WE’RE IN THAILAND!
Over the course of our month in Chiang Mai, Thailand, we’ve gotten to take part in a bunch of different ministries.
Monday-Wednesday was spend doing construction at a soon-to-be international Christian school. That looked like a lot of tearing down walls and shovelling dirt, and honestly it was the dream.
The rest of our week was “ATL” – Ask The Lord. This meant that in the morning we would get together as a team, study our Bibles, and pray and see where God wanted us that day. Essentially, it’s what real life with Jesus looks like! Here’s a little story of some things that happen when we let Papa plan out our day instead of ourselves.
Before we began the World Race our team established a couple of team norms. One of those team norms was that people would always come before the agenda. God is for the individual and so would it be for us.
On our first full day in Thailand our squad went to something called “Monk Chats”. Essentially, at one of the local Buddhist temples some of the monks will be hanging out, ready to talk about anything and everything! They practice English and we get a buddy to talk to – talk about win win!
As we were talking to our new monk-friend, Reem, we looked down at our watches and saw that it was 4:50. We were supposed to be on a bus leaving from the hostel at 5:00, and it was about a 15 minute walk there. Oops. We quickly finished our conversation and began speed walking back to the hostel to make it back in time for the busses. All of a sudden I realized that our teammate Ryan was no longer with us. I looked back and sure enough there he was talking to a woman with a sprained knee. Ryan LOVES praying for people with physical ailments. I swear he has hawkeyes – I wouldn’t have even noticed and Ryan would already be praying for them.
With that being said, we were already late but we’d also all agreed that people come before agenda, so that’s what happened. This lady was so sweet to us and explained that her knee hurt a lot when she put pressure specifically on her right leg. It especially hurt if she tried to walk up or down steps.
Ryan, being Ryan, asked if she would be willing to have him pray for her knee. She nodded yes and Ryan prayed a simple, short prayer that all pain would be gone and that her knee would function exactly as it should. He asked her if she would be willing to test it out, and hesitantly she agreed.
She nervously took a step down from the sidewalk to the curb, right knee first. Ryan was right there to catch her if she needed him, but she didn’t. She looked up at us in confusion and said “again”.
Once again, she stepped down from the curb to the road, right leg first. This time she looked up at us with a huge smile on her face! She did it! She had no pain in her knee!! She thanked us time after time after time and we all reassured her that it wasn’t us who healed her knee, but it was Jesus who loves her and just wants to show her that.
As we said goodbye and started speed walking away (we were still late), she yelled back to us “look!!” And climbed back up the steps right knee first, just to show off what her newly restored knee could do.
Friends, this whole interaction took no more than 90 seconds. If Ryan had chosen to simply keep running towards our hostel to get there on time instead of being obedient and stopping to pray for this woman, she would have gone to bed that night with her knee still in pain. But because he chose 90 seconds of obedience, this woman was showing off her perfectly working knee.
Sometimes in life we get so caught up in where we have to be next that we forget to listen for that little pull inside of us that tells us what we maybe should or shouldn’t do. I’m here to tell you that saying yes to it, even if it means you’ll be 90 seconds later than you could have been, just might result in being a life-changing 90 seconds for someone else. Choose to say yes, choose to put people before your agenda. Beautiful things come when you do.
