So I intended to write some very detailed blogs about our Ask The Lord experience (read previous blog if you do not know what I am talking about). However, God has been moving so much in my life that I am having a difficult time processing. Therefore I am only writing one blog on the ATL experience. The following is a glimpse of what happened last week.
We went to the train station in Bistrita, Romania. We prayed before we bought a ticket, and told God we wanted to give this week to Him. We didn’t want to spend money, and we wanted to put our complete trust in God to provide in every way. From that point on we had a spirit-filled miraculous week.
Every person that we met (that could speak English) was used by God to help us and direct us in our steps for the day. Every time we got on a train, or arrived at a train station, or were presented with options on our next step, we would stop and pray until we heard God’s voice clearly. It reminded me a lot of the old school “choose your own adventure” books. You know the books, where at the end of each page you were presented with two options to either take a left on the street (turn to page 47), or climb the mountain in front of you (turn to page 63). I felt like I was living one of those books this week.
To make a long story short, God directed 6 Americans in the middle of Romania from a train station to a monastery on a mountain. God put people in our paths all day to direct us to an orthodox monastery on the side of a mountain– that looked like it should be on a post card (I was given one after my stay)! We were given free lodging and free meals.
The next day we were asked to leave, because after the MASS we attended we were CLEARLY not part of the Romanian Orthodox Church. As God kept leading us, a door was opened to stay at another monastery that would let us stay through the week, even though they knew what we believed. We would be given free rooms and meals all week, yet something didn’t set well.
Were we so focused on God providing us with free meals and free housing, that we would take that motive for ATL over another direction God wanted to take us? Maybe God was directing us to something different ,that would use our WR budget for food and housing, to put us in the middle of a city that needed his Kingdom to fall in the atmosphere. We declined the free meals and housing and took a train to the 2nd largest city in Romania.
It was here that God began to move in and through us in Worship. We worshiped everywhere. We walked around the city with a guitar, drum, and drumsticks to worship our Father in the midst of a materialistic/stagnate atmosphere. The amazing part was that God led us on a journey to where we felt like going– through road signs. We followed a sign that said MALL–> (this way). These signs took us on a 7 mile walk, to be conservative, and on the way God highlighted a university campus, and a city square to worship in! It was because of this obedience that some of us got completely set free and wrecked at our debrief this week.
I eventually want to put up the lessons I learned through this experience. Some parts of it were SO difficult, but in the end we learned so much about ourselves and our GOD. If you want to know more send me a message, but this is just a glimpse of how God ordained our every step for 5 days!
