The first question was difficult to answer because I legit did not know what this year was going to look like, other than loving people. Broad, but good.
The second question was a bit easier for me, and my one answer was that I wanted to experience God in a new way. I’ve always know Jesus as my savior in my head, but didn’t start to walk in my own faith, understanding in my heart that Jesus wants to have a personal relationship with me until I started my senior year of university. I had a small taste at training camp as to what the race was going to look like – completely unpredictable, and filled with the Holy Spirit whom I didn’t truly meet until those sweaty nights in Tennessee.
Now it is month 11, and I am looking back on my answer to that question… and my goodness has it been surreal. Month 2 and 3 (Moldova and Nepal) I started to, for the first time in my life, recognize my God’s voice and hear what he was actually speaking to me. The other women on my team would have conversations with the Lord in their prayer journals, and I could never understand what that meant. Isn’t it just your hand channeling more words out of your own mind? God started to speak to me then through small “coincidences” – by lining things up to catch my attention. I would read Psalm 23 one morning, which was the topic of the bible study later that night. I was prophesied over before leaving for the race at Resurrection Fellowship, and the same words spoken over me were part of my pastor’s vision in Nepal – to open heavens. I started to feel an actual stir in my spirit… a nervous, butterfly sensation in my chest and belly and heart. Wow. It definitely took me by surprise and while being able to verbally process with my teammates what I was experiencing, they confirmed my spirit’s attentiveness to the Lord’s Spirit.
Month 4, India, I started to have these conversations in my prayer journal as well, and I knew then that it was not me saying and writing the responses to my heart’s cries. I didn’t have that vocabulary, sentence structure or fluency, and my own thoughts or words would initiate such an emotion and stir in my spirit. Was this for real? Some of my squadmates started to talk about their ‘secret place’ where Jesus took them. I wanted that – that intimacy and depth in my relationship – that secrecy that only Jesus and I knew about (Psalm 91). So I prayed and prayed and prayed, and as the Lord knows my heart better than I do, he took me to a place that only he and I go. Somewhere that makes my heart sing, and he spoke some of the most beautiful truth to me there – about my beauty, purity and worth – I will never ever forget it.
Throughout the rest of the race, I had to surrender the team that I was leading to Jesus, understanding after my hurt and tears that I cannot lead out of my own flesh, and that I need his guidance and strength always. The Lord then brought the team to a genuine place of joy and love for one another than could have only come from him. As I would walk from hut to hut, I waited for God to guide me to scriptures I should be sharing at each home visit to encourage his beloved children that need prayer for food and clean drinking water. Like Peter, what I did have, I gave – Jesus’ love, and I trust that that was more than enough, as Solomon wrote in Proverbs 3 that fearing God brings health to our bodies and nourishment to our bones. While preaching at different churches, I had to confess and proclaim who Jesus is and why I believe what I believe. In this, of course I was nervous to get up in front of others… I’m not a preacher… but there was something special about standing up in front of a congregation that is eagerly listening to the words that come out of your mouth, partly because you’re American, but mainly because you love Jesus too. I prayed each morning that the words I spoke would be channeled from the Lord’s heart to my lips and then to be planted like seeds in the hearts that he gathered together each day. “I already spoke about that”, I would think to myself, but would be convicted to get up in front of the congregation and let the Holy Spirit lead what I was sharing, and almost every time I allowed His movement, I sat down and thought to myself, “what did I even say?”. I have found that experiencing the Lord’s guidance and obeying when you feel the impulse is one of the most freeing feelings.
So now, as I am coming home to Grace Place in less than three weeks, remembering the heart filled hugs and smiles in the foyer those Sunday mornings before I left, I am in awe at the Lord’s goodness in that simple prayer to experience him in new ways this year and I cannot wait to come home and share his goodness with all of my brothers, sisters, and friends. God is so good… too good…. And I am forever in debt to his love for me.
