I remember being at my World Race Training Camp and thinking so many thoughts! I wasn’t sure that I was really going to love all 51 other people who were going with me on the Race, and I was not so sure that I would be radically different than I was at that time. I mean, come on, I have known Jesus since I was 12 years old — and really loved and been devoted to Jesus since then (just read my Middle School diary)!!!
Boy, did the Lord show me a thing or two. I had walked along for so many years loving and knowing Jesus, but I feel like over the course of the last year and a half of my life – I have begun a relationship with God the Father and God the Holy Spirit! And, it has radically changed me! I have never had such passion (even when I was trying to “save” everyone in Middle School) for the Lord or for the things the Lord is doing in me! I watched at our Training Camp just a few weeks ago as 130 people gathered together to get commissioned to go out to the 11-15 different countries they will go to this year, and tried to think back to who I was before God so lovingly made me go on the World Race. The transformation that happened in their lives over the course of 9 days was monumental, and I know that will be completely trumped by who they are when they get back next May/June!
I did not really know how to hear from the Lord until the World Race came into my life and I almost feel like I didn’t even know how to pray. I prayed before, of course, I prayed — but now I know how to pray with power, I know how to pray, believing and trusting in who God is and what He has said and is saying right now! I believe and have felt the Holy Spirit move through me in unbelievable ways – ways I had only vaguely heard about before now. I learned how to let God the Father become a Father to me and pour His love out on me, and I began to believe it — even to the point that I finally believe that He loves me MORE than my earthly Dad loves me. I have learned how to be still & quiet (well, I am still working on this one) and let Him speak over me, and let Him transform my heart with His words of love and grace. I believe that God gives people dreams and visions and that sometimes He uses things that make no sense at all to lead us to the right person at the right time, that desperately needs a touch from Him…and more than ever, I want to find those people and be His voice to them. I have learned how to worship Him with an abandoned spirit – free to move and dance in His presence, unafraid of how people will receive it. I have realized that I come ALIVE in worship and I was absolutely MADE to worship Him and nothing makes me feel more in the presence of God than singing & dancing in worship – and that God is so pleased with my worship before Him!
So, I ask for your prayers for the 130 people that will leave from the states in June & July for a truly life-changing year. I know that if they are willing and stay open to the Lord, He will radically ruin their lives forever! That is my prayer for them — that God would wreck them so much that they can never be “normal” again – to be always striving and always longing for MORE! I am so thankful that I get to be a part of their stories!
