October 5, 2012:
Yesterday, I felt the Lord calling me to just be intentional about not speaking most of the day so I can just listen to what He has to say. I didn’t know what to really expect or if I could even do it. My team and I go on prayer walks around the neighborhood almost every morning, so we went yesterday morning. I began to ask the Lord questions:
So you can hear me.
Seems to be working, what do you want to tell me?
I want to give you a new voice.
…..What?….
I want to give you a new voice.
Oh… what will that look like then?
Me.
I’m down. So, what does YOUR voice look like?
I just so happened to have my IPod playing and the song from Jesus Culture “Father of Lights” was playing. Right when I asked what His voice looked like, the lyrics “Love has a voice, Love has a name; Jesus, Jesus!”
Yes.
And you want me to have Your voice, which is love?
Yes.
Ok.. well when this happens, can my singing voice change too?!
You’re missing the point…
Right. Sorry. Well, let’s do this…
About 20 minutes later, the Lord blessed me with the ability to speak about Jesus to a Hindu family that has never heard of Jesus before. This is the same household that on our prayer walk the day before was doing some sort of worship/chant thing in their house while they all sat around a fire. My team and I prayed for anything on that house that was not from the Lord to leave and the next day I’m sitting in that family’s living room telling them about Jesus and how much He loves them.
Today, I was speaking at a church service. I had all day to prepare it because the service was at night. I sat down and prayed and the Lord showed me the scripture I was going to speak from; Philippians 4:4-7. Great, I’ve never really sat down and went through that specific scripture myself. I asked what to do next and He showed me a part of my testimony I was going to use. So I wrote down the main points from my testimony and then I was going to break down the scripture so I could know exactly what to say when the Lord spoke:
Yeah, don’t write down anything.
Lord, I’m not a speaker, you know this. I need to know what to say or I’ll start getting nervous, probably start sweating just a whole lot.. I need to know what to say!
You will.
….I don’t like this…
Yeah well, you said “let’s do this”.
Touché.
So, instead of preparing a sermon all day, I didn’t. I prayed that the Lord will just speak through me. We get to the church service and I go up to speak. My translator happens to be the Pastor’s mother. So, I go into my testimony and then before I know it, I’m reading from Philippians.
I start to speak and when I started to speak that’s when my self-criticism kicked in; I was criticizing myself for not speaking more in depth or for not having some amazing vocabulary. But I didn’t know how to stop speaking what I was speaking. My translator stopped translating for a second so I looked to her to see if she needed me to repeat something and I noticed her crying…
Keep talking.
Ok.
I finished speaking and we both go to our seats. After the service, I go and find her. She begins to explain things before I was able to ask:
"Yes! I was wondering about that…"
"My husband died this past January and I became very angry with the Lord. I am still so sad but on my way to church tonight I was praying that the Lord just comforts me. Those words you were speaking, it was like the Lord was speaking directly to me. I felt so embarrassed because if you were crying, it would be different because you are the one speaking but I’m the translator and I’m crying! I almost didn’t translate the words you were saying because I knew they were words the Lord had you speak just for me… so why should I let the congregation hear them too?"
I began to let her know that those words were for her because the Lord told me to not write down anything but to just to trust in Him. He had something to tell her and that He didn’t want me trying to put my own words in there.
I am realizing more and more that I don't bring anything to the table. Anything I try to do is filthy rags compared to what the Lord has me to do.
All I know is that He calls me to draw closer to Him and run.
All I know is that I want less of me and more of Him.
