A headache, “It’s no big deal, I have the means to help it and if it doesn’t go away oh well I’ll just live through it.”
For food; Why pray or rely on other means when you have the ability to buy it and acquire it on your own?
So don’t bother praying. It’s a saying that so often shuts the door to God being the New Testament God He so often wants to portray in and something I did so often. Not praying for the little things, the details of my life because I thought they were insignificant. Especially in regards to what I thought was the ‘grand scheme of things.”
Yet I never realized how much it hurt me.
The more I did this, the more I grew into the idea that God wouldn’t move to action for the details of my life much less truly care for them. He didn’t become personal with me because I wasn’t willing to become personal with Him.
God was the Almighty and I was the little peasant needing to be careful what I approached the great master with. A very traditional, old fashion and even old testament way of witnessing and living in life regarding our Father.
Think, most often the closest friend you have knows the details of your life. They are someone you go to vent and blabber on to at times because you are safe there. They know you as a whole person. They see every side of you and most importantly your heart, which enables them to handle tough moments you go through or things you say with grace because they know your true self.
This is something I noticed I never did with God. I approached him and spoke to Him always as the God of the Old Testament. One I needed to compose myself for, approach with much time and ritual and keep things solely spiritual and kingdom minded when talking with Him…
Boring and exhausting right??
Talk about never being able to walk in freedom! For if you can’t walk or find or express freedom with God can you discover any of those any where else?!?
Through an occurrence of events I have come to realize and reform into a new mentality. Not two weeks into the race this new mentality started to emerge through the untying of so many costumes and desires I have put before God for so long. A realization that came from this unveiling was that I didn’t know God personally. I am unaware of His traits and characteristics that are so often expressed in Psalms and I rarely have delved into the unknown and unique step of knowing Him intimately.
At that time I was ready for change, ready to see God from a friend level and personally. I was ready to grow into each other the tough and lasting way and not something given to me, for what true and lasting friendship comes in a goodie bag?
Bits of joy started appearing that nudged me into feeling encouraged that He had heard me and responded by reaching back towards me.
Last night sealed the envelope of His first personal letter to me. It said He was aware of my ‘little things,” my earthly details, and not only that but He empathizes towards their importance in my life and the weight they hold regarding my mental and spiritual health. Not only does He see them, His letter said, but He will provide for those needs when given the opportunity.
This past weekend we were moved into a VERY nice hotel. Talk about a treat; running water (hot water) showers, AC, beds, beautiful lobby (with a Christmas tree already set up!) and a TV. Crazy luxury I know, but a fun change to the pace of things. Saturday was going to start early with a breakfast, provided by the hotel, before we headed off to help at the orphanage for a feeding program. Of which they also provided our lunch for us! Crazy blessings but this isn’t where God had the message for me, He was waiting for that evening. It was on the team’s heart to rely on God for providing us dinner. Started out great. Praying for the hands that brought it, thanking Him in advanced for seeing it to be and continuing on with our evening as if no biggy. Then time came where we were getting hungry and I wondered what we would do. We prayed again for the evening meal yet I couldn’t help but start thinking, “we have been provided two meals already today, why bother with being that needy person and provide for ourselves? We have the budget to get it. Why not just be autonomous and do it?” I was starting to develop this idea that God was looking on us with resentment being that in all that had been given to us through the past days we are holding out and asking for more from Him. I was literally at a point of going on my own and buying food with my personal money because I felt 1) so much guilt in doing it and 2) partially not agreeing with asking when we have the means (in hindsight, thinking of it as an insignificant matter of which God wouldn’t act on. Because God only acts in big, grandiose ways).
We decided to go walking in faith that evening to pick up the food of which God had planned for us. Not minutes after hitting the city streets and praying again we get a call from none other than our lovely host. “Hey!” He says, “What are y’all doing and have y’all eaten?” …… (insert blank expression face here)
You’re kidding me God, I think as a sly grin started to arise. This is actually happening! And not only did it happen but wow did God make it happen in style. The pastor picked us up at the nearest gas station and drove us to his daughter and son-in-law to be’s bachelorette party where we were treated with a full plate of food, bags of candy, cake and drinks. Yeah if the message isn’t driven in enough already haha.
Without easily ranting more let me continue on to the next story.
Flash back to when we were leaving Honduras’s capital Tegucigalpa to venture 3 hours North East to where we are now in Catacamas. We needed to find a bus station, somehow get a big enough taxi to fit all 7 of us with our life-size body bags to take us there and do it in such amount of time where we would arrive before nightfall. Which, mind you, happens at like 5pm here. We found a station and decided it would be best to travel there as a team, hope we arrive at a time where we can buy the next tickets out without having to wait too long and arrive as our host requested. We end up getting there at 12 and I look at the sign of bus departures to Catacamas to see that there is one leaving at 12:15, and the next wouldn’t be until 2:30. The line was HUGE, there would be no way we could check out in time yet I jumped in line anyway. Time ticking away I can finally see the counter and when greeting the man checked my watch to read 12:13. I asked for 7 tickets to Catacamas fully believing he would shrug me off saying we are to late (because forging through 7 passports to make tickets is no walk in the park) Nope, he went straight ahead and asked for all our passports, started stamping tickets and sent us on our way. To our surprise we jump on the bus and start sitting scattered, want to know why?? Because God blessed us with the last 7 tickets on that bus!! Mind you, if not gifted these we would be laying on all our possessions in a sketch bus station off a shady street for two plus hours only to be arriving to what was told to be another bad situation being nighttime.
God is good, especially when you let Him in. Moments like these have brought great happiness at the time seeing God work through them but it’s now after the fact and piecing them all together through God’s word and crafty hand lately that it has been built into a Joy and cornerstone lessons in my life.
The message for the month now is, let God see your insignificant details, let God see your current troubles, be vulnerable and don’t feel you need to show only your glorified side. For if I hide my insufficiency (of what I believe to not be of worth or good in me) how will I ever see Grace? How can I ever be given the message of Grace and Love if I continue to hold a composure of being above it? More than anything else, how can a relationship be grown and intimate when one person is never being fully honest, be it honesty towards himself or the other?
Want the second part to this months message? Insert ‘people’ or ‘friends’ or ‘leaders/mentors’ ‘loved ones’ or ‘WR teammates’ in the paragraph above where “God” is.
It hit me good and boy has there been sweet freedom from it since!
There is never such a freedom as where one is able to express their true self, their childish sides, their sad sides, their dislikable sides, their dreams and even counterintuitive thoughts.
Be Free.
