As I’m sitting on my bottom bunk on the second floor, strumming my guitar next to the open window, I look outside and think about my new life. My life that’s full of soccer games with Romanian children, visiting homes of people I’ve never met and telling them about Jesus, walking 10 minutes to the church where we worship everyday, and living with 40 other people in one house. This life is one that I’ve come to love so dearly through both the laughter and hardships.
One thing this new life has taught me is how important it is to let go of fear. Fear will hold you back from so much good if you allow it to. And let me tell you, never have I been so scared then when I realized that I’ll almost never know what my days hold until seconds before I’m doing it, and that I’m pretty much never going to be in control. But there’s so much freedom in simply going where the Lord is leading me even if I don’t know exactly what it’s going to look like. I’ve had to remind myself time and time again that as 1 John 4:18 says, “There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear.”
Any fear I may be feeling is not of God. The devil is so scared of what we can accomplish when we’re being led by the Holy Spirit, and he uses anything he can to keep us from leading others to Christ. One of his biggest tools is fear. Humans so easily become slaves to fear and let it control their lives. They fear the unknown, rejection, and being uncomfortable. But with God I’ve been realizing that new and unknown things are often my favorite experiences, that I don’t need to be accepted by this world, and that God calls us to step out of our comfort because that’s when we find freedom in Him.
During launch before we arrived in Romania, each world racer was given a key necklace with a word on it. These necklaces were each prayed for; that God would place each prophetic word in the hands of the person that it was meant for. The key I received had the word “BRAVE” on it. At first I thought to myself, “yeah sure I’m brave, I mean I’m going on a 9 month missions trip to 5 countries I’ve never been to.” But then thinking about it I realized that I’ve never been more scared in my entire life. Sometimes I get so overwhelmed at the thought of what I’ve thrown myself into. I mean literally almost everything is unknown, and I’m someone who hates to not be in control. As I looked at this key and ran my fingers along the word staring back at me I began to realize that I didn’t feel brave at all. There were times when I felt so overwhelmed by the thought of the year to come that all I could do was cry.
The night I received that key we had worship with all the different squads, and God revealed to me even more of why he gave me this key. We sang a few songs and then after one of them the woman on stage stopped and said something along the lines of, “I keep seeing the word FEAR in my head” and she went on to bring up the Bible verse 2 Timothy 1:7 which says, “For God has not given us a spirit of timidity, but of power, love, and self-control”. Now I have a little backstory for you regarding this verse. Back in high school during my sophomore year, I went on a Missions trip with my church. During all missions trips with the senior high at my church they do this thing called “the senior experience.” Basically the senior class prays over each underclassman and gives them a verse they feel God putting on there hearts for each individual. The verse I got was indeed 2 Timothy 1:7, and I’m not going to lie, I didn’t understand it at all at the time, but now I get it. He gave me that verse then, but it wasn’t actually for that time in my life. God weaved together all these incidences just to show me how brave I can be because of the spirit He has given me, and I don’t need to be afraid because darkness cannot exist with light.
I’m still learning everyday what being brave in Him looks like, and it may be filled with the unknown, with rejection, and with being uncomfortable, but none of that matters when I get to find hope and freedom through the Spirit God placed in me.
