My faith is so tired, but I know that I can’t do anything without Him.
This has been my prayer over the last couple of weeks on the race.
This week we arrived in Durban, South Africa. Whoah. What a beaut. We had the chance to spend our month six debrief here in this place. I was excited to be here, but felt like I was going through the motions.
In my quiet time this week I really pressed in and asked the Lord to take away any spirit or feeling of apathy. Even through the prayer it’s hard to feel His presence, but I was persistant.
Today His love wrecked me more than I could have imagined. The Lord remained faithful, as He always does, and revealed His promise to me.
This morning we had our last day of debrief down by the beach. This week my squad leader, Madie, shared a teaching on surrender vs sacrifice. A way to symbolize the things we surrendered this week on the race we each received a stone. On that stone we wrote our words; mine read loneliness and family. After I wrote these words on the stone and my team prayed over me, you guessed it, I threw that stone as far as I could into the Indian Ocean.
This morning I surrendered loneliness. The way I felt distant from God. This morning I also surrendered my family to the Lord. He loves them immeasurably more than I ever could. It’s hard to be away from family, friends, and home. All I want to do is just give away some hugs and kisses to them, but I can’t. It often hurts a bit as I think about home and the people that I love there so dearly. I feel complete peace in knowing that they are His.
When I thought that this was all my heart needed this morning I was beautifully surprised as we went into our final worship session this evening. I was standing there in worship as Ian played the guitar I was suddenly asked by my brother Jonathan to come with him. I walk to the back of the room and I see chairs lined up with buckets of water sitting in front of them.
Then I realized what our brothers were doing. Just as Jesus did for his disciples they asked if they could wash our feet. The love that I felt in that moment was something I can’t explain with words. As tears ran down my face Jonathan prayed for me, washed my feet, and told me words that the Lord revealed to him through listening prayer.
“You are beloved and you are cherished.”
After this time I walked back to my chair completely overwhelmed by the love that our brothers showed to us. What is even more beautiful is that we serve a God who loves us even more than that. The Lord has remained faithful in His promises and answered big prayers this week during debrief.
We must continue to surrender and fight for our faith even when the enemy tries to shake us in all things.
