Disclaimer: This is the accumulation of not writing a blog post in a month and a half (oopsie) and God doing some cool stuff in a series of events over the course of that month and a half.
In Zambia last month, my team did a one day fast together. Instead of spending time cooking and eating, we prayed for each other, we worshiped together and we did a Bible study together. We spend more time in the Word. We spent more time journaling. A couple people got artsy and started drawing, but I was too lazy for that/my drawing skills are seriously lacking.
Cooking for 7 people can tend to take a while. Cooking for 7 people when you you only have 2 pots and one burner to cook with takes for-freakin-ever. So that day I found myself with a ton of free time. Time to think about food. Time to pray. Time to think about how surprised I was that I wasn’t more hungry. Time to thank God that I wasn’t more hungry. Time to wish I was eating. Time to say “screw food, I’m happy with Jesus!” I even had a full out conversation about how I just missed the actual act of eating. It was only one day, people. One day….And I was pathetic. But it was also really awesome. God talked to me in some really cool ways and that day sparked a new hunger in me. He started to tell me how deep He wanted to take me and that some crazy things are going to happen in my life that are going to push me and stretch me and force me to trust in Him. One word kept popping up in my head: sanctification.
Fast forward a couple of weeks. I’m now in Livingston. A few of my squad mates have talked to me about how they decided to read through the Bible in 90 days. I’ve tried to do the “Bible in a Year” plan just to read the less popular books of the Bible (never have I ever read the book of Zephaniah) or just books that need to be revisited (which, let’s be real, the entire Bible always needs to be revisited). After talking to them about it, I thought to myself, “Ok Hannah, you can say ‘good for them’ and move on, or you can do this thing too”. So I did…a little unofficially, but I did, nonetheless. On March 4th at 6:30 am, I walked out on the deck at our house and after praying and journaling, I flipped open my Bible to Genesis 1 and started reading. Sidenote: I forgot how much cool stuff happens in Genesis. A fire was sparked inside of me. After just a week, I’m genuinely excited to sit there with my coffee cup reading. For some of you, that may not be a big deal, but for this chick, it’s a big deal.
I’ve struggled my entire life with seeing devotions as just a task to check off my list. I didn’t do them 90% of the time because it was like homework for me. And I HATE homework. Coming on the Race, I knew that was one thing I wanted to change. I wanted devotions to be something I don’t skip, like brushing my teeth. I wanted them to become something I craved instead of a check box. I wanted them to be something I couldn’t imagine not doing. I wanted them to be something I looked forward to. I remember my pastor saying that sometimes you just have to force yourself to do something even when you don’t want to, and that eventually, It would become something you wanted to do. It’s safe to say I have officially reached that point.
I say all of that to say, I’m hungry. I want more. I’m eating it up.
Fast forward again to last Sunday. At church, the pastor preaches on how Christians are “sent people” and how to decipher where God is sending you. Something I’ve…scratch that, everyone on J Squad has been thinking and praying about lately is what we’re going to do and where we’re going to go when we get home, so this is great. At the end of the sermon he goes, “Now we’re going to break up the World Race group and have about 3 people from the congregation pray and prophecy over each of them. If I’m being honest, prophecy is something I’ve always been kinda iffy on, but hey, I can roll with it. Here are some words I got from people:
“God wants you to be hungry for him.”
“Dive deeper.”
“He’ s teaching and preparing you for something big that’s going to happen.”
“What you’re learning right now is going to be used in the future.”
So….let’s see where this goes
