In less than a week our bags will be packed and we will be in Thailand for month 3 of the Race. As I sat in reflection of everything I’ve learned this month in Nepal, one recurring word kept coming to mind – obedience.
Obedience isn’t fun. It’s submitting yourself to do things you don’t want to do, creating space to be uncomfortable and mostly to wait for the blessing of those uncomfortable moments to come to fruition. Sometimes not seeing any fruit at all. God calls us all to walk in obedience, but this isn’t so he can take us captive, but rather that we can live in freedom and live in the fullness of the promises He has for us.
“But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it—not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it—they will be blessed in what they do.” – James 1:25
I hate to admit it, but I’m more disobedient to the Lord than obedient. There are times when He clearly asks me to do something and I look at Him and say, I hear you, God.. but no. It’s terrible, I know. I’m a missionary, and I feel a sense of responsibility to live to a higher calling and lead others well. But sometimes, it’s hard!! Sometimes my flesh takes over and I want to pout in the corner and just say, no God! Use somebody else!
I know I’m not alone.
I wanted this month to be different. I prayed at the beginning of the month and God gave me the word contentment and I thought, Awesome! I can just chill out this month, God will provide and just bless me. Wrong. It turns out that God was calling me much higher. He wanted me to walk in obedience and through my, yes God he would fill my heart with peace and contentment. There are so many instances this month where God has shown me immediate blessing from my obedience and I don’t want to forget!
God called me to share my testimony
Trust me, this one was not an excited Yes, God moment. But a how do I get out of it moment. I am many things, but open and vulnerable to others is not one of them. If it were up to me I never would have gone down that road. I sat in the stairwell of our house the night before posting it, literally crying and having a minor panic attack with my teammate, Heather. I didn’t want people knowing all of my crap. I didn’t want people to look at me differently, talk to me differently, or even be nice to me and praise me for what I wrote. I didn’t want any attention. I literally had to take the lens off of myself and say, Quit being so prideful, Juliana. This story isn’t about you anyway. It’s about God. God should be getting the attention and if you are – then you’re doing it wrong. Ouch.
So, as you all know I posted it. And I was met immediately with an overwhelming outpour of support and love. People from all over were sending me messages, telling me how I’ve helped them, how they understand cutting and abuse better now because of my words. I’ve been able to begin mending other relationships I didn’t know were hurting. God brought so much to the light and immediately sustained me and gave me hope. I’m still wrestling with a lot of the aftermath of it all. Sitting alone for a week, digging up past emotion and then spilling it out to the world oddly has a lot of mental side effects. But I know that my God will continue to give me strength and help mend my soul to what has been a burden for so long, and I will continue to walk in freedom.
God called me to a brothel
This is a story in it of itself, and I will be sharing it in a separate post, but one of our ministries last week was going to the cabin restaurants (brothel) to meet with the women working there to try to establish friendships and offer them a way out of the business. Heavy stuff. Because there were so many of us going, they didn’t need all of us to go inside the restaurant and decided to split the group in half. Half would go minister to the women, and the second half would intercede, (sit in a coffee shop and pray on behalf of our squamates who were inside).
Me being selfish, (I’m praying about it, okay) I wanted to go inside! I didn’t want to sit outside and pray about it. Not that there isn’t power in intercession, there is, I just wanted to be in the heart of it. To see these women and get to be part of a ministry that is so unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. I wanted to see if I had a passion for the ministry and if I did, then maybe partnering with larger organizations in the future.
Immediately, God told me no. Before I even started my prayer of which group I should go to, I knew I needed to intercede. I was so mad! I roughly prayed, Fine! But if I do this God, please give me an opportunity to go into a cabin restaurant at some point. Please let me see your people in this way and see if I have a heart to do ministry like this in the future. I finished my prayer and lifted my head and the leader of our group told us that something weird happened during her prayer and she thinks that now we should go to two cabin restaurants to give everyone an opportunity to minister to the women.
What? OKAY, GOD! You’re so great!
I abandoned my selfishness of what I wanted to do, and opted to do something I knew God was calling me to do, and he immediately blessed my prayer! I was so happy! And yes, I went into the cabin restaurant that day and it was heavy. I’ve never experienced anything like that. Stay tuned for a blog with more detail about that experience.
God called me to preach a sermon
HAHA! Right? I know. I KNOW. I am the least qualified pastor there ever was or will be. I may have been a Christian all my life, but I still reference that I’m in the “infancy” stage of my beliefs. I just don’t know scripture all that well. I hate speaking in front of people – you know if you’ve read my posts. And just NO GOD I won’t do it!
That weekend was adventure weekend and I was going to be heading to Pohkara, this stunning mountain town in Nepal where I could go white water rafting and hiking. Well, mid-week our squad leader said some of us needed to stay behind to lead church services on Saturday.
I felt my arm go into the air.. was that really my arm being raised? I felt my mouth move I want to preach the sermon. Wait I want to preach the sermon? Who’s talking? This is surely not me! And sure enough I was signed up to give a sermon two days from then. Great. Well Saturday morning rolled around and I gave the last sermon of the three services. I preached on Matthew 4 and the temptation of Jesus. I definitely spoke too quickly, I missed about two pages of notes and I’m pretty sure I blacked out halfway through, but I did it! There was, once again, immediate gratification in my obedience. People supported me and affirmed me that I’m a great public speaker and that I gave an amazing sermon. How crazy!
God called me to share the gospel
I wrote about this whole experience in a previous blog and I’ll be writing another one to update you on the story. But I preached the gospel (first time) to a man Rab and his uncle! Since then, we’ve seen them three more times and hopefully he is going to come visit us this week before we leave for Thailand. This is probably the most fruitful of my “yeses” to God. I have loved getting to spend time with Rab and talk with him, learning about Nepali culture and what he believes. I truly believe he is my brother now and I’m so excited to share more of that story in a later post!
God has been blessing me so much this month, even through the pain, even though it’s been really really challenging. I feel so full and free! I have a feeling that God is answering my prayers immediately because He is showing me that He can and that He cares, but I know He won’t always answer right away. I feel God is about to lead me into a season of quietness, where He doesn’t answer me, but He will still call me to the same level of obedience. I’m really scared of that. I keep reading stories of Abraham and his faithfulness to God and I just know that God is calling me to have faith like that. In my selfishness and anger I’m already shouting out, No God! I mean Abraham and Sarah had to wait 25 years before God answered His promise to them… twenty-five years! I’m being dramatic. I just don’t want to wait that long before some of these prayers are answered.
The fact is, I may not have to wait literally 25 years for the fruition of His promises, but I have to be okay knowing that if it takes that long, I have to continue in my obedience and have faith that I am deeply loved and deeply cared for by a great Father that I can trust.
So like I said, obedience isn’t always fun, but it is always fruitful. I am really working on abandoning my own plans for my life and stepping out fully trusting that God’s plan is far better than mine. Since truly declaring and believing that, God has shown up in great ways in my life. I may not always understand, but I will always trust that He will fulfill His promises to me – and I think that’s a pretty great way to live life.
