Kisses from Katie

​​What compels me to live the way I do? How does that cause me to live differently than those around me?

I asked myself these questions as I read Kisses from Katie by Katie Davis Majors. While a senior in high school, Katie went to Uganda on a short-term mission trip and ended up moving there after falling in love with the land and the people—especially the children. God so moved in her heart that, at the age of nineteen, she starting adopting several little girls and eventually became mother to thirteen of them. Her story is amazing, and her book is a life-changing read that comes with a challenge: Try and read it without it breaking your heart or causing you to ask yourself the same questions I did.

Katie never started out with the intention to make such drastic changes in her life. Her life in Nashville, Tennessee, centered around being senior class president and homecoming queen, involved with her family, boyfriend, friends, and church, and enjoying all the comforts and lifestyle of the upper middle-class environment she’d been raised in. Out of her love for Jesus, she felt the desire to go to Uganda to serve Him on the mission trip, never expecting it to change her as it did. She said that the love she had for Jesus “was beginning to interfere with the plans I once had for my life and certainly with the plans others had for me. My heart had been apprehended by a great love, a love that compelled me to live differently.”

The trappings of a comfortable life were no longer important to Katie. She was willing to live without the things we take for granted, in order to serve the community she became a part of--one person at a time. Katie said, “I am running from things that can destroy my soul: complacency, comfort, and ignorance. I am much more terrified of living a comfortable life in a self-serving society and failing to follow Jesus than I am of any illness or tragedy.” Later in the book, she went on to say, “I was forever ruined for comfort, convenience, and luxury, preferring instead challenge, sacrifice, and risking everything to do something I believed in.”

God very much blessed her willingness to take up the challenges, sacrifices, and risks by using her to spread His love and gospel to a people so in need. You might think she spent time being sad and missing the life she left behind but, instead, her life, as she told it, was full of joy and laughter. That’s not to say she didn’t have difficult days and times when she cried, but her tears weren’t for herself. Rather, they were for the children and adults who lived constantly with disease, filth, and pain, along with a lack of food, water, and medication.

Katie said she learned that “something happens when one makes [oneself] available to God: He starts moving in ways no one could imagine. God began doing things in me, around me, and through me as I offered myself to Him. I began each day saying, “Okay, Lord, what would you have me do today? Whom would you have me help today?” And then I would allow Him to show me.”

We don’t have to go to Uganda to be used of God. We can wake up each day as Katie did and pray this same prayer. Like her, we can simply care for those around us, one person at a time, as an “overflow of love for Christ and the love that He has lavished” upon us. “See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!” (1 John 3:1 NIV).

Katie’s story captured and convicted my heart all at the same time. Her lived-out faith challenged me to think about how God can use me right where I live. I may not be able to go to Uganda, but God isn’t calling me there. He’s calling me to serve Him here, and to use the gifts and talents here that He’s equipped me with.

The world around us, even in our comfortable, middle-class cities, is hurting and so in need of a Savior. “All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us” (2 Corinthians 5:18–20b NIV).

Katie took God’s word to heart. It couldn’t have been easy, leaving her family, boyfriend, and friends, moving to the other side of the world by herself to follow Him. But how God used and blessed her! He can do the same with us, if we’re only willing to be obedient. In her obedience, Katie came to an amazing realization: “. . . mediocrity and abundance, comfort and ease, do seem to be safe choices for many people, myself included. In stark contrast, leaving our possessions, following Jesus when we don’t have a well-defined plan, and entertaining strangers—well, that does sound a little scary. But what if, just beyond that risk, just beyond the fear is a life better than anything we have ever imagined: life to the fullest.”

I believe that’s a risk worth taking!

So, what compels you to live the way you do, and how does that cause you to live differently than those around you?

​Blessings to you!
Lori 

---