It’s month 8 and we are in Bulgaria for the month. However, ministry looks a little different than it has the last 7 months. This month is called an ATL month. ATL simply stands for, ‘Ask the Lord.’
We were given no host, no specific ministry and no specific place to live. We were given the city of Sofia and the instruction to follow wherever the Lord may lead us. That is all. For an entire month.
Every morning we give 30 minutes of our time and dedicate it to hearing from the Lord and each morning the Lord gives me insane visions that seem to me as totally unreadable such as an aquarium, a zebra and the Japanese flag. Obediently, I research things around the city that I can pursue that relate some how to those visions.
One day I walked to a store called ‘The Aquarium’ and on the way asked a sweet woman if she knew of a restroom around. She graciously invited my teammate and I into her home, fed us fresh strawberries and gave us the sweetest welcome back.
On another day, I followed my zebra vision to the Sofia Zoo and wrote encouraging notes and placed them around the park for the right people to find.
And today, I will follow my Japanese vision to the embassy a short walk from our apartment and hope that the Lord will interrupt me.
Though I am doing my best at walking in obedience to where I feel the Lord is calling me, I am genuinely struggling. I want nothing more than to step in tune with the Holy Spirit, to step out boldly when the Lord asks me to move and to take rest in His carefully crafted plan for this month and my life. However, I find myself frustrated. Every time I take a step in one direction, He leads me in another. He gives me a vision and I come back empty handed. When I feel as though I understand what He desires for my future, He picks me up off the ground and puts me down in a whole new scene and scenario and I can’t seem to keep up.
Fortunately, that is the beautiful thing about God. He is a mystery and I don’t need to ‘figure Him out.’ This month the Lord is stretching me. This month the Lord is stripping away the boundaries I had placed on my trust in Him and He is teaching me what it really means to walk by faith and not by sight.
