Some people have the gift of prophesy. I’ve not heard about this much prior to the Race, but our host this month is one of those people.
I knew from the first conversation that I had with her that I had a lot to learn from our host, Olivia, this month. She is a pastor’s wife, and a woman who truly hears the voice of God and uses it regularly in her ministry. When she feels that God has told her something or revealed something to her, she speaks it out with no hesitation. She made it clear, though, that it was not always this easy for her, and even now there are words that she struggles to speak because of doubt. Even just living with her and her family for a week, though, I can see how powerfully God is able to work through a person that has an ear tuned to hear His voice. This is something that I have been struggling with for a while, and one of the areas that I knew I wanted to grow in while on the Race this year. I know God has brought me here for a reason.
A few days ago, I had the opportunity to talk with her more in depth on this topic one-on-one, when she took me into town to get new glasses to replace the ones I broke in half at the beginning of the month. On the bus ride there, I asked her how she is able to differentiate God’s voice from her own thoughts, or even thoughts that might have come from the enemy or other sources. I asked this because in this area, that is my biggest struggle. I told her that I probably hear from God more than I think, but I dismiss a lot of it as being my own thoughts and not important. The main idea of her response was this: If God is speaking to you, He will confirm it, somehow. It is either already confirmed in Scripture and we need only seek it out, or it will be confirmed through other circumstances. She said in her years of practicing this, those circumstances are often just feelings of peace in her heart. That is the point I want to get to, eventually.
She told me a personal testimony to help illustrate her point, and give an example of what this has looked like for her in the past. Last year, while she was hosting another World Race team, God gave her the image of a prostitute whenever she looked at one of the girls on the team. Her immediate response was confusion as to why God would show her this, and what it could possibly mean. The first time she dismissed it, but the image was persistent. Eventually one evening, she asked all of the girls to share their testimonies with her, if they were comfortable. Sure enough, the girl in question shared that, before becoming a Christian, that was the life she was living. While still confused as to why God would show her something from this girl’s past, Olivia shared the vision with her anyway, and took her testimony as God’s confirmation.
That was not the end of the story, though. Fast forward a few months. Olivia stayed in touch with the girl even after the month they spent together. They had connected pretty well, and the girl even calls Olivia her spiritual mother. Olivia told me that, shortly after finishing the World Race, the girl had messaged her to tell her of the most recent development in her life – she would be moving to the Philippines to work long term with an organization that rescues women from the sex industry. After leaving Rwanda, and in the remaining months of her Race, she had developed a passion for this work and wanted to continue in it. This confirmed that the vision was not only God revealing something from the girl’s past, but also speaking prophetically over her future. Olivia deciding to share that vision with her was part of that prophesy being fulfilled, and God used her obedience in an incredible way.
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Several days before this conversation, on one of our first mornings at breakfast, Olivia asked us if it would be alright for all of us to walk down to her church after we finished eating for a time of intercession, even though it was supposed to be a free morning. We were all a bit tired and still adjusting to our new city, but we said yes anyway, because there was really no good reason not to. We spent about an hour in prayer over the church and the area that we would be ministering to, but when we thought we were getting ready to wrap it up and head back to the house, Olivia said that she first had some things the wanted to tell us.
She proceeded to spend over and hour prophesying over all seven of us, one at a time. She talked about the roles we should each be playing on our team, past hurts and mistakes that we had told her nothing about, and future plans that God had for us after the Race, again based on things that we had never discussed with her. It was wild, surreal, confusing, and encouraging all wrapped up in one, and I’m still piecing together exactly what it all means. This is what sparked my questions for her on the bus several days later – I wanted to know how she could confidently say the things that she did to people that she barely knew. I wanted what she had.
In talking with one of my teammates afterwards, on our walk back home, he admitted that he is inherently doubtful about things like this at first. He was the last one that Olivia spoke to, and he told me that while she was speaking to everyone else, he was praying that, when she got to him, she would say something about his past that she could not have known on her own. He wanted confirmation that whatever she was speaking was, in fact, coming from God. And he got it. One of the first things she said to him was that he had had a very close friend for many years that betrayed him, and that had been a large part of his journey. This was in reference to his long-term girlfriend that had cheated on him, but no one had told Olivia about any of that. She knew anyway.
I didn’t have anything quite that crazy in what she said to me, but it still confirmed a lot of ideas in my mind that I had been thinking about almost since the beginning of the Race. This comes in two parts, but both of these are rooted in the same issue that I have struggled with for years – confidence in the abilities that God has given me. The first part of what she told me was exactly that – I have a lot of potential that I am suppressing because I doubt my ability, and by default, God’s ability to work through me. She said that I hold back too much, that I need to be more willing to put myself out there for the sake of God’s kingdom, and to have more of a ‘Here I am, send me’ spirit. Keep in mind – we had not really done ministry yet. Most of the time we had been there, we had spent with her husband. She didn’t know us, yet. But everything she said was right. I even wrote a post about it way back in month two while I was in Ecuador. I obviously still have some things I need to work out.
The second part of what she told me had to do with what I should do after the Race, so I’ll give you a little background into my own plans and how they have been changing so you understand how well what she told me fits into all of it. Just a few months before leaving in January, I finished up my MBA program, with the intention of working in some sort of management position at an NGO like Compassion International, World Vision, or Samaritan’s Purse after I finished the Race. While this is still somewhat the case, over the last few months, I have started thinking about how I could incorporate photography into my career plans.
Since the beginning, I have unofficially become my team’s photographer, in charge of documenting all of the ministry and off-day adventures for everyone that doesn’t enjoy taking photos. Through that, my teammates and other people on the squad have told me on multiple occasions that my content was good enough that I could pursue it as more than a hobby once I got home. I had never thought about that before the Race, mostly just because I didn’t think I was that good. It goes back to what I wrote about back in Ecuador about being bad at accepting and leaning into the gifts that God has given me to use for His glory. In spite of all of those feelings of inadequacy, though, those words from my teammates were further solidified in my mind when the marketing department at Adventures in Missions reached out to me last month, asking my permission to use my photos on their website and for their advertising. While I don’t think photography itself will ever be a full-time pursuit, there are plenty of jobs – in the industry I was already going for – that I have started looking into where this skill could be used well.
I want to stress again that, at the time that Olivia was prophesying over my team, she really did not know us well. I don’t think she had even seen my camera at this point. The second part of what she told me, though, was that she saw an artist in my future. She said that whatever I pursued after I got home would have something to do with that, and that I would thrive as a leader wherever I ended up. There wasn’t any elaboration after that, but what she did say was enough to confirm in my mind what several other people had already spoken over me this year. When I search for job listings every once in a while, all of that is having an influence on the types of positions that I’m looking for, and there are quite a few options that look interesting at the same places I was searching before.
The overall lesson from all of this, though, is leaning into the voice of God, and making the effort on a daily basis to hear from Him. Olivia does that, and I have seen the fruit from that not only in my own life, but in the lives of my teammates as well. We were all affected on some level by the prophesy that she spoke over each one of us, and we were all encouraged by her faith and willingness to share it all with us, even though some of it was difficult for us to hear. I know that we all left wanting more of what she had. I know that I’m looking forward to learning from her for the rest of the month.
