Hