So I haven’t been feeling super special to the Lord lately. I can’t remember if I mentioned that to you guys already or not so I’ll say it again to preface this blog post. Actually I’m pretty sure I did when I talked about the lion thing. But I’m saying it again anyway.
I know I am special to Him. I know He loves me. I know He knit me together in my mother’s womb. Yada yada yada, I went to Sunday school and summer camp, I got all that. But knowing something and feeling it are very very different. I’ve felt special to Him before, obviously, but I just haven’t felt Him around lately.
So yesterday was Valentine’s Day and our Z Squad Men went ALL OUT. It was absolutely unbelievable. They did water duty (getting up at 5 am and hauling water from the well 1/2 mile away in 20 liter jugs back up a giant hill, getting covered in mud and sopping wet), did all the kitchen duty, all of the manual labor jobs around the compound (there are a lot of them, too many to count), and absolutely everything they could just to give us a day of rest together. I was overwhelmed and cried like a baby.. multiple times. They wouldn’t even let us stand up to get our plates at meals, that’s how dedicated they were to serving us. Later on they did a hilarious skit of the Malawi Winter Olympics (still laughing to myself about it as I type this, it was so funny) and then later gave us a big surprise of chocolate bars and cookies (not easy to come by here) and then the most amazing part of the night, where they held a beautiful feet washing ceremony. They lit tall candles in empty glass soda bottles and had five of our men washing our feet and five of them behind praying over us. They read the scripture of Jesus washing the disciples’ feet and made a covenant to serve us as Christ did and to treat us as the bride of Christ. It was unbelievably touching and beautiful. I cannot express what a blessing they are to us.
All that to say, God was making me feel special through all of that just as a precursor to what He was planning for last night. So all of the teams have been on rotations of doing all day and all night prayer shifts. So like a night shift is 8pm-6am, and your whole team stays up/takes shifts praying all night for protection and safety and just whatever. Ours was a nigh shift last night, after that beautiful ceremony. It’s our teammate Jessica’s birthday today so we had the divine pleasure of spending most of the day yesterday baking her a birthday cake (in a charcoal fire oven, lol), so we all woke up at midnight to sing to her and then her shift ended at 1am and that’s when Kristy and I had our shift, from 1am-3am.
Kristy walked over to an open doorway and started praying for each of our squad mates individually while I turned on my worship music and slowly danced along the perimeter of the room praying and singing His praises. And I was asking God for a vision of something, anything, just something beautiful. He brought to mind Ezekiel 37, the valley of the dry bones, and that He is a God of big things, and when He says He is going to do something, He does it. Then He brought to mind Mark 5, where Jesus calls out the demons in the man and they beg Him, beg Him, to go into the pigs. The demons have to ask permission even to go into the pigs. It’s almost laughable how much control our God has and how the battle is completely and 100% won. That the Name of Jesus holds so much power that even having it on your lips is protection enough from evil. It can get close to you, but against the power of the Name of Jesus, the Name that is on my lips and on my skin and in my soul and in my hands,it can never touch you.
So then He gave me this image. This beautiful image, of myself swaying my arms up and down and everywhere, how I’d been dancing in that room, and there was this bright, brilliant, sparkly, gold coming from my hands. My hands felt warm and tingly. The only way I can describe what He was saying to me was that I was painting with His glory He has put within me. Painting His Name as He poured out through my hands. The best picture I can compare it to, cheesily enough, is the pixie dust from Peter Pan. Remember that feeling when Tinker Bell coats the entire pirate ship, with her glittery gold magic, and nothing can touch it? That’s what was happening here. I didn’t really know what to do with it and God said, “Just pour it out”, so I poured it out. I waved my hands up and down, coating the room with His golden glory from my hands, touching the walls, imagining it going out over each of my squad mates, covering our tents. I imagined it covering my loved ones at home, my parents, my brothers, my sister-in-law, my new nephew, my boyfriend, my dearest friends. I imagined coating you all with His shining glory in that moment, painting His protection over you.
The power that raised Christ from the dead is within us. Is within you. What are you going to do with it?
