World Race training camp has now come to an end. 10 days of community, missional focused living, and intimacy with the Lord. 10 days of learning, seeking, listening, healing, praying, worshipping, and growing. Our goal; activated in being and bringing the kingdom of God. I want to share with you something that the Holy Spirit shared with me during training camp. During those 10 days we focused on seeking the Spirit in different pathways. The pathway that I draw closest to the Lord is naturalist, meaning seeking and finding the Lord in nature.
Sitting on the ground with sweat soaking my dirty t-shirt I started praying. Asking the Lord to silence my voice, silence the world’s voice and destroy the enemy’s voice. My eyes became stuck to the trees in front of me, and I began to write. But it wasn’t the type of writing when you have to think about the next sentence or the thought of punctuation. It was the Holy Spirit speaking to me. I was throwing words onto the wrinkled pages in my journal, until my soul felt satisfied. Once my pen stopped scribbling I read what the Spirit had shared with me.
“The Lord sees me as a tree. I am planted in soil, it is my choice to decide what soil I will live and grow in. It could be rich, good soil that is healthy. Or it could be dry, sandy soil that withers me away. The Lord has rich, nutrient-filled soiling waiting for me, He has rain and sun to give to me freely, no price to pay because he paid the price already. With his soil of life I will thrive, I will grow. With his light I will portray his beauty, with his rain I will be saturated with His word. My roots will grow and grow, and they will continue to grow until the day I leave to be with Him. My branches will reach others and go beyond me, they will share the good news and build his kingdom. It is my choice, I choose the soil grow in.”
About an hour later someone came up to me and told me they liked my necklace, without thinking of the necklace that I was wearing I said “oh thanks!”. I then looked down at the necklace that I had been wearing everyday since it was given to me. It was a tree! One of my best friends had given me the necklace as a graduation gift with the journal I had been writing in. I flipped to the first page of the journal and read over the words she wrote to me. The encouraging words mentioned that she chose that certain necklace with a tree on it because she has seen growth in me. “Every time you wear this, remember who you are, and where you came from, and how far you’ve come.” This sentence, this simple necklace with a tree on it, and the spoken words the Spirit gave to me, all come together and now mean so much more to me. The Lord used not only the time in front of the trees to speak to me, but also the words my friend spoke over me a month ago, and the necklace she gave to me. I am the tree. I am his tree.
Daniel 4:10-12 Now these were the visions in my mind as I lay on my bed: I was looking, and behold, there was a tree in the midst of the earth and its height was great. ‘The tree grew large and became strong And its height reached to the sky, And it was visible to the end of the whole earth. ‘Its foliage was beautiful and its fruit abundant, And in it was food for all The beasts of the field found shade under it, And the birds of the sky dwelt in its branches, And all living creatures fed themselves from it.
Psalms 1:3 He will be like a tree firmly planted by streams of water, Which yields its fruit in its season And its leaf does not wither; And in whatever he does, he prospers
