…but it’s something worth fighting for. -Warren Barfield “Love is not a fight”
Welcome to Thailand! It’s a totally different ball game over here spiritually and socially. You can’t walk 10 yards without tripping over an idol. We all experienced spiritual warfare at different times and intensities. For me, it was almost an immediate “unexplainable” heaviness/anxiousness. I tried keeping it at bay with worship music and tried waiting it out. Don’t try to “just wait it out/ignore it, it’ll go away.” That doesn’t work. I talked to my teammates about it and we prayed together and for each other. It helped a little, but I still couldn’t shake this junk. I felt like I was in a fog not knowing how to deal with this crap.
It finally came to a head one morning at 2 a.m. I woke up to the enemy filling my head with all sorts of fear and discouragements. That’s IT! I went out on the balcony and cried out to the Lord for the strength and clarity to deal with this crap. I wasn’t leaving that balcony until this was settled. So the next 2 hours were spent in worship, prayer, and with Jesus next to me, in His name, I rebuked every lie and screwed up thought that came into my head, one by one. That was the beginning of the turning point for me. In the next couple weeks, my Father began showing me that all this (this month, and Race as a whole) He has been Fathering me and training me. Enter Warrior Phase of training. Being a man of peace is good, but often I’ve blurred the lines between peaceful and passive. Love is a choice. Fighting for what you love is a choice. Sometimes, actually alot of the time, you have to MAKE peace. It doesn’t just happen. “The only thing needed for evil to succeed is that good men do nothing.” -Edmund Burke
The other thing I learned in Thailand is that God’s been speaking to me alot more than I gave Him credit for. He’s also been giving me words of knowledge and encouragement for people left and right, but I didn’t realize or trust that it was Him. I had the opportunity to pray with a woman from a different missions team after sensing the Spirit’s prompting that she needed encouragement and that’s when I realized I’d been hearing from Him all along. Right before we left Thailand, we were in a restaurant and God shared with me that a certain man’s wife had recently left him. I almost didn’t act of it, but I went up and tried talking to him. He didn’t speak english so our waitress ended up being the translator! His wife and him had just recently separated and I got to tell him that God sees him and knows where he’s at and that Jesus loves him. He even let me pray for him! It was pretty cool for everyone involved! These blogs are just the World Race cliff notes. There’s to much to tell on these blogs. I haven’t even touched on what my Father’s been doing with me in the area of musical worship in both private worship and leading worship of which the last two months have been a huge growth spurt. God is good. All the time!
“I have given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and to overcome all the power of the enemy; nothing will harm you.” Luke 10:19
“For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened. Which of you fathers, if your son asks fora fish, will give him a snake instead? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion?If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” Luke 11:10-13
“For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.” 2 Timothy 1:7
