From door to door we went through the slum in Kitale, Kenya . House after house we sat in their little living rooms and each time I shared with them my testimony and the Gospel. Person after person they all prayed to receive Jesus as their savior. By the end of the week I had prayed with 20 people to give their lives to the Lord.
That next Sunday the pastor invited me up on stage to share my testimony with church but before he did he praised me and my ability to evangelize for a good ten minutes.
In the moment I was flattered. The praise of men can make you feel good about yourself. But upon replaying that moment in my head, I realized that something was missing. Something very important was missing from that replay.
Where was the glory to God?
I replayed those days I had spent evangelizing in the slum over and over in my head and I couldn’t remember one instance where I felt I had to rely on the Holy Spirit. I can remember all the words I said like a script with only slight variations. I started to see the formulas I had formed, a + b = c. I had gotten so comfortable with sharing my testimony and the Gospel that I no longer had to rely on the Holy Spirit to give me words. I thought back to those days in Tanzania when I would walk around with Johnson and stop and talk to random people with no agenda, no script, but fully relying on the Holy spirit to give me the words to say in the moment –and He always did.
“Your gifting attracts people to you, but the anointing attracts God to you.”
I had been operating out of my own strength; I felt like I had turned this gift that God has given me into a machine. That’s something I never wanted to do. I never wanted people to look at me and see my giftings or my talents, I wanted them to look at me and see Jesus. Like the story of Elijah and the prophets of Baal in 1 Kings : Elijah prays to the Lord and the Lord hears him and sends down fire from heaven to burn up the sacrifice and it says that when all the people saw this they fell prostrate and cried, “The Lord—He is God! The Lord—He is God!” No glory was given to Elijah, all glory was given to God.
I remember one time in Tanzania when we were walking I met a man who was a Muslim. I didn’t know what I was I going to say, but I knew the Holy Spirit wanted me to speak. So I opened my mouth and the words flowed out, I had shared the Gospel in a way I had never thought of myself. I knew it wasn’t me speaking, but the Holy Spirit speaking through me. I also remember the look on his face –the look of a man who was pierced through the heart. His only words, “I now believe that Jesus is God.”
A few days later we left Kenya early for unforeseen reasons, and my team headed to Jinja, Uganda where we stayed on the Nile and had planned to do freelance ministry until the rest of the squad met up a week later and headed off to our set up ministry contacts.
For that week in Jinja I didn’t want to open my mouth. I had no desire to do ministry. I didn’t want to continue operating in my own strength, I didn’t want steal any of the glory when it all belongs to God. I needed to figure out who was leading who. Was I leading or was I allowing the Holy Spirit to lead me?
Because of the Ebola outbreak in Uganda all the women of D Squad were halted in Kenya while the men went off to South Sudan. After a week of waiting in Uganda to find out if we were going to be rerouted, we were told the news that we were going to be staying in Kenya for month 8 as well. However, this time we weren’t in Kitale but in Nakuru with 13 other women from our squad. Because of the limbo It had been 2 weeks since I had done ministry. In those 2 weeks I did the only thing I knew to do, I went to the only person who has all the answers. I ran to Jesus. I dove deeper into the Word, I read a book called Crazy Love, and I prayed my heart out.
The other day we started ministry again. We went to a juvenile detention center in Nakuru and all 13 of us were crammed into a room with 75 teenagers and kids. I had made up my mind beforehand that I was still in the process of figuring out how to be led by the Holy Spirit so I wasn’t going to speak. In truth I was afraid. I was afraid I was going to fall back into a place of depending on myself. As I entered the room I felt the presence of the Holy Spirit in there so strong I had to fight back tears. I saw their stories written all over their faces, and then I felt the Holy Spirit welling up inside of me. I sat there heart pounding, hands shaking, feeling like I was going to burst. I stood up, grabbed my Bible, and I began to speak. I shared my testimony –I shared about the choices I had to make. I shared about how each one of them was created for a purpose, that they have a hope and a future. Scripture after scripture came to my mind and then I opened the Bible and began to speak about Paul’s conversion, how God intersected his life and gave him a purpose –to bring the Gospel to the gentiles. None of what I spoke that day was my own, not one word.
As we were leaving the Pastor that we are working with here came up to me and said,
“Thank you for your words, I saw the Holy Spirit come upon you.” And that was all he said.
“Not to us, O LORD, not to us but to your name be the glory…” Pslams 115:1
All photo credit goes to my lovely teammate Jo Linda Sala. My camera met with an untimely end a few weeks ago so i've resorted to stealing photos from my teammates. If you feel like blessing me with a new camera, let me know! 🙂
