Let today be the day!

// January 25th, 2012 // 6 Comments » // Loux Family News

“Love God more than life, walk by faith in his Son Jesus Christ, and pour your life out for the orphan.”
John Piper

Proverbs 24:12 tells us that”Once our eyes are opened we cannot pretend we do not know what to do. God, who weighs our hearts and keeps our souls knows we know and holds us responsible to act.”

You  know.

I know.

It’s our job to make sure others know too….and it’s our job to act!

My heart aches and is so burdened for God’s people to realize the responsibility we have,  not to just “talk” about caring for the orphan but to really step out and to choose that this day will be the day we actually do it.  When I’m made aware of one more child whose been abandoned, orphaned, sexually abused, sold into sex slavery or even killed, my heart just breaks. I wonder why more isn’t being done by God’s people? What is is going to take for our eyes to truly be opened so that we will act and not just think about how sad all the little orphan stories and pictures are….. and then go about our day?

I believe that the majority of the Church does care, sometimes they just don’t know where to start. Some however, keep putting the stirrings of Jesus off….thinking they’ll take those steps when the time is more convenient, when there’s a little more money in the bank account…. when they aren’t so tired and busy.

There’s a quote by an anonymous person that says this. “Sometimes I would like to ask God why he allows poverty, famine and injustice in the world, when he could do something about it, but I’m afraid He’ll ask me the same question.” Scripture is clear that we are to be the hands and feet of Jesus to the orphan and the widow. Even I, as a recently widowed woman with 12 children (10 adopted) am not off the hook. He still expects me to act and to do my part to help more orphans and other widows, in whatever ways I can. There are millions of orphans around the world who have absolutely no hope. Jesus expects us to act! It’s not optional…it’s God’s mandate.

Some of you are not able to travel to another country to see for yourselves the reality of the suffering these priceless children go through. You might be thinking that orphans only exist in other countries around the world, so that gets you off the hook (said with respect). Did you know that there are hundreds of thousands of children who have been abandoned, abused, uncared for and left alone, in our U.S. Foster Care system?  To adopt out of your state’s foster care system is free!  There is no reason why God’s people should not be stepping up to the plate, taking these children in and making them a part of their family, or, facilitating help for those who are taking children in.  I don’t believe that everyone is to adopt. But, I absolutely believe that everyone is to help in some way.   You will need to pray about what that all looks like for you.

There are families I know of who are in the middle of trying to adopt. They need help with finances, so that they can save a child. Maybe you are called to sew into their adoption costs. Do you know of anyone who has already adopted… someone who lives near you? If so, they will need help with your time. All of that counts to Jesus, as doing your part.

A child suffering may break our hearts but the truth is, unless we come face to face with that suffering child, unless we walk in their ‘shoes’, unless we experience some of their pain-we often times just go on living our lives, feeling bad for them, but not really knowing what to do. I’m imploring you to let this be the day that you will take that big step, with God’s help to make a difference in the life of at least one child.

If any of you would like to give financially to families who are in the process of adopting, but need financial help to do so,  please let me know. I would love to pass their information on to you. These families are amazing and have already adopted many children. Their hearts are to walk out James 1:27 in the most radical ways and I love that! Please, I ask you to not walk away from this post thinking…Oh wow, just another person wanting my money. That’s not what this is about. It’s about you making a difference in the life of a child,  by helping families who are reputable and who are really using that money to put towards the cost of saving a life.  By helping these families, you will be the hands and feet of Jesus, rescuing a child who is God’s child…priceless to Him in every way. For information on how you can help these families, please contact me at reneeloux@orphanjusticecenter.org. Thank you so very much!

I want to stand before Jesus one day, knowing that I did my part. I know you do to.

God bless you!

Much love in Jesus,

Renee’

“I’m just here to love”

// January 20th, 2012 // No Comments » // Loux Family News

My friend Ruth Armbruster Bergen is reading a book by Katie Davis called “Kisses from Katie.” She shared a portion of it with me. I know that so many of us who are working to see God’s justice walked out, feel this way sometimes. I love this and it’s such a good reminder to us all…of why we do what we do! I thought I’d share it with you..

“Sometimes working in a Third World Country makes me feel like I am emptying the ocean with an eyedropper. And just when I have about half a cup full of water it rains:: more orphaned children from the north migrate to where I live, more abandoned and dead babies are found, more people are infected with HIV.  It is enough to discourage even the most passionate and enthusiastic person……love is the reason I just keep filling up my little eyedropper, keep filling it up and emptying my ocean one drop at a time. I’m not here to eliminate poverty, to eradicate disease, to put a stop to people abandoning babies. I’m just here to love.”
~katie davis

~katie davis

Let your light shine…

// January 20th, 2012 // 1 Comment » // Loux Family News

‎”Let your light shine. Be a source of strength and courage. Share your wisdom. Radiate love.”

