Month two, all squad month. It is a few days before we pack up everything we own, yet again, into a 55L backpack and travel halfway across the world to our next country. We are in Ghana, at our quaint guest house where many laughs, talks, and meals have occurred over the past few weeks. As we begin to wrap up the month, our two worship coordinators and leaders set aside a special night for the whole squad to come together and reflect on the month. Great, I thought. Sounds nice.
For me personally as a Christian, worship music has always been nice, but never really an experience where I have had a supernatural encounter with the Lord. Before the race, I always figured that the people at church raising their hands during the worship music just had a lot of questions. Who is going to answer them? Their hands must be getting tired, I thought.
I hate to admit it, but occasionally I find myself disregarding or doubting Jesus’ love for me. I have heard about how much he loves me in church a million times, but somehow because of my persistent pride or possibly my thick skull (or a combination of both), I still struggle with doubt and distrust from time to time. With that being said, I went into the worship session and I remember praying a very specific prayer that night. I asked God to reveal to me a new way to encounter His love. A prayer asking for a better understanding of how He views and loves me, to make it fresh again.
We began the night with the “Vapor” Meditation by The Liturgists, which I have been listening to at various times and it is just incredible and really puts human philosophy into perspective. If you haven’t listened to it, go do so now. Seriously, it’s that good.
After the meditation ended, the music began. People were spread out throughout the room, some were standing, some sitting, etc. I’m not sure why, but naturally I gravitated towards the floor and found myself laying back flat with my eyes closed. The music was nice, but to be completely honest everything felt normal. Nothing amazing was happening. In reality I was laying on a dirty floor in a dining hall in West Africa with my eyes closed. In retrospect now, that might have looked slightly strange to some people.
I’m not certain how to fully articulate what happened next, but I will try my best. The song “King Of My Heart” came on and the room shifted. If you don’t know the song, there is a part in the chorus where it reads:
“You are good, good, oh-ohh
You are good, good, oh-ohh
You are good, good, oh-oh-ohh
You are good, good, oh-oh”
Now, typically when I hear this song, I imagine myself singing these lyrics to God, makes sense right? God is good. So naturally, we sing those lyrics to Him. But as I was laying there with my eyes closed on the floor, I received a vision. I saw myself, scarred up, bruised, and broken from all the hurt I have gone through and all the hurt I have caused others in my life. I was curled up, on the ground, dirty and ashamed of the things I had done. Jesus was there, standing in front of me, wearing all white, covering me and saying “You are good”. Me? I thought this song was about Him? God was telling me right then and there that: “You may see yourself as bruised and tainted by your sin, but that is not how I see you. I view you through the person of Jesus, who is righteous and perfect and covers all of your sin.”
Less than 5 minutes after receiving this image, Alissa (our squad mentor) came up to me in the middle of worship and whispered to me that she had specifically received Psalm 103 for me. Starting in verse 10, she whispered the words to me:
“He does not treat us as our sins deserve
Or repay us according to our iniquities,
For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
So great is His love for those who fear Him;
As far as the east is from the west,
So far has he removed our transgressions from us”.
She read these verses with me as I laid there with my eyes closed, feeling a deep sense of peace in knowing that God had heard my prayer tonight.
I continued to lay there listening to the music but was unable to sing along to the songs. For the first time in a long time, I was simply still. Why is it so hard for me to forgive myself for the things that I have done when God so easily lays them down at the cross for me? This is a love that is unfathomable to human understanding. It doesn’t make sense. I feel so unworthy of this love. How is it possible that someone can forgive me of things I can’t seem to forgive myself of?
Whilst these thoughts were swarming around in my head, my teammate Jon physically got up from his chair from all the way across the room and walked over to me and instantly began to pray for me. Immediately, tears began to stream down my face. How did he know? He spoke so much life over me and reminded me that the Lord is with us in the midst of our darkness. He told me how much I am loved by our heavenly father, over and over again.
I was in complete awe that the Lord was literally answering a prayer right before my eyes that I had just prayed. Trying to grasp all that had happened, it wasn’t long before another teammate, Breier came over to me and began to pray for me. He told me that I popped into his head, and so did Matthew 7:7. It states:
“Ask and it will be given to you;
seek and you will find;
knock and the door will be opened to you”.
Clearly. Did I not just ask for a new encounter of His love? Alright God, you have my attention now. I was taken back by his immediate faithfulness. To be honest, I felt a little dumb because of how often I doubt Him. After what felt like no time at all, the worship music ended, and most of the squad headed to their rooms to get some sleep. I was not ready to move yet, so I stayed. Yet again, another squad mate came over and prayed over me. Sometime later, I finally got up from the floor and walked over to my open bible where I had originally began the night in a chair. Laid out on my bible was a cut out purple colored piece of paper with a bold black word written on it that read: “Powerful”. Unbeknownst to me, yet another squad mate had left that note for me at some point during the session.
Once more, I was in awe that even though the music had stopped, and most had gone to sleep for the night, the Holy Spirit was not done moving and prompting people around me to speak His truth and promises over me. The Lord literally used the people in the room as a vessel to declare His divine love for me. Others around me were prompted and reminded of scripture that may have not meant much to them in that moment, but that I personally needed to hear. For me, that had never happened before. This was entirely a new encounter. A new way of understanding His love.
I can’t stress enough how important this is, not only in my own walk, but also as a testimony that God speaks to us still, in the most tangible of ways if we ask and believe that He will. This night, the Lord met me right where I was at. I’m not referring a physical place on a dirty floor in Africa. He met me right where I was at: mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. He doesn’t judge us and he doesn’t condemn us for the things we condemn ourselves for. Time and time again, He continues to be faithful and meet me right where I am at. I affirm that He wants to do the same for you too, all you have to do is let Him. Tonight, I choose to see myself how Jesus sees me. I am good.
“You are good, good, oh-ohh
You are good, good, oh-ohh
You are good, good, oh-oh-ohh
You are good, good, oh-oh”
