This trip is going to be an absolute blast! Not only will I have an opportunity to be stretched to a whole new capacity, learn from people I never would have met otherwise (both on my team and in the cultures we visit), and see God’s people through God’s eyes, but most importantly, I get the privilege of getting to know Jesus Christ in a deeper way! My intimacy with Him is going to go to a whole new level and this is what excites me the most! Slowly, I am going to learn that, above all else, my love relationship with Him is what matters, even when everything around me is broken. If you read my blog on how I got called to this trip, you’ll see a place where I stated that it was so hard for me to press into God while knowing that His people were being destroyed. I believe one thing that God is going to teach me on this trip is that it doesn’t matter what is going on outside; I need to focus on fearing Him, loving Him, and doing His will on this earth. I’m almost scared to learn this, but luckily, His ways are higher than my ways (Isaiah 55:9). 🙂
Some specifics that God has showed me…
One day I was working and listening to the song “How He Loves”. During the chorus of the (original) song, the man is saying, “Woah! How he loves us” over and over… to be completely broken and ruined over the love God is something I’ve only experienced in small bits, but I desire to experience it more. Then I began to imagine young women and young men who have been forced into the sex industry. People that would never even suspect that an all-good, all-powerful, and all-knowing God loves them enough to send His son to die for them, people that would probably do anything to experience a real, unfailing, unconditional love. What if those people were so caught off-guard by God that all they could do was stand in His presence and sing “Woah! How he loves us!”??? This is what I desire to see.
Another thing that God has shown me for my personal life is this: I was reading John 4 one day, trying to grasp what it meant to worship God in spirit and in truth (John 4:23). I read in the Message translation where it says that your spirit engages you in pursuit of the truth, which leads you to knowing the truth. That’s how it will be on this trip… there could be a young woman that we tell about Jesus, and to her mind, it won’t make sense. To a young woman who has been abused and forced into prostitution for a number of years, the idea of a God loving her and wanting an intimate relationship with her will go against her mind, even though its the truth. Her spirit, however, will recognize the truth, the good news, and engage her in pursuit of the truth. Thank God that we don’t fight against flesh and blood, but that we have His Spirit to lead us into all truth.
Right after that (in John 4:34) Jesus begins talking about harvest and that it’s ready… there are people all over the world seeking to know God! I believe that God is going to use this team to reach some of these people. We are going to be bold for Him!
I am so looking forward to developing and preparing for this trip; God has already showed me some cool stuff and I am em excited to understand these things and learn more from Him! Woohoo! 😉
