[written 10.12.12]
As a team, we do worship and devotionals every day (usually in the mornings, depending on our given schedule with the kids for the day)- I usually lead worship or we do iPod worship, and we take turns leading devos each day. Today was my designated day, and I honestly had no clue what to do. I’d thought about doing something on spiritual gifts, since Laura led us yesterday in looking at unity in Ephesians 4, which emphasizes different parts of the same body working together to build up the body. I spent a good hour or so looking at passages and meditating on what to lead the team in today… but all that stuck in my mind was ‘ATL’- World Race lingo for ‘Ask the Lord.’ I just felt like we should do an intentional ATL on behalf of each person to seek God’s heart for the individual. How does He see this person? How does He want to encourage this person to use certain gifts for the edification of the body (our team, the children and adults here in Honduras, the Church as a whole)?
So then came worship and devo time, and I still felt sorely unprepared for both. So instead of playing guitar today, I decided to take a break from that and use Erin’s wonderful speakers (JamBox!) to lead us in worship with songs on my iPod. I also did that in hopes of being able to more fully engage myself in the worship than if I had to be concerned about playing the right chords from memory. I told my team at the start of devo time that I didn’t feel prepared, but I decided to dive in with some Scripture passages. 1 Cor 13:4-13 (on love) and 1 Cor 14:6-19 (on edification through spiritual gifts in worship).
I’d felt convicted that I (and perhaps we as a team) was forgetting our purpose. It all truly comes down to love, and whether that’s in giving daily feedback to each other, disciplining the kids here at the children’s home, or making conversation with the nannies, it should all be done in love. True love never fails, and I realized my lack of joy lately had to do with a lack of love. I’d been impatient, self-seeking, envious, and definitely not always filled with hope (quite the opposite of 1 Cor 13:4-7).
I’d also started to feel that maybe our hindrance to further depth as a team was in part a lack of love, or at least expressed love… which brings me to my next point. The second passage (1 Cor 14:6-19) was about using gifts like tongues to edify others. But it isn’t just about tongues. It’s about all gifts, all blessings with which God equips us to be His hands and feet. How can we know how we’re building each other up when we aren’t fully aware of what each person is potentially contributing? How can we fight for each other? It can be difficult to fully edify one another with our own gifts if we don’t lay them out, call them out, and spur each other on.
So it seemed appropriate, as World Race people like to say, to ‘draw out the greatness in each other.’ And that’s just what we did. We went around, each person taking a turn in the middle as the rest of the team huddled around, laying hands and asking the Lord for edifying words and visions. I won’t go into too much detail, but let’s just say that some incredible revelations came about, some quite unexpected but very exciting. The Spirit was tangibly moving, and it was awesomeee. So affirming, encouraging, life-giving. I’m pretty sure all of us were blessed in some way when we came out of that. I sensed that our joy and positive energy levels changed for the better. All that to say: ALL the GLORY to GOD! Clearly, I didn’t really know what to do or what passage to study, but He was the one who laid ATL/group listening prayer on my heart. And He definitely had awesome things to tell us through listening prayer as a team. Today’s precious time left us all wondering- shouldn’t all team times be this full of the Holy Spirit?! I certainly want them to be… 🙂
