//Month 2, Guatemala//
Beginning of month two, my squad had debrief in Antigua, Guatemala. Along with sessions and meetings, we also had a bit of downtime in between to rest and explore the city. Courtney and I walked to our Coaches’ hostel one night to meet up with the rest of our squad for a session. We found one of our teammates sitting at a table and went over to talk to her only to discover her wallet was missing! After looking and asking around, we calmly backtracked to the coffee shop she had been at last, praying it was still there. We arrived and talked to the manager of the shop where he was able to help us confirm that the wallet was still missing. Losing you wallet that contains your money, cards, ID, and passport in another country is terrifying and the weight of the situation began to set in. Was it lost? Was it stolen? Will it be returned? What do we do now? So many questions. We decided to sit down on the sidewalk to pray and give the situation to the Lord.
As we got back up and continued walking, the Lord reminded me that even though we had no clue where the wallet was or who had it…He did. He sees everything and knows everything, and we can simply ask Him where it is and He could very easily tell us. So I asked Him and heard, “It’s under the bench.” It’s under the bench? The one she was sitting on? I’m pretty sure we would have seen it, I must have just made that up. I had been asking to hear His voice more clearly, but this just seemed odd. I wanted to tell the girls what I thought “might” have been God, but I was scared that I was wrong and if we looked and it wasn’t there that I would look like a fool, so I didn’t say anything. We kept walking and finally made it back to the hostel for the meeting. We decided to take one more look around the area she had been sitting at and Courtney got down on her hands and knees to look under the bench and…THERE WAS THE MISSING WALLET! I couldn’t believe my eyes, we were all so surprised! We were so excited that we had found it and it wasn’t stolen! Then I remembered that was exactly where God had told me the wallet was… I looked at the girls and told them about my prayer and how God had told me where it was, but I had been too afraid of being wrong that I didn’t say anything. I was disappointed in myself for not listening to Him, but I chose to learn from this lesson. (And the cool things is that God never wastes our mistakes. He is our Redeemer and He always redeems our mess-ups and uses the lessons we learn for His glory! Redeemed story coming in the following blog!)
The thing is, God DOES speak to us and we DO hear His voice more than we think. My desire is to recognize His voice and to be bold enough to listen. I had been asking the Lord to help me listen and to understand that I do hear His voice in the moments of every day life.
I took the first step to ask God where the wallet was, I listened and “heard” His response, but I failed to trust that God was big enough to cut through my thoughts and actually speak to me. And I let my lack of trust keep me from stepping out in faith and obeying. I doubted that He actually answered me, when in fact, He did. I gave myself too many excuses of why it wasn’t God, I cared too much about what people would think of me if I was wrong, and that my pride would be hurt. Afraid of wanting to hear God’s voice but being disappointed if it turned out only to be my own… I think it boils down to a wrong perception of who I saw God as. Because honestly, I can quote scripture and tell you all day who I know God is with my brain using my words, but you can understand who I believe God is in my heart through my actions.
I know God is a loving Daddy who longs to have a deep and intimate relationship with His daughter and would love every chance He got to speak to me. But I believed that asking Him to talk to me would be an inconvenience to Him because He had way more important things to do. I believed that He was too busy and wouldn’t want to speak to me unless it was about something super important. I believed that God was weak and wasn’t strong enough to cut through my own thoughts and that I would be disappointed by Him because He couldn’t or wouldn’t. And I believed that hearing His voice was hard and that I wasn’t good enough to hear it.
It took my teammate misplacing her wallet for me to realize how mislead my heart had been. Because the TRUTH is – You ARE a child of God, He is NEVER too busy for you, He is ALWAYS talking to you, ALWAYS desires to be with you, He NEVER fails you or disappoints you, you DO hear God’s voice, and He DOES care and IS personally involved in every detail of your life whether you think they’re big or small!
“My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me.” John 10:27
How many times have we actually heard God speaking to us and just ignored it because we thought it was ourselves, had misconceptions about God, and were too afraid to take a risk and step out?
