Brave. Courageous. Faithful. Lion chaser.
The last two weeks have been weird, in the sense that so much has happened in such a short time that it’s hard for me to believe it’s only been two weeks.
This is going to be a lot thrown together, (and maybe hard to follow because I’ve been writing it for over a week), but hey read the thing anyway.
So, my last post was about adventure day, where my team ventured to the beach. Cool. That was awesome. The next two weeks, honestly not so much. (Until like a couple days ago, anyways.)
Later in the week after our day at the beach I woke up not feeling so hot. (Actually, I was too hot… literally.) Aches, chills, sweats, fever. Basically I had the flu. I was pretty hopeful that I would only be sick for a day, the fever would break, and I would be better by the start of the next week. It wasn’t, I didn’t get better, and had to go get checked out at the hospital because I was getting more dehydrated. Long story short, I didn’t feel good, and basically the devil used my being sick to feed me lies and doubt, and I believed them.
(Just for reference, being sick in a foreign country is way harder than being sick at home, not really sure why.)
Okay so I’ve been reading this book that my squad leader lent to me, called “In the pit with a lion on a snowy day” and it has really convicted me of my reaction to being sick. The book revolves around the story of Benaiah, this guy who chased a lion into a pit on a snowy day, and won. It goes on in a bunch of different directions, but basically comes back to the point that as Christians we need to be “lion-chasers,” people of action, who run towards the lion instead of away from it. (The book is awesome, but I can’t summarize all of it very well so do yourself a favor and read it if you haven’t.)
Anyways, so in one chapter the author mentions the story of Paul and Silas when they are beaten and thrown in jail for sharing the gospel and how their reaction to being beaten to a pulp and shackled in a jail cell was to sing and worship God. Holy freaking smokes.
Doesn’t that just blow your mind? It’s so counterintuitive to our flesh to rejoice when we hurt or when our spirits are broken. I mean, imagine it. You’ve been preaching and healing people, doing what God has told you to do to further his kingdom, and he lets you get caught, abused, and thrown in jail. Wouldn’t that make you so frustrated with God? I would be so upset. I would be hopeless, sorry for myself, nursing my bruises, and my attitude would not be a pleasant one. I definitely would not want to sing and praise God.
And I didn’t. When I was sick, feeling crappy with a fever, I was grumpy. I was irritable, uncomfortable, and got it in my head that I just wanted to go home, that they didn’t need or want me here anyway.
Instead of praising God when things got hard, I ran away from the lion.
I chose wrong, and my attitude affected everything because of it. It affected me personally (obviously), but it also affected my ministry, and my teammates. I became negative Nancy. I was the Eeyore of the group. I got in a funk and withdrew from being fully invested.
This is me recognizing my failure to act faithfully, and realizing how that affects me and my relationship with God, and my teammates. I messed up. I backed down when I should have stepped up, and that’s what I’m striving for. As our month in Chile ends, and we head to Argentina, I want to be faithful, to grow in serving and loving my teammates.
I think Dad has been walking me through worship, and what that actually means. Most of my life, worship has meant singing songs in church, occasionally raising my hands if I feel particularly emotional, maybe swaying side to side with the music. But worship isn’t just that. One of my teammates mentioned to us the other day that when we worship it should cost us something. That we should have to give something up to God when we enter into his presence in worship of him. (And that could look like anything, but basically what I took it as, was that worship was doing something we don’t really want to do but glorifies God.) But what I’m realizing now is that it’s never cost me anything to worship God before. I’ve never had to give something up to worship him, I’ve just been singing songs.
So fast forward to me, sitting in the back of the bus today, with three of my squad mates. God was asking me to give something up. He was asking me to step into obedience to worship him. I saw the lion in front of me, and I was so, so afraid.
But I remembered Paul and Silas. I remembered that to receive more of who God is I needed to sacrifice something of myself.
So I stood up on a very full, very public bus, and asked the people in broken, google-translate Spanish if I could pray for them.
And I did.
This time, I saw the lion and I ran after it. I reacted faithfully through my fear. And though it might not mean anything to any of those people on the bus, I know that it meant something to my Father.
So this month in Argentina, if you ask me what I’ve been doing, I’ll tell you I’m chasing lions.
In peace,
Britt
