“Taryn, your team and you need to pray for that hotel and go
to room 316 and pray as well.”
“Is that you God, that can’t be, where did 316 come from,
was that my own crazy mind thinking of that…I can’t just throw that out to my
team, what if they think I’m nuts?”
“Taryn, are you worried more about what your team thinks of
you than being obedient to Me and seeing what I have to do?” That was the conversation I had with
the Lord yesterday.
Jumping back a couple weeks to our homeless ministry in
Malaysia, a similar situation occurred.
I felt the Lord lay something on my heart, but instead of trusting that
it was God speaking to me and going the whole way on faith, I only went part
way. I shared with my team what I
had heard and then proceeded to question if it was really God or not. I became consumed with it, was it me or
was it God? What I know now, but
did not allow my mind to submit to my hearts leading at the time is that it was
truly the Lord speaking to me. I
know when my spirit is be burdened by God and I must learn to trust that. He was simply testing me.
This battle always reminds me of Matthew 25:23 “Well done,
good and faithful servant! You
have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things.” So often I pray that God will give me
more, show me more and allow more in my life and then I’m disappointed when it
doesn’t happen. But when I really
think about it, I’m simply foolish to think anything different would
happen. God continually puts things
on my heart to do in faith, but instead I’m more concerned with people thinking
I’m crazy, how I will look or simply dismissing it as something of little
importance.
God says, “well done” first and then He follows with “I will
put you in charge of many things.”
Not the other way around!
God gave me a simple task to go serve someone and I had to question
it…why would He go any further with me?
Back to yesterday, thanks be to God for giving me yet
another chance! While praying for
the women in prostitution in a specific area of Thailand, the inner most being
of me…the place where the Holy Spirit dwells spoke to me. God asked a very simple task of me…to
go with my team to room 316 of a hotel and pray outside of it. The Holy Spirit was saying, “Taryn, how
many times are we going to go through this, I have more for you, but I need to
know that you are going to be faithful in the small things before I can give
you more.”
So I threw my fear of man out the window and put God
first. I thought, really why do I
care about anything over the Creator of this earth, a God that is completely
sovereign? So we headed over and
looked like a bunch of crazy people standing outside of a hotel room praying. After a bit we decided to leave and
then Rocio felt lead to go back and pray for a man that was sitting in the
hallway. Low and behold a moment
later the man staying in room 316 arrived. I felt the Lord say, “Well done. I wanted you all to pray for the room, the night and the
thoughts that would consume this man.
Your job is done here. I’m
not always going to reveal to you what I’m doing and sometimes I will, but
today I wanted to show you just a bit.”
I don’t know the struggles of that man, I don’t know if he
was in Thailand visiting friends or out to satisfy his flesh with alcohol and
sex. What I do know is we were in
the heart of an area notorious for American and European men to visit and
indulge in the strongholds of prostitution, but even more importantly I know it
was not a coincidence that we were praying for this room and moments after we
were done the occupant of 316 arrived.
I will probably never know more about this man, but what I can rest in
is that God knows him better than he knows himself and God is at work. I can rest in the simple fact that God
will speak to us in ways we think are small and meaningless and in ways that we
think are huge, but at the end of the day they are all of equal importance to
Him and they all glorify Him…we are simply the vessels He uses to complete His
work.
I pray that we all would not fall to our fear of man and
live by the leading of the Holy Spirit.
I pray that we would all remember that God is working in us and through
us and He is simply asking us to be obedient and trust Him over ourselves.
I love you all and thank you for your prayers and
support. Every single bit of it
helps to keep me going and I’m honored more and more each day that I get to
share this experience with you!
We had a going away party for our squad leader, Jenny Brown. The party was a same, same but different party! Matt, Rocio and I won. We were both mothers, just one child out and one child in! lol
