Break my heart for what breaks yours
Nobody likes me. I’m so stupid. I’m a failure. I’m a loser. Everybody else is so talented, and I have absolutely nothing to offer anybody. I don’t even understand why I have friends. I have to be perfect and funny or else my friends will see how boring I am. I’m ugly and I’ll never find anybody who will love me. I don’t even believe that God really loves me because I’m such a horrible sinner.
How many girls have never thought any of these thoughts? How often do women think poorly of themselves? Often we tend to think that when bad things happen it is somehow our fault. I know that for a long time I was trapped in a prison of worthlessness, shame, and self-condemnation. Because I dealt with it for so long, I see it in other girls easily.
Throughout the 9 months that I have been on the World Race, God has systematically been breaking down the walls and strongholds that I have built and allowed to be built inside of my mind. I have had a series of encounters with God that have rocked my world like an earthquake. Many of my walls have been reduced to rubble. The last encounter was a couple weeks ago in Nelspruit, South Africa. I left feeling completely rocked. It was spoken over me that my ministry was going to be women for the next three months and that every time I prayed to break worthlessness off of someone else, I would learn more about how to break it off of me.
I have NEVER considered girls or women to be my type of ministry. I have always had a heart for teenagers – so I was really doubtful when it was spoken that my ministry would be women.
The second week we were here, we stayed in a city called Shah Alam . We stayed with some Christian college students. They are AMAZING. This country is primarily Muslim, but Hinduism, Confucianism, and Taoism are also practiced. The college campus is only 2% Christian. These young people face persecution in a way that I have never had to face. Their faith amazes me. Our purpose was to evangelize the campus and also to disciple and encourage the college students we were living with.
I was not totally shocked when God specifically put one of the students on my heart. I loved her immediately and I knew that was not only my love, but the love of Christ coming through me. She is spunky. She is so funny. When she laughs, she loses control of her upper body and hangs on to the nearest person for balance. She reaches out and hits people when she is frustrated and doesn’t know what to say…..not REALLY hit…just a little smack. She also enjoys hitting me when we are just joking around. She is completely gorgeous and her passion for the Lord is inspiring. She (along with another girl) prayed for my sore knees and healed them. She sings beautifully. Everybody loves her. When I see her on the college campus, she is always surrounded by friends. She is sarcastic and likes to poke fun at people….ahhh….she speaks my love language 🙂 The more I talked with her, the more I felt burdened for her (not in a bad way, but in the sense that I needed to pray for her). When I spoke with her, I could just hear in her answers all the same lies that I believed for so long in my life. She doesn’t believe anything good about herself and I know personally how deep that goes and how hard it is to break. My heart just aches for her. I want so badly for her to break free from those lies while she is still young. I do NOT want her to be 30 like me when she finally breaks out of that prison.
I don’t know if I have ever been burdened like this for someone that I don’t really know. But after the last real conversation I had with her, I couldn’t go to sleep. I couldn’t stop thinking about how I might be able to help her….things I could say….I kept thinking about how I should pray and what Bible verses I could give her. I knew she was hearing my words with her ears but they weren’t getting through to her heart. I was desperate to find a way to reach her. Sometime in the middle of this LONG night of drifting in and out of sleep but constantly thinking, I heard God tell me to fast. I remembered that some strongholds need fasting to be broken and so I decided to fast the next day.
I woke up the next day and found out that we were going to a Chinese New Year celebration. I contemplated just starting my fast the next day, but decided that I heard from God and I was going to be obedient. I fasted that day and God told me to keep going. I had no clue when I was going to stop. I prayed a LOT and God directed me to fast until the day we moved on to our next ministry which turned out to be 5 days. I have NEVER fasted food before and I thought it was going to be horrible but it wasn’t. I have never heard God’s voice so clearly. It made me want to fast all the time.
I was fasting for this girl, but I had no idea how powerful that was. I didn’t even really know if it was going to “work”. I was just trying to listen to God. What God taught me is that the fight in the spiritual doesn’t always have results we can see in the natural, but being obedient in a spiritual battle is NEVER fruitless. When God asks us to do something, he has his good plan in mind. It might seem silly or insignificant, but God’s world doesn’t work like our world does. It isn’t about immediate results.
When we left Shah Alam, I knew I wouldn’t be able to see or hear from her for at least a week. I let her know that I would be praying for her and then spent a week in the jungle.
The very next time I could talk to her she told me that she was coming back to God and that she had missed him. I know that feeling. Even when we think we don’t deserve His love – He gives it freely. The joy I felt for her was overwhelming. I nearly cried in the middle of Starbucks. I didn’t know how God got a hold of her, but it blessed me beyond belief to hear that. God taught me so much through this amazing woman of God and I just can’t tell you enough how much I love her. I am so thankful that God pursues his children and never gives up on them!!
God is amazing. He works in ways that I cannot comprehend.
I pray that he continues to break my heart for what breaks his.
I pray that I continue to be obedient even when I have no idea what I am doing.
P.S. I am still in need of about $1100 to be fully funded. Please pray about helping me with this and give as the Spirit leads you.
