I have read so many books this year, so far. Maybe 25.
I get in these moods and I devour them in a day. I can be really picky though, like, certain
books might be fantastic reads, but they have to find me at a certain time or I
hate them. For instance, one of the
books I read last month was Redeeming
Love because I heard it was a great story.
Well, last month was a personally torturous month for me because I
worked a lot on being single (and not available) in the world (well, in America) and
how that looked and how I viewed myself and what my tendencies are blah blah
blah. A girl needs to do that now and
again and what better time then 11 months of forced single-hood on the World
Race! Well, the book was perfectly well
written, but I just hated every page of it!
I hated the characters and the pattern both characters had in their
whiny, desperate personalities.
Yuch. I did NOT need to read a
romance novel last month.
This month I devoured a book in 2 days called Blue like Jazz. It was exactly what I needed. In his novel, Donald Miller writes “I felt as if believing in God was no more
rational than having an imaginary friend.
They have names for people who have imaginary friends, you know. They keep them in special hospitals. Maybe my faith in God was a form of
insanity. Maybe I was losing my
marbles. I start out believing in
Christ, and the next thing you know I am having tea with the Easter Bunny or
waltzing with my toaster, shouting, ‘The redcoats are coming!’� I laughed so hard at that because I’m sure I
have thought those exact words more than a few times this trip. It is REALLY difficult to live 11 months in a
life of pure service to others in a community where the common tie is an unseen
God. That is something I’ve struggled
with my whole life.
But yesterday God finally blessed me with a huge answer to
my most frequent prayer. “Lord, let me
see a miracle! If I’m not meant to be a
part of a miracle healing this year, at least let me see one!� You know God loves those prayers…he is so
anxious and willing to heal His ‘least of these’ when the time is right and His
servant is there to deliver His kingdom.
That happened to my team yesterday.
With our Mozambiquan translator and a pleasant couple visiting from Australia,
we laid hands on probably 60 afflicted widows and watched them walk away
grinning and free! Oh, it was
fantastic! I realized something special
was about to happen after I had prayed for about 6 women who smiled kindly at
me and walked away, and then a beautiful woman walked up, placed her hands on
her lungs and stomach, signaling that there was pain there, then she closed her
eyes and lifted her hands expecting
the healing. Well, I stopped praying like a child asking for a favor from daddy and prayed
as a Queen of my inheritance and expected
the healing to come as well.
Everything shifted. My prayer was
bold and she opened her eyes and said “no more pain, no more pain! Praise God!�
She gave me a hug and walked away.
I just sat there…I couldn’t believe it.
But I HAD TO! No more Easter
Bunny or waltzing with the toaster, no way!
I saw God! I saw him touch a
woman’s life in a drastic way. It didn’t
stop there, of course. Another woman
walked up to a group of us, and her hand was frozen in an outstretched
manner. The skin was pulled tight and
she had absolutely no range of motion whatsoever. She couldn’t even flex her finger an inch. We laid hands on her and prayed and
afterwards she squeezed her palm shut immediately! I mean, the other woman could have been
giving me lip service…how was I supposed to know if her lungs felt better. But here was a woman with a decrepit hand and
it WORKED right in front of me. God
healed her through us. This ancient
woman started skipping and lifting a heavy bag of corn onto her head and told
all her friends. Then, faith started to
rise so we had a line of people, mostly with back and lung pain. They all walked away free!
God is so real and so good.
I know how fortunate I am to have been a part of this. My faith has solidified even more than
ever. And I still have three months of
all this!
