The Lord certainly answers prayer. And He has a sense of humor.
You know those times when you pray to be humbled, to be stretched, to grow, etc., and then you think, “Shoot! Why’d I just ask for that?? because you know how hard it’s going to be? That happened to me. Sort of.
For the last couple of months, I’ve been desperate to be more desperate for God. I want to want Him more. I want to be in a position where I absolutely cannot function without Him, and I want to because I want to need Him to show up.
In Honduras I started reading through the Bible chronologically. I finished Genesis and Job pretty quickly, so in Nicaragua I spent a lot of time with Moses. I’m still reading about him today, a month later. No judging. Leviticus takes a long time to get through.
Moses is a fascinating character. He was just an ordinary guy. He didn’t like public speaking, he didn’t want to stand up to Pharaoh, he didn’t ask to lead the grumbling people of Israel around the desert, but he was chosen. And he was equipped. And the Lord chose to use an ordinary guy to do the extraordinary, and despite all odds Moses’ story is still being told today.
Moses was always in a position of needing God. To the outside, it looked like they were just wandering around the desert without a purpose. But God did have a purpose and He was guiding them around the entire time. The Lord came down and filled the tabernacle, and whenever the cloud was taken up, the people of Israel would set out, and if it wasn’t taken up, they would stay put. The cloud of the Lord guided them throughout all their journeys.
So I’m in Nicaragua reading this amazing story about Moses about how the Lord spoke to him, used him to lead his people, etc., and I’m handed our team phone to talk to one of our squad leaders. I’m told that next month (this month) is “Manistry” month (all the men get shipped off somewhere to go throw rocks or something Lord only knows what goes on), that they’re asking new women leaders to step up, and I’m one of those people to whom they’d like to offer a leadership role. Long story short: they asked me to be a team leader.
My first reaction: panic. No. This can’t be right. I’m on the Race to learn how to follow, right? Is this a test? I’m supposed to say no, right? I don’t need 24 hours to pray about it- I’m pretty sure this isn’t from the Lord.
The more I thought about it, the more I started to recognize that the Lord was preparing me this whole time to step into this role with this specific team for this specific month. It wasn’t coincidence that I was reading Moses. It wasn’t coincidence that I was asking for more of Him and for a deeper level of dependency on Him, because that’s exactly what I need as a team leader. I just plain old can’t do it without Him.
As I prayed about it, the Lord just kept telling me that there was no pressure, but that I had absolutely no reason to be afraid. He told me to let go. He told me that I’d be surprised by the strength He’d bring out in me. Despite how much I didn’t want to lead (seriously, who wants to be in charge of 6 other people in a foreign country?), I decided I’d regret not obeying more than I would regret leading and hating it.
I said yes.
It also wasn’t a coincidence that my team was assigned to Unsung Heroes for the month. In short, we’re looking for people who have dedicated their lives to the Lord, who serve and give out of the little they have, and who need help that we as World Racers could give. Essentially this boils down to networking. As a team, we Google ministries in the Philippines, send out emails, set up meetings, arrange travel to different ministry locations to see what they’re really all about, and send all that information back into Adventures in Missions so they could send a team in the future. We don’t actually partner with a specific ministry for the month- we just do the groundwork before sending a team to come stay. The World Race and Adventures in Missions is growing so much that they are running out of places to send teams, but we know there are people out there that need help.
(part of team GPS- God’s Path is Straight- photo credit Kristen Bennett)
More to come on that later, but in short it’s been a crazy month, a great month, a restful month, and a very humbling and stretching month. And the Lord certainly answers prayer, even if it’s not how we expect.
