I just want to share with you what God has been doing in my life this week, the week before launch and my journey on The World Race. I was in Denver, about 45 minutes before I was going to be dropped off at my friend's house when I decided to go to Passion Conference in Atlanta. As much as I wanted to stay and go snowboarding, boy am I glad that I listened to God's whispering for me to go to Passion.
Just to highlight the week, starting Monday: I had a vision for a girl, helped the homeless, saw 44,000 students passionately worship God, prayed, prophesied, and encouraged a very sweet/passionate girl, shared my testimony with 18+ students, cried out of joy for the generation that is rising up, saw a generation hungry for more, made 8 new family members, saw over 300 students come to Christ, raised $3,066,000 for freedom from slavery worldwide, heard Francis Chan speak about the importance of reading your Bible and heard encouraging testimonies from other brothers and sisters in Christ.
I want to share a few of the stories with you, so that you might be encouraged to seek out this amazing God that I serve.
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Freedom.
The theme this year at Passion was Freedom. Freedom for the oppressed and freedom from people in slavery. There are 27 million slaves worldwide and this breaks my heart. As we heard stories, it began to shift from statistics to people's faces. These are 27 million PEOPLE. That number is outrageous. There were girls that were sold into sex slavery at the age of 4, there were families working in a rice mill for their entire lives, there are people beaten and broken all over the world, including America, that aren't living a free life. To see a map go here: www.slaverymap.org or www.slaveryfootprint.org
As a group of young adults (ages 18-25) we were able to raise $2,666,000 to help prevent, rescue and renew people's lives who are or could be effected by slavery. I am not sure if you caught that, 44,000 students raised $2,666,000. This is my generation. This really encouraged a older couple that was there and they donated $500,000 on top of that to bring the total to $3,066,000 to help rescue people from slavery.
As we heard stories from Christians battling slavery it was amazing to see girls in their early 20's were leading the charge. This is encouraging, this is my generation. People are not statistics. Just imagine if it was your brother, sister, son or daughter that was in slavery. We need to rise up and do something now.
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Vision for a girl.
As we walked into the Georgia Dome for the first nights service, I had prayed that God would blow me away with his presence. He did just that. The worship time was so intense. From the moment I sat down in my chair I felt like I had something to say to someone. I knew that God had a word. I kept singing and worshiping, praying that Jesus would speak to me. Louie Giglio preached a powerful message about how God interrupted a funeral in Ephesians to raise the boy from the dead. Louie asked anyone to stand that felt like they were going to their funeral and needed to be raised from the dead. The girl next to me stood up, and I instantly knew that she was the one God wanted me to talk to. I was praying and seeking God's voice. I just heard God say "be still, listen." I wasn't giving God a chance to speak to me. He painted a picture in my mind. I saw the word BOLDNESS in gold letters with a black background. He wanted me to speak to her about boldness. I stood up with her and said, "I know you don't know who I am but God wants me to tell you that in this season of your life, He is going to call you to be bold. That the things He is about to tell you to do are going to require boldness." I described to her the image I was seeing and then went on to encourage her in the boldness that God was calling her into.
Lately, I have been spending more time just being still and listening for God's voice. He has been speaking.
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Reading the Word.
This is something that I have been sharing with my friends who are going on the Race with me. We need to memorize scripture, we need to be able to speak scripture into Satan's lies. Something that God put onto my heart here recently, that just keeps coming up more and more. Francis Chan spoke about it during his sermon on Tuesday night, and it was such a great message.
How do you know that you aren't being lied to when you are at church? Are you reading the Bible for yourself to search for answers or just trusting in what people tell you? Often in my life, I find myself searching the internet for the correct answers instead of the Bible. I am always searching for the best sermon series or the best book or article to read to explain my questions instead of opening up the Living Word. Francis Chan spoke about how he is constantly reading the Bible because the words are constantly speaking to him. This is how it should be in Christian life. Books, the internet, podcasts and sermons have their place, that is not what I am saying, I am saying that in order to get revelations from God we need to constantly be searching his Word. In order to have authority over Satan, we must know scripture.
Why can we read through Harry Potter, Hunger Games, Twilight, Lord of the Rings (or whatever series you choose) in record timing but we struggle to read words that are God breathed?
I want to challenge you to just pick up the Word. Read the New Testament or even the whole Bible. Just read and notice how your life changes.
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Rachel.
On the second night, as we were waiting for the service to start. I was talking to some people around me just sharing my testimony and what I was going to be doing for the next year. Where I had come since last year at Passion and the desires of my heart. My dad had been talking to two other people on his end of the row and he came down to me and said, "This girl down here wants you to pray for her."
I said, "Why me? … Are you serious?"
I see her getting out of her chair to come speak to me, and hesitantly I got out of my chair to go speak with her. I felt awkward, but God calls us to be awkward and he blesses us for trusting in Him. Her name was Rachel and I just spoke with her about what I was doing and I asked her what she was doing in her life. I told her about the visions I have received for other people at World Race training camp and how they have been true in people's lives. She said, "Can you do that for me?"
I told her that I am not special but I can pray for her.
I laid my hands on her, expecting God to work through me. As I was still in God's presence I knew that He did in fact have something to say to her and I just began to pray. After praying for a little bit with her I said, "I just see you sitting under a big tree."
She said, "What kind of tree?"
I said, "I am not sure maybe a fruit tree? Are you going to Africa?"
She looked at me with excitement, she said, "I am going to Africa in the summer!"
I have no idea why I asked her that but as she was able to share with me what she was going to be doing and that she wasn't going on a mission trip but that she was going with her work. During the week we had spoken about how Jesus uses interruptions to perform miracles. I knew that was what I needed to encourage her about. That her trip, even though it was for business, was going to be full of interruptions and that God was going to work through those moments to perform miracles using her. I really enjoyed speaking with Rachel, she had such an amazing spirit that just resonated from her and I could tell that God is going to use her to do great things.
Often we see interruptions as annoying or frustrating. Just remember that God might be using that opportunity to heal the sick or raise the dead.
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This blog could be 100 pages long from different experiences from this week or things that I have learned, so if you want to hear more email me at [email protected]
An amazing quote that I took away from the weekend was – "Light works best in the darkness."
I am so excited for what God has in store for me this year and through the World Race.
2012 just started, what have you been doing?