Wilferd Petersen

We need your justice Jesus!

// January 18th, 2012 // 4 Comments » // Loux Family News

Jesus, we cry out for your justice for the orphan! God, cause your Church to rise up and not just talk about helping the orphan…not just dream about it saying, “Well maybe one day….” Jesus help your Church to understand that the time is NOW. No more will we wait for a “convenient time” and stand by as millions are sexually and physically abused…starved and neglected…losing all hope, not knowing their Creator and Savior. Jesus, we cry out for your mercy Lord! Cause faith to rise up in the hearts of your people! We want your justice for these priceless ones Jesus. Open up the store houses of Heaven Jehovah Jireh! Make a way, where it might seem there is no way. I ask that you would raise up “Josephs” in the market place, who would give radically through finances, with joy, to those who are adopting and fighting for justice! We need you Jesus to move on behalf of your people…your children. Massage hearts back to a place of life….Raise up a Justice Revolution oh God, in the precious and mighty name of Jesus we ask this…

CBS NEWS VIDEO on Iraqi orphans (along with an update)

// January 15th, 2012 // 1 Comment » // Loux Family News

Here is the video link to the CBS News story (on the Iraqi orphans) that I just shared with you. You’ll learn more about what happened to the orphans after they were discovered. For some reason I couldn’t imbed the link on this site.

Click below:

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=2946323n%3Ftag%3Dfacebook

Will you be His hands and His feet?

// January 13th, 2012 // 18 Comments » // Loux Family News

Many of you probably saw the CBS news report a few years ago,  regarding a scene that was so shocking that it even stunned soldiers hardened by trial and conflict – naked, listless, emaciated Iraqi orphans lying unattended in their own excrement while covered in flies and tied to cribs on a concrete floor. Meanwhile, in the adjoining kitchen of this government orphanage in Baghdad, three ‘caretakers’ were cooking themselves a hearty meal while the twenty-four special needs children were starving to death in the next room.

Even more troubling is that the orphanage storeroom was well stocked with food and brand-new clothes, yet the staff was allegedly selling these items to local markets instead of providing them to the children.

Sadly, it’s just another example of the exploitation and abuse that can occur in government-run orphanages, especially those in poverty, disease and war-ravaged countries where accountability is non-existent and corruption is extreme.  Below, are photos and they will shock you. I think sometimes it’s good that we are shocked into the reality of what’s going on in our world. We, as the church are going to have to rise up and walk out what we are “preaching.” Christ is the only answer for these horrifying injustices. We must link arms together to bring awareness, to give financially and through our time, to be the hands and feet of Jesus to these ones who are His priceless children!

Please don’t turn away, thinking there’s someone else out there who will act….let this be the year that YOU will act.

Instead of writing anymore, I’ll let the photos and captions speak for themselves…

“They thought they were all dead, so they threw a basketball to try and get some attention, and actually one of the kids lifted up their head, tilted it over and just looked and then went back down.”

- Staff Sgt. Mitchell Gibson

“I saw children that you could see literally every bone in their body that were so skinny, they had no energy to move whatsoever, no expression on their face”

- Staff Sgt. Michael Beale

“The kids were tied up, naked, covered in their own waste – feces – and there were three people that were cooking themselves food, but nothing for the kids”

- Lt. Stephen Duperre

“There was a boy with thousands of flies covering his body, unable to move any part of his body. We had to actually hold his head up and tilt his head to make sure that he was OK, and the only thing basically that was moving was his eyeballs.”

- Staff Sgt. Mitchell Gibson

“There were hundreds (of flies) in his open mouth. They were crawling out of his nose and ears and anywhere they could feed on his flesh and bloody, open sores from sleeping on the concrete, in what appeared to be the last few hours of his life.”

- Staff Sgt. Mitchell Gibson

“The smell was so bad, that you could smell it from outside in the street. It even overpowered the smell of the food cooking in the kitchen.”

- Anonymous soldier

“How could you take the most vulnerable children and subject them to such torture?”

- Lara Logan, CBS Correspondent

“Two women working there posed for pictures in front of the naked boys as if there was nothing wrong.”

- Lara Logan

“I can only imagine they (the caretakers) thought this was absolutely normal. Or that these special needs boys, who could not talk or communicate properly, were not human to them.”

- Lara Logan

“Violence is creating widows and orphans on a daily basis, many of whom are left to struggle for survival. Iraq’s children, already casualties of a quarter of a century of conflict and deprivation, are being caught up in a rapidly worsening humanitarian tragedy.”

- UNICEF

Religion vs. my Jesus…….

