March 14th, 2019
It is our first week in the lovely country of Guatemala. Our first of twelve weeks in Central America. So far, team Joy has explored Antigua, started ministry at Los Encinos, eaten amazing food, evangelized, and had a day of “activation.” I know activation sounds weird, I was a little taken back by that unfamiliar term. Activation, for Adventures in Missions Guatemala, is simply a morning of teaching and an afternoon of application. We have activation once a week, every Thursday.
This week was our first. I heard it was about identity, and like you may have noticed in my last blog, I have already been learning about it a lot. Honestly, I was NOT looking forward to the teaching because I figured that it would be mundane. I WAS WRONG. It brought a whole new light to what our identity truly is! I won’t go into detail because it is not completely relevant to the topic of this blog but I’ll share what God said to me when I sat down and listened to him. I want to speak this over you as well!!!
“Listen with intentionality, my love. Listen with open hands, my child. Who you are has no association with what you’ve done! Your identity does not rest in what you believe makes you, you. Your identity does not rely on your appearance, your achievements, your friendships, your relationships, or your “godliness.” YOUR IDENTITY HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH YOU! It’s all dependent on me, your Creator, Lover, Friend, Father, and Counselor. I am the only thing/one that dictates who you are and I proclaimed your true identity and when I chose to step down from heaven, become fully human, be rejected and humiliated, die on the cross, rise again, and give you my spirit. I declared who you are by my willingness and excited to pay everything I have and give my entire life just to be with you. Why? Because heaven wouldn’t be the same without you; I don’t want it without you, child. And if you did nothing to earn my love, which you didn’t, how can anything you do discredit it? The answer is: nothing you do CAN! You are forever in my love, you are forever in my heart. Step into this truth right here and now. You are not yourself, you are one with me. You are my creation, bonded with me, your creator.”
So after processing this message from God with my teammates, we were sent into the town of Antigua to share the message of our true identity with whomever we felt led to. We were testing out obedience to the Holy Spirit. Before leaving, we vision casted and I kept seeing us a Fat Cat (a coffee shop) talking with a woman our age. I doubted the vision, thinking my brain was just wiring an excuse to buy a dirty chai latte. As we walked by, it was completely empty so I threw the idea out the window. My team walked around praying for women begging on the streets, people selling avocados, single mothers, and looking for a tug to talk to someone. Our time was wrapping up, it was easily the fastest 2 hours of my life. As we made our way back to our hostel my teammate, Madeline, looked inside and stopped saying “Hey, Lil. I see a girl in Fat Cat. I think that is who God wants you to talk to her.” My head filled with doubt and hesitation. The first time I have practiced evangelism and approaching strangers to talk about Jesus was in ESwatini, and I have only spoken to people who barely speak English. This woman was (as I found out) from Canada, and for some reason the fact that she spoke perfect English upped my anxiety. I sat down across the room while waiting and praying for the courage to get up and go. I closed my eyes and asked to incision talking with her, because I hoped that would make this seem more reasonable to me. It began feeling less like a “missionary mindset” and more like a “this is how my day to day life should be mindset.” The idea of putting myself out there just to possibly be met with rejection terrified me, but also exhilarated me. I jumped up (as to avoid backing out) and walked across the shop.
“Hi, my name is Lillian! What’s your name?” I forced myself to calmly ask.
“Oh, hi. My name is __ .(keeping it secret because I did not ask if I could share her name here,.”
“Hi ___, nice to meet you. I know this sounds crazy, but God told me to come talk to you. Can I sit?” My mind and heart were racing fiercely.
“Yeah. Sure.” She, signals to the bench across from her kindly.
We begin talking about why we are in Guatemala. She said that she was here because she had a heart for the street dogs in Central America; their uncleanness and poor treatment “kept her up at night.” So she was working with a rescue center training dogs and cleaning them up. She said she has been here two weeks and has three more to go. I told her that I was on a mission trip for nine months and talked about the countries I have been to. After some small talk I decide to go full send and ask the question I was nervous to ask.
“Do you believe in Jesus, like do you have a faith? Or do you believe in anything? If you don’t mind me asking…” At this point, my voice was shaking and my hands were sweaty. You have no idea, my fear of rejection is something I am working on, but it is ever so real still.
With a gentle smile she chuckled, “No actually. I don’t have any beliefs. I am atheistic. Religion just isn’t for me.”
