So as I continued my journey through Thailand with a lot on my heart and no voice from God, I pursued my own heart and what it meant to be me. It didn’t seem like much, what God was telling me to do, but I soon found out that this had been the hardest challenge yet I was to face.
Everyday seemed like a constant struggle. I woke up, the start of my day, only to ask myself question upon question. What does this look like through my own eyes, through God’s eyes, what is God teaching me? I didn’t understand it at first. There were so many questions, and very little answers I could approach them with. It was great at first, because they were deep questions I have never asked myself before, and it was like an adventure, exploring them for the first time. But then it got harder, the questions digging deeper, the pain and hard truth that came out of those questions. With that, these questions were constantly running through my head from when I woke up to when I laid my head on my pillow to sleep. I thought that I would never be able to find rest.
One day I made a major breakthrough. I was with two wonderful women of God upon this epic journey to find the most tantalizing of all Christmas specials I adored: a wonderful peppermint mocha from the wonderful world at Starbucks. We all sat down, drinks ordered, taking the time to just sit and bask in the air conditioned wonderland and to sit down to write a lot of my findings. The other two ladies were deep into their own books while I sat down to, once again, process.
As I was about to write, I got a question, once again, the dawning of a new outtake of a revelation already foretold. The question: Who are you? Well I didn’t know how exactly to respond to that question, but it continued to bang into my head, time and time again. Who are you?
So I made a list, thinking back to an earlier discussion with my teammate Matthew, and decided to write down all the things that make up me. This included what I liked, what I loved, what I dreamed about. I wrote a list of about twenty different things that included things like my passions for drumming, singing, my dreams for Africa, for children. But there was something wrong. Dead wrong. After I wrote down every one of those, I could pinpoint the time in my life where that was installed in me from someone else. These dreams, these loves, these things I convinced were mine, were really somebody else’s.
Who are you? I started to panic. I couldn’t believe it. I was faking everything. I couldn’t pinpoint a thing of my own liking. And then I asked one very dangerous question, one that I’m glad I asked, but the hardest one yet. What about my faith? Is that real, is that my own? Or am I just a fake, someone installing this into myself as well, just doing another thing that someone tells me to instead of asking myself if this is really me?
God made Himself very clear at this point to come into the conversation and to proceed give me a holy spirit slap in the face. No. This faith is mine to claim. Not only this belief, but this love, this passion, this burning desire for me to become so close to the Father, is mine and mine alone. The love that is between us will never separate, and I will hold onto that with my life. I am His son, and He is working in me in ways no one may ever understand.
After this, I took a good sigh of relief, and thinking to myself with a smile, “Well, at least I’ve got one thing right.”
