heart.hope.justice: Sophie McDonald

(Most of you know about heart.hope.justice: a ministry of handlettering prints that support ministries or people or families who care about and are involved in different types of justice ministries.)

Heart.Hope.Justice supports justice ministries and families and persons who love justice for the sake of the gospel.  I’d love for y’all to meet Sophie.  Here is her story: keep reading to find out how you can support her trip and ministry and get yourself a handlettered art piece.

1.  Tell us a bit about yourself: My name is Sophie McDonald, I’m 26, I live in Paducah, Kentucky, and I have been mesmerized by the God of the universe.
   

   His glory is the reason I have breath

   and His Gospel the reason

   I’m no longer who I used to be.

   My passion is for the nations to see and be transformed by the stunning truth of the Gospel, but my heart beats with a fiery desire for young girls and women to see the real source of beauty—Jesus Christ. I am convinced true beauty comes only from a life fully devoted to following Christ and that until God is enough, nothing ever will be. To this Truth I give my tiny vapor of a life.  You can also find me working full time as assistant editor over at RTM Magazine, an interactive Christian web magazine designed for iPads and Android tablets (also available for viewing online)

   2. Why this trip and this team you are with?  Great question. Simple answer: The IMB (International Mission Board) asked me to consider going and God gave complete peace about it. The peace turned into a burden. A burden for the beautiful people in this particular area to hear and know and be radically changed by the Gospel of Jesus Christ and to be freed not only from sin slavery but human slavery. 
   Check out some of the stats from the specific area to which we’re going in South Asia:

   • Population: Almost 30 billion
   • Believers: 0.9%
   • 93% unreached by the Gospel (this means they’re dying and going to an eternal hell and have yet to hear of another option)
   • This specific area is listed in the top 10 countries as THE place to practice modern slavery
   • More than 15,000 women are trafficked from this country to another country ANNUALLY and more than 7,500 children are trafficked domestically
   • Approx. 200,000 girls and women are working in brothels here
   • Even believers don’t always know the signs of trafficking or what to watch for to prevent the trafficking of their own children

   I wept the first time I was faced with the reality of those facts. How can we sit back and do nothing? We must go. We’re commanded to. If we don’t, who will?

   Seven of us will be going as part of a Women’s Mission Immersion Team through the IMB and I am thrilled to go under the leadership of my sweet friend Lori McDaniel. Our team will participate in several mission opportunities from discipling national believers in individual and conference settings to praying for and working in areas where women are exploited. This team also has a component of mission training, where we will be learning tools that we can implement both in the States and overseas.

   What’s your bigger picture for this trip?  The big picture is Revelation 7:9-12, “After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, ‘Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!’ And all the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshipped God, saying, ‘Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might by to our God forever and ever! Amen.’”We spend our days, we labor across the globe and across the street, with that vision in mind. The bigger picture is to spend our short little lives on this earth in the God-ordained mission of gathering more eternal worshippers for the one true God. We live this day with that Great Day in focus. That’s the bigger picture for this trip; to make disciples who make disciples so that more worshippers are surrounding the throne for all eternity giving Jesus Christ, our suffering Savior, the glory due His name.

What’s some verses that God has used to bring justice ministries into your heart?

Over the past couple of weeks God has really put Psalm 72 on my heart. In that Psalm, which most linguists attribute to Solomon, we find what one theologian called “A glowing description of the reign of Messiah as righteous, universal, beneficent, and perpetual, to which are added a doxology and a postscript.” It is a stunning picture of our Lord in all His breathtaking (literally) holiness and through that we get a glimpse into His heart for hopeless humanity, “For he delivers the needy when he calls, the poor and him who has no helper. He has pity on the weak and the needy, and saves the lives of the needy. From oppression and violence he redeems their life, and precious is their blood in his sight” (vss. 12-14). If we are Christ’s representatives on this earth and He, through the Holy Spirit, is to live His life through us, then are we not to do what He does? He loves the poor, the weak, the needy, the outcasts, the rejects, the wretched (all of which we were). We are to do the same, extending the same grace, mercy, kindness and steadfast love we have received from the Giver of all good gifts.

What have you learned about God as you prepare for this trip?