I immediately freaked out because I thought she would be mad at or annoyed that I came trying to talk about God. My anxiety made me want to apologize and run, my passionate desire to see her come to know the Lord made me want to fight (for her, against her belief), but the Holy Spirit in me told me to sit and be still. So I sat, so I was still. “Were you raised atheistic or did you later choose it?”
“Well, my mom only went to Catholic Church twice a year. That’s when I knew religion wasn’t for me.”
Something within me clicked and all my nerves dissipated. “Yeah, religion isn’t for me either!”
She immediately tilted her head over in confusion and asked, “So you believe in God but not religion? Interesting! I have never heard that before. What do you mean? Like why don’t you like religion?”
“I don’t like how religion focuses on the law before it focuses on love. I don’t like how religion teaches that you earn salvation by being a good person. I don’t like how religion makes God seem like a distant “deity” that is either micromanaging you or is asleep. I don’t like how there seems to be a lack of genuinosity and passion in religion. I believe in a relationship with the Maker, and I follow God, not a pastor, a church nor a list of manmade guidelines.” I looked up to see her listening with curiosity, so I continued. “I am on this earth to love. Not to force my rules and regulations on people. Sensitive topics that have given Christians a bad reputation like same-sex marriage, abortion, premarital sex, etr. are one of the reasons I disassociated myself with religion, along with he reasons I listed earlier. We are hear to speak truth and love, not to force my beliefs onto people in a spiteful and disgusted way. People who do that miss 1) the reason we are here and 2) the most important commandments = Love God and love people!”
“Yeah! Wow! I love your gentle and loving approach. I didn’t think that Christians thought this way! Was it hard to disassociate yourself with the church? And do you think the Bible is mostly symbolic?” Boom. She asked two questions I have not really sat down to intentionally thinking about.
“I disassociated myself with religion but not church. I actually still go to church because community is important. As for the Bible, I think some things are symbolic and some things are true life events. Some are both, but all of it is equally important and has timeless truth. However, I don’t spend all my time arguing and scratching my head about every story because it is technicalities. I think every story is important of course, yet, like one of my friends said “I look and decide what I would be willing to die for. I look for facts that I will base my faith on and the rest are technicalities that wouldn’t shake my faith if I found out I was wrong about them.” I decided the fact that Jesus died in my place and rose again is the only thing that I would die for, because that is the only thing that can save me!”
Tracking along, she says “I have never heard a Christian say this! I actually really like your approach. It is very intriguing. You have a very gentle and loving approach, which is refreshing.”
“Yes, forcing my beliefs into someone’s face won’t save them, it will only scare them away from me and push them away from God. I choose to speak truth with love and if they reject, that’s okay, I will still love them.”
“So, loving people as they are?”
“Exactly! That’s what we are called to do. I am not called to make people change. I am just an example of God’s love. Also, I can’t change people, only God can! I am just living in obedience and love – he does the rest.”
“This is very interesting to me. I really like your outlook on life and how when I told you that I am an atheist, you didn’t try to “fix” me. You just continued sitting with me and let me be who I am.”
Everything in me wished that she would come to know the Lord right then and there. Everything in me wanted to sit there as long as it took to convince her to change her mind about God. However, I knew it wasn’t what God wanted from me in that time and place. I knew that he called me to sit and simply be with her. I knew he called me to just have a conversation, not a debate, not a fight. Our conversation ended – a mutal understanding about living life in love rather than in rules and condemnation, an unspoken yet mature knowledge that we will agree to disagree, and a simple goodbye. That was it. No conversion, no miracle. I just had to walk in obedience. That’s not saying that there was no seed planted, because who knows? Maybe I opened her mind up to the idea of following God, or continued working in that direction? Maybe years down the road she will have another conversation and come to know the Lord? All I know is that I am not the “harvester” I am only the planter, the worker. I do what the Lord calls me to do and he is the one who sees it through. This lifts a huge burden off my shoulders and left me feeling encouraged rather than frustrated and discouraged.
As my team and I walked out of the coffee shop, all my nerves returned and I was still shaking. God gave me strength, courage and confidence for those twenty minutes to speak about him to her. Strength, courage and confidence I don’t naturally possess. Walking away, I was filled with a renewed sense of passion and excitement. I was unable to deny to amount of hope that bubbled within me. I was having continued visions of seeing her in heaven and a sense of peace. I understand that I may never see what that conversation did, and I may never see her come to the Lord; but I have a supernatural confidence that God is chasing after her and that I can be reunited with her in heaven! That is prayer, and I know that with God, all things are possible.
Please pray for her and for her to find salvation in God’s will and timing!
