being away from our families. Doug has just been hired onto our team and is a retired US Marine Colonel. He is very smart and very funny and brings a lot of experience and knowledge to our business team. He has five children and has been married for over 30 years. Another interesting fact is that he is a Muslim. Do you think that it is coincidence that a Christian minister and follower of Christ Jesus, is teamed up with a Muslim man. I can’t accept that it is. Again, I found myself humbled and feeling very inadequate at what the Lord has put before me. I have never prayed so much.

These last two experiences lead me to a huge thought. In the past several months I have spoken about Jesus to a Muslim on numerous occasions! Again, I feel very humbled and with this in mind I feel very weighted down by the enormity and burden of what I am to doing. Matthew 5:14, “You are the light of the world”. This is so easy to preach and proclaim from within a church deep inside the United States. Yet here I am talking to men who do not know the truth of Jesus Christ. The truth is the truth though and someone must pass it forward. Yet you can’t just bang someone over the head with it. It takes relationship; specifically with such opposing cultural and religious belief systems.

Follow this chain if you will. John 1:1, John 8:32, Isaiah 40:8, and John 14:6. These versus have been on the fore front of my mind over the past several months. Christ is the word, which is truth, who is standing now, and will stand for eternity, and no one comes to the father except through Him.

How did I end up with this? A long time ago I got rid of my way and got real with God’s way. Do you want that in your life? Ask God to break your heart for his people. Ask him to melt away the cares of this world with only the broken left to be seen. Ask him to burden your eyes for the lost; to only see the lost as he sees them. Ask him to give you courage to be courageous! Tell him you want to sell out to him. He already knows it’s hard for you….just acknowledge your desire to sell out to him and his desires….and watch him transform your life.

God Bless you Roadies.
Matt