Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it.” And He was afraid and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.” ~ Genesis 28:16&17
What does connecting with God look like?
If you had asked me a month ago, I would have told you that it could be many different things. I felt that I could be pretty flexible and didn’t have too many expectations or “rules” for how to connect with God. On one hand that was true. I experienced connection with God in many different ways – through music, nature, dance, prayer, reading the Bible, journaling, fellowship with other believers, etc. However, I have begun to realize how many times I still put God in a box and don’t expect to hear His voice because of the circumstances.
Coming on the World Race has started to change that. God has surrounded me with people who are hungry for more of Him and situations that force me to rely more on Him. The more I press into who He is, the more I want to know Him. I have experienced in new ways just how present God is everywhere, all the time.
Here is a partial list of some of the times when I have connected with God while on the race:
– When we took Marleny into the quietest room and prayed for her to not be frightened by the storm during our first day at Los Gozosos. She then gathered all our hands into a pile and started praying for us. Every time she said “amen” we would pull our hands away but within a minute, she would gather them back up. This lasted for about an hour.
– Afternoon devotions at Los Gozosos with the children and workers where we would sing songs, share passages from the Bible and then close out the hour with prayer.
– Evening devotions with the kids that was the same format as earlier in the day but without all the workers
– The night Vincen started crying because he didn’t get a chance to read the Bible during devotions.
– When I sat with Rosie listening to worship music with her. It was the calmest I had ever seen her and she would often come up to me after that. On the last night when we were saying goodbye to the kids, she was supposed to already be in bed but I found her outside her bedroom. Once Shea and I said goodbye to her, she gave me a hug and then went to bed.
– Singing worship songs with my team while washing dishes
– Singing worship songs during meal times to help calm kids down.
– Singing How Great Is Our God as a team because Daniel had poked his head in the door of the room we were in and asked us to sing a song in English
– Singing with my team in a field of grass on the other side of the road from Los Gozosos without caring who might pass by. During the last song several of us were dancing.
– Sitting right outside the gate of Los Gozosos with my team praying over each member
– Very fruitful times of studying the Bible have occurred on chicken buses that were so crowded it would have been impossible for me to fall off the seat because I was pinned in by other bodies. Somehow in the middle of that I heard God clearly and saw things in the passages I was reading that I had never noticed before.
– While hiking Acatanango
– The night my team stood in a corner of a park and took turns picking a song and leading everyone else in a dance to it
– During debrief there was lots of down time that I used to dig into the Word and connect with others
– Worship at debrief when I danced without caring what the other people at the hostel might think
– While traveling from Guatemala to Nicaragua, my squad had an impromptu Bible study on 1 Peter 1 followed by a worship session while sitting on the side of the road because traffic was at a complete standstill for over two hours
– Singing with my squad on the bus on the way to Nicaragua and watching sunsets together.
– The morning we arrived in Nicaragua, we sang several worship songs after breakfast.
– On the ferry over to Ometepe where CICRN is.
– The first three days at CICRN before our ministry started so we had plenty of time for devotions and community.
– Singing worship songs and sharing Scripture and testimonies with the team from Maine that is also at CICRN this week
– Studying Psalm 2 with some of my squad mates. What was supposed to be quick turned into over an hour and left me with 1.5 pages of notes
