Our God is a God of divine appointments: He knows exactly who we need when we need them.
We have been in Ecuador for about a week now, but it sure doesn’t feel like it. We have experienced so much in such a short amount of time! I can hardly believe just how much my team has grown in the power of the Holy Spirit. God can work incredibly quickly sometimes!
This month in ministry will look a little different every week. We will be partnering up with different pastors and churches in the area, aiding them in whichever ministry they partake in. Our schedule changes, and our hours are a little unpredictable, which is honestly how I like it. I love surprises in ministry because it greatly reflects (in my opinion) the true essence of life as we know it: we never know what will happen at any given moment in time. This month, I am learning what it really means to “go with the flow” of the Holy Spirit, trusting Him to guide my thought and actions and to give me the words necessary in the heat of the moment.
This week, we joined a local pastor in making house visits to the community in the area. We visited several people who were sick or going through some difficult times in their lives. Since we were strangers to them, a lot of our ministry time was just spent getting to know people and their stories. Everyone was so welcoming and willing to talk to us, and it was super refreshing to see! The hearts of the Ecuadorian people really are so beautiful and hospitable! You can easily see the heart of the Lord being around these people.
After getting to know them a little bit, we spent time seeking the Lord in prayer, inviting Him to speak into the moment. The first couple of times, we were a little unsure what we were hearing or seeing, so we kept kind of quiet at first. Our squad leader Brittany encouraged us to be bold and speak out what we were sensing in those moments, and we began to see the Lord show up in powerful ways!
The Lord started to speak to us through visions or words of encouragement for the people we were with. All of us shared different parts of our testimonies and sections of Scripture that spoke to us most in those moments. A few times, we prayed for healing in some people, and in other times we prayed for deliverance from demonic influences and oppression. Several people came to the Lord, and others experienced the Holy Spirit filling their hearts for the first time.
As the days went on, we all grew in confidence and started to fully walk in the unique gifts that the Lord had given us. When everyone walks in their own gifts, the body of Christ looks so beautiful. This was very evident in one of the last houses we visited (so far).
Before we entered the house, my team prayed that the Lord would speak to and through us, and I saw a really quick, blurry vision of a white tombstone shaped like a seven. I was SUPER confused about what that might mean. When we entered inside, I immediately felt that the lady was sick, so I naturally assumed the vision meant that the lady was going to die. But despite this, I believe the Lord told me to keep silent and meditate on it… And thank goodness He did because I was far from the truth.
One gift that everyone on my team really seems to walk in is “mercy”- the gift that allows us to love others much because we have been shown much love by the Father. This was super evident in this house. We started talking to her, and the conversation started to flow. My teammates spearheaded a lot of the it, asking her questions and getting to know her story. They spent some time in quiet meditation when they were not speaking, asking the Holy Spirit to help them discern what was going on in that moment. Several of my teammates received passages of Scripture from the Lord in this moment, and they spoke truth over the woman.
As for me, I was trying to make sense of what I saw outside. The woman told us she had abdominal surgery the week before, and the night before her operation, she had a vision of Jesus’ face. I, being a nurse who had seen more than a handful of post-operative complications, started thinking the worst. And that would make sense with my vision, no? She had surgery a week ago, which would explain the number seven. And the tombstone? Surely that means she was going to die. I looked at her face and then at the dressing from her abdominal incision. Strange… She didn’t look like someone who was going to die. She was on the mend.
Suddenly, the interpretation of my vision started to flood my mind. It took a minute for my mind to stop spinning, but when it did, it suddenly made sense. We see the number seven MANY times in the Bible, usually representing “completion” or “spiritual perfection” (seven days in the week, we should forgive “seventy times seven” times, etc). So my “tombstone seven” didn’t mean she was going to die but that whatever was in her that needed to die would die COMPLETELY. I began to try to articulate this all to her. It’s all kind of a blur because the Holy Spirit was really taking over, but here’s the gist:
I started by saying that the Lord wanted to speak through her surgical experience to teach her something about her walk with Him. She had been experiencing pain long before her surgery, and she was still having a good amount of post-op pain. I told her that as part of the healing process from surgery, you experience worse pain immediately after. After a time, you begin to feel better, and soon you feel better than you did before the surgery. As you heal, it is also important to keep up with dressing changes, and eventually letting the wound heal uncovered. Where I worked before this race, we called this “letting the wound BREATHE” (I see you, Lord! Bringing my prophetic key back into this, are we?). You can’t just leave a wound alone sometimes. It has to be cleaned out and recovered. You may need to rely on other people such as nurses to help you with the dressing changes until you learn how to do them on your own. You trust them to do what they need to do, even if it hurts in the process.
The same is true for her walk with Jesus. Before her Jesus encounter (and thus before her surgery), she had something in her life that was making her sick. Jesus, our Great Physician, performs operations on us in order to completely kill and remove whatever is making us sick. The Lord was saying that whatever it was in her life needed to die, and Jesus was going to make sure it died completely. The pain you experience after your spiritual “operation” may be way worse than before the surgery, but once the healing process is complete, you feel better than before (and sometimes keep a scar with a cool story behind it). As for the incision, we need the help of other people (in this case, our brothers and sisters in Christ) to “change the dressing” on our wounds, allowing the wound to fully breathe and fully heal. Sure, it is painful sometimes, but it is so worth it in the end!
Furthermore, I told her that the basis of all of this comes from what we see in Scripture concerning Jesus’ death and resurrection. God works through death to bring resurrection to new life. Jesus had to die so that we could live. So after the death of her spiritual sickness (paralleling the death of her physical sickness), she has the promise of new life. God is a God who brings HEALING, not death! He was never saying she was going to die! He has proved it before and He will prove it again. Death is not the end but the BEGINNING of life.
The time we spent with her was so valuable- we could all see it! And we were able to speak more truths over her after that because of the encouragement she received from that word. We rebuked the spirit of “religion” and invited her to accept God’s invitation into a relationship with Him (which she did). We prayed for the Lord to fill her heart with His Holy Spirit and grant her more of His peace. The Lord brought us there to encourage her, but by the time we left, I wasn’t sure who was more encouraged: her or me. Always remember to follow the Lord’s direction and His timing. You may not know where exactly He is leading you, but He will ALWAYS lead you to the person who needs your witness the most… And He will build up your own faith in the process as well!
In all things, be blessed!
AG
