I've been in the Dominican exactly one week and I would be lying if I didn't tell you that it has been hard. So much harder than I ever expected. There I go again with those expectations, thinking it would be a smooth and easy transition into community living and daily ministry, but boy was I wrong. Our first week in the DR was filled with little ministry to Dominicans and a lot of wrestling with the Lord. It's funny to me sometimes, how God knows exactly what we need and when. He knew that our team had things to work through, issues to be solved and things to be brought from darkness into the light before we were ready to dive into ministry on the Race. And He didn't let one thing slide out from under His love and grace through a week of intense conversations, misunderstandings, and restless hearts.
Last night my team had what we call "Listening Prayer", where we are intentional about listening to God more than talking to Him. It was during this time that chains were broken and we saw the fruit of an emotionally and spiritually labor-intensive week… God is SO faithful. During this listening time God gave me a vision… I don't usually hear from the Lord in visions, but rather words or Bible verses, but last night clear as day I saw a river of water rushing through a rusty gate, the hinges of the gate coming loose due to the extreme force and power of the water rushing through it. It was loud and crashing and if I tried hard enough I think I could have felt the mist coming off of the water. It was so powerful and spoke to my heart so boldly. It was our team, Team Ahava, Team "Love", and the gate was open and God's glory was bursting forth. It was a freedom we hadn't experienced yet as a family, and it was coming at full speed.
During listening prayer, my team also prayed about the church we are working with this month, specifically we asked the Lord to give us a direction to take the church service we were to lead this morning. During this time of praying for Pastor Navine and our church, the word "healing" kept coming into my head. And more than that, I saw a woman. A very, very old woman. Again, another picture. What in the world is God doing?! Let me be honest with you, I'm still not quite as comfortable with this word "healing" as I know God wants me to be and as my group shared various things we had gotten from our prayer time and as we planned the service for today, I purposely kept that scary word and vivid image of the old woman to myself. As I went to bed last night, it flooded through my mind, and as I went for my run around the track and ate my oatmeal for breakfast today, it was all I could think about. While waiting for Navine to pick us up, I casually asked two girls on my team to be praying about this "healing" word that was in my mind, that God would make it clear as to what it meant and after that I thought nothing of it…
The service this morning went great… One of my team members, Ken, gave an awesome message, we sang Spanish worship songs, silly American songs, and I could have broken a mirror with my rendition of Come Thou Fount, but God was glorified and we had a blast. =) After the service Pastor Navine asked us if we would be willing to do some evangelizing throughout the village before heading home and after a week of little ministry to the outside world, we were ecstatic to get into the village to meet people and share our faith with them. As Navine was locking up the church, my team gathered outside and again that darn "healing" word was flashing through my head. So this time, I casually mentioned to my entire team and our translator what I heard and saw the night before and asked them to just keep it in mind and prayer as we walked through the village. Not even two second later Navine was at our side, talking to Hector, our translator. Hector and Navine went back and forth, Hector grinning the entire time. "Plans have changed," he said. "Someone just told Navine about a woman in the other direction who is sick and he wants to go pray for her." My heart started thumping out of my chest! God is SO wicked cool! (Yes, I say the word "wicked" now. Someone on my team does, I think I've picked it up. hehe.)
So we walked a few minutes to the woman's house and when we got there, her daughter brought her from her bed and onto a chair in a small gathering room. This woman, Neela, was the oldest, frailest woman I have ever seen and was beyond a shadow of doubt the woman God showed me last night. Everything from her dress to the scarf on her head were the same. I could have fallen to my knees right there. Hector started translating and we found out that the woman has lost her normal hearing and is instead hearing demonic voices inside of her head. Heavy, heavy stuff. We listened to her story and found out that she has been battling this for quite some time, and we asked her if we could pray for her. Myself and my team member, Kate, kneeled on the dirt floor holding Neela's hand as our other team mates and Pastor Navine laid hands on us. For the next half an hour or more we spoke life and truth and Jesus' power into this woman. We rebuked the enemy's hold over her, we called God's love and light into her life. We sang freedom over her and prayed the darkness away, asking for full healing in Jesus' powerful name. We spoke God's worth and His grace into her and it was so powerful, so many people, God's army, fighting on the front lines for this woman. We are on the front lines!
The rest of the afternoon we were able to evangelize to various people in the village, God using each member of Team Ahava in a distinct and specific way. Ken spoke so much truth into people, Hector and I shared our testimonies at various times, Kate asked amazing questions and brought wisdom and insight and Alyssa, Hannah, and Joey were our prayer warriors for the afternoon. God's glory was flowing, absolutely flowing.
Tonight we had house-wide worship led by one of our squad leaders, Phillip. During worship, God spoke even more clearly to me about my flowing water and rusty gate vision…
"Through rusted gates, His glory is flooding through, breaking the hinges and pouring out, promising that His power will never cease. His love, His plans, His purpose will never be contained. Nothing can separate us from His love. Not trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword. For as it is written: 'For your sake we face death all day long; We are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.' No, in all these things WE ARE MORE THAN CONQUERORS through Him who loved us. For not death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, no anything else in all of creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Romans 8:35-29)"
We are more than conquerors. And nothing, not selfishness, confusion, frustration, misunderstanding, lack of love, disagreements, attacks from the enemy, limited vision or anything else that we experienced last week or will experience in the future can ever keep us from experiencing the Father's love, the Father's glory.
Oh, God is good. SO, so good. I forget this far too often.
