Hey everyone! Long time no see! I am officially in Thailand and moved into my ministry home for my last 2 months in Asia!!! We left our last ministry home on September 26th and spent a few days exploring Siem Reap and Angkor Wat (ANCIENT WONDER OF THE WORLD!!) and then took a decently long bus ride to Bangkok and spent about 2 hours walking through customs. We then had a few days of debrief in a hostel in Bangkok (with a bed and a shower with hot water!) We then loaded up on a bus (at 3:45am) and drove for about 11 hours into Chaing Mai and then took a little metal military caravan type taxi thing with our luggage strapped to the top in the rain for 3 hours to our ministry home.
So now that you are a little bit caught up heres a little synopsis of my month in Cambodia!
I have been trying to write this for quite a while now (like before i left cambodia) but i have just not been able to put this month into words. But I am going to try my best (and maybe add some to this as i process a lil more).
This month was HARD, like living on the foundations of life; food, water, shelter. This sounds absolutely awful, but hear me out: it was so beneficial for my growth.
One concept i never really thought about was actually LISTENING to God. I knew God listened to me and worked in my life, but I always viewed prayer as a voicemail system. I would say my prayer and “hit send” as i said amen and it would travel through the air and end up in His voicemail box; He would get to it when possible, hear my words, and that was it. But like, thats not it. That’s not how intimacy with the Lord works, that’s not how He made it to be. Think about it like this: would you consider your best friend to still be your best friend or your husband/wife to still be your husband/wife if the only way you ever communicated was through leaving each other voicemails? No thank you. If thats not suitable for earthly relationships what makes us think it’s suitable for a relationship with THE CREATOR IF THE UNIVERSE?!!???!?!?!? I kinda understood this concept a while ago but really never did anything about. I figured me knowing that God heard me and sent His Spirit to be in me was enough, but I kinda just knew that and did nothing about it. So this month came with alot of tears and frustration when I realized that I couldn’t hear the Lord speaking to me (or so i thought). I felt that everyone around me was this seasoned veteran who just spoke profound prophetic words all the time and i felt so discouraged, I even questioned if I was even good enough for God to speak to me. The truth is, He did speak to me, but I wasn’t listening or didn’t understand that it was Him. I am very straight forward and logical, so when I hear “God speaks to you” I picture the Lord literally speak to me with His mouth and His words, and while sometimes this is the case it isn’t always. Living the life I was last month, it gave me a lot of time to just sit in His presence and figure out what it actually meant to hear God. Luckily, I am surrounded by people who have massive amounts of wisdom and have been through this and are pouring into me and supporting me. So as it turns out, I have been hearing the Lord but I never truly knew it was Him; He speaks to me in a very physical way (such in like drawing me to certain scripture or putting thoughts in my head). Now that I can take a step back a look at my life from a birds eye view I see that it is SO obvious that the Lord did speak to me. There are so many decisions I have made in life that I would not have made on my own (as in living in Asia for 3 months). At training camp we did a prophecy circle where our team sits together and close our eyes and our leader picks someone and we all pray and listen to the Holy Spirit and let Him speak through us. THIS WAS SO SCARY TO ME. I had never done anything like this and I had it set in my brain that the Lord was not going to speak to me and I would have to sit here silently. Little did I know I would start talking almost immediately. Once we finished I was like “eh my words don’t carry any value”, but once again I was wrong; we all opened our eyes and our leader told us who it was and asked her if anything stood out to her or meant anything to her. Apparently the Lord was using me a lot in that moment because everything I said seemed to be meaning full to her. That was great but for some reason I still didn’t understand that the Lord was literally speaking to me because the words were for someone else, not me. Once again, God proved me wrong; the next time around our leader picked me. Everything that was said either immediately meant something to me or has become true in this past month. Okay God, sorry I doubted, I am ready to listen now. Just like most things, I am not a pro at hearing the Lord after the first time. I am still learning how to be confident in hearing Him, but at least now I know that He does speak to me 🙂
Okay so this ended up being a lot longer than I intended it to be so I will probably be posting more “what I learned in month one/so far”. Anyways, we do not have wifi where I am living for the next two months so blog posts and communication will be limited to off days when I can get a chance to ride into town, but know that I love yall and will bombard yall with blogs and stories and a bunch of rambling in TWO MONTHS!!!
I am going to end this blog with some prayer requests!
health for my team!! I am going to say it again because we need it desperately– HEALTH FOR MY TEAM
assurance for my future/ ability to lay it down at the Lord’s feet
overcoming language barriers
finishing strong and not becoming homesick
Thanks for reading my words, love yall 🙂
Tabitha
