For awhile now i’v been asking myself how do I write a blog about everything I’v seen and experienced these last few months? It seems impossible.
If I tried to give a detailed account of every mind blowing and life changing encounter I’v seen, I would be writing for days. So i’m not even going to try.
These last three months have been some of the hardest, but greatest months of my life. I have seen dozens of healing miracles, major diseases healed in front of my eyes, crippled hands restored, sight fixed, whole body pain gone, paralyzed legs completely restored, the handicapped get up and walk/jog, and many many more. just one of these is enough to write a long blog about. Each time God touched one of these people with his love through healing, it was an automatic testimony to everyone in that village and family, that only through the power of Jesus can the hopeless be healed. God wants healing, just read the bible especially the gospels, almost every page is Jesus healing someone. He didn’t tell us to pray for the sick, he told us to HEAL THE SICK.
The miracles are one thing, but even better are the lives i’v seen come to know Christ. In the DR I was blessed to experience a mother and daughter except Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior during a random house visit. That same month a young hopeless boy that was living in a cave surrounded by a trash dump, found the hope in Jesus and became my brother in Christ that day. In Haiti three young boys all excepted Jesus one night while us four were sitting around having a small discussion, the Holy Spirit turned the conversation into something powerful (one of them just got baptized last week). Just one of these souls saved is enough to make these 11 months worth it.
These awesome stories are a reality of life on the race when your listening and obeying the Holy Spirit, but another reality of the race is the darkness and spiritual warfare we experience almost daily. We go into places where you can literally feel the demonic, almost to the point of vomiting. Since the first week we have been getting attacked. The spiritual warfare is enough to write a small book on, but it has to be expected, especially when we are bringing the light of Jesus into places that have been gripped by darkness for hundreds of years. It takes a toll on you, the race isn’t all glamour. Ministering to Transvedite prostitutes at night isn’t “fun”. Seeing the hopelessness and pain in the young girl and boy prostitutes eyes while they are surrounded by old fat white men isn’t “fun”. Hearing the heart cries of young children that literally have nothing including the absent clothes on their bodies isn’t “fun”. Seeing eight abandoned young boys living in a cave in a dump isn’t “fun”. Waking up in the middle of the night to growling noises and your door shaking because of the demons on the other side of it, isn’t “fun”. Seeing your team and squad members tormented by demonic dreams nightly isn’t “fun”. In certain countries knowing the fact that almost every little girl you pick up and hug, will be or has been abused and raped, isn’t “fun”. Life on the race isn’t “fun”, it’s hard in ways I can’t even begin to express, but it’s good, it’s so good! Because Jesus is good.
I have experienced some amazing and beautiful things. I have also experienced some terrible and heartbreaking things. But the most amazing, and the most heartbreaking thing I have experienced so far is what The Lord has been doing in my life personally.
I came on the race on fire for The Lord, I thought I was in a good place and would just continually grow closer and closer to him each day. Before we launched I was thinking, “man if I am this on fire for The Lord now here at home, I can’t wait to see where I’m at after 11 months surrounded by others that are all on fire for The Lord too.” I went into it thinking I didn’t have any distractions or anything that would slow my growth down, I was in a good place. But a lot happened the first 3 months that I was not expecting. He humbled me. The first month there was something in my life that I slowly started focusing more of my time and energy on. It wasn’t a “bad” thing, but my priorities started shifting from my relationship with Jesus, to this other thing. Thats dangerous. Before month one God had been my top priority and love for a while, the majority of my thoughts, time, and heart was on Jesus. The best place to be. As month one went on, and my priorities started to shift even more, there was conflict and division that started to develop, things were happening that I couldn’t control and that frustrated me. I was trying to do things MY way. Month two it all hit the fan, that whole month was miserable for me, all of my joy was 100% gone, I hated it. I was trying to hold on to something that I wanted. I wanted it MY way, in MY timing, no matter what others said. This “thing” was a good thing, but it became a bad thing when I started making it a priority over God. By the end of the month it was all coming to a head, what control I had over it was gone. God spoke to me one long sleepless night, it was the night those three young boys came to Christ. He said to me something similar to “whats more important, what you saw tonight (young children finding Jesus as Their Lord and Savior) or your selfish wants and desires,” It hit me like a ton of bricks. I wasn’t trusting Jesus. I had considered myself someone that had a lot of faith, heck I truly believed if someone fell down dead in front of me God would and could raise them up from death. But I realized my faith was small, very small. I did’t trust him with this, I tried to hold onto it with my on strength and will, instead of trusting God with it. If I truly trust God, I have to trust him in all things, including this. That was the beginning of a beautiful new season in my life. The rest of that month was very difficult but I made it through and was off to Costa Rica. The first day in Costa Rica I still had no Joy, I was just trying to get by. I cried out to God and he told me to start asking him for 4 things, His supernatural joy, peace, strength, and trust in him. So each morning the first thing I did was ask him for those 4 things. Each day the first week I started to see my Joy grow. By the middle of the month my joy was back, and I could say for the first time this race that I truly trusted him with everything, including that specific thing I was holding on to. God literally worked a miracle in my life, in ways impossible to describe on here.
I am in month 4 now here in Honduras, and the transformation He has done in my life over the last month is nothing short of a miracle. My faith and trust in him is at an all time high, and my joy is the awesome joy of the Holy Spirit. God is a good, good father, and as long as I keep him above everything else in my life no matter what it is, he will keep blessing me, because I am his son. He poured out his love and blessings over me last month in a way only the God of the universe could. I wake up each morning and ask for those 4 things, and he spoke to me last month, practically saying “I want you to rely on me each and every day Daniel, don’t think you can make it through a day on your own strength, rely on me for everything.” That’s how I plan to live the rest of my life, in complete reliance on him, in ALL things. God took me through some deep and long valleys these last few months, harder than anything i’v experienced in a long while, but it was all worth it. I have learned to love him in a deep, deep way I that haven’t before. I have learned to trust him with ALL things, in a way that gives me perfect peace even in times when it seems impossible to have peace. God has been so good to me, he keeps loving me more and more each day. My father gives good gifts, I just have to daily forfeit my will, and trust him to take care of me.