// January 11th, 2012 // 11 Comments » // Loux Family News

I’m writing a book and would love your prayers!  I have someone collaborating with me on the project. Her name is Bette. She is wonderful, amazing, funny, deep  and very “real.” It was refreshing to hear her heart and I love it that we’re on the same page with the things that definitely matter the most!

Bette wanted to know what I would like to accomplish through my book?  My answer was this.  ”People are sick of religion. They are broken and desperately hurting and some of them are at the end of their rope. They want to know why we, as Christians, are offering Jesus to them as the answer? I want to give them a million and one reasons (through my story) of why Jesus is the answer and yet I want to be gut level honest and real with them.  Jesus can’t be put in a box. Bette and I discussed the fact that He does not always “feel” safe. He doesn’t particularly feel comfortable all the time….and He is not always predictable! I lost my father (he was only 57), my son (at 2 and 1/2) and my husband (at 37). I still don’t have all the answers to the “why’s, but I have a story to tell of God’s grace that has not only carried me but given an amazing hope for mine and my children’s future! I want to share that hope with you.

Now on to the subject of Religion vs. my Jesus….I hurt for those who are bound by religion and for those who feel they have to be religious for God to love them. I found that in reading the Bible, Jesus reserved his harshest words for religious leaders. Jesus reprimanded them for falling short of the standards of God’s Kingdom.  Jesus pronounced “woes” on religious leaders like the chief priests, the scribes, the Pharisees and Sadducees. While he labeled these religious leaders as blind guides and hypocrites, he mingled with tax collectors, prostitutes and others that he considered the very worst of sinners.  I love that!!

Jesus was tough on religious people because he was NOT one of them.  Jesus placed Himself and His new way of relating to God far beyond the reach of “religion!” Religion kills! Religion likes to wage war. Religion traffics in power plays, discriminates and promotes slavery.  Organized religion comes up with hoops that we are told we have to jump through for God to love us…produces rules, rules and more rules about how we should dress, who we should get to know, where we should sit to be seen and known by the “who’s who” crowd.

I’ve found that my beautiful Jesus is a very glaring contrast to everything religion stands for. Amazing isn’t it that the Christian religion has itself become as Anti-Christ as any man made system can be?  Religion is a barrier and a stumbling block in getting to know Jesus. Jesus came not only to save us and to set us free from our sin, He came to break the chains of bondage that religion has held over our lives.

I’d like to share a portion of Bette’s email to me.

“The Christian walk is one of mystery, of balance, of patience. It is not one of manipulating God to do as you wish, or of “ten ways to transform your husband,” “Nine ways to deepen your walk with God.” My walk with God (now more than 37 years) has been both rich, and terrifying. It has been at times, lonely, confusing, and difficult. I’ve had health issues, depression, and marriage troubles (big ones), and yet, I can say with confidence that I have come to know how much I don’t know about God. And yet I follow him.

I don’t really believe that being saved will rescue you from all your deepest difficulties. In fact, it seems to me that being saved most often drops you over the edge — into territory where the difficulties aren’t “out there” but rather in your face — or worse, in your soul.

I am awed by the passage in Exodus where God leads his children down a blind alley. In the text, it says clearly that he led them to that place where the Red Sea was in front of them and their enemies were behind them. It was intentional. He did it. It must have been terrifying — both in the outward (what if they get us?) but also in the inner man (what kind of God have we decided to follow? Can he be trusted? If he led us here on purpose, what ELSE will he do to us?)

We Christians tend to look at God as some benevolent old man, that we can understand, control, explain, and perhaps worst of all, write about and sell to the masses.

I’m a doubter (by nature) in that I doubt people’s explanations for God. I stick to the text (Bible), but I don’t have much faith in charts, and liturgical explanations. But at the same time, I’m a server in my deepest heart. The Lion of Judah must be respected, obeyed, whether we understand or not. He wants us to know him, as much as we are able in this life. As much as an ant can know the man who builds his house on his nest, perhaps. But we will never ever completely explain him, or understand him. Nor, will we ever direct him.

He is God, after all. All we can do is to try to love him back.”

Thanks Bette, for letting me share this portion of your email! I love how real and honest you are!

God is beautiful and limitless! It will take all of eternity to continue to get to know the beauty and majesty of who He is. His love for us is outrageous…seriously outrageous!

You are precious and priceless to Jesus, no matter where you’re at. He loves you and wants you to get to know the fullness of His amazing love for you…a love that drove him to the cross to set you free. It would be pride for you to think that any sin you’ve committed is too great to be forgiven. There is no sin too great that He is not there waiting for you, to bring you freedom but most of all to say, “I love you.  Let’s run this race and finish it together!”

Much life and hope for you today, through Jesus’ most committed love for you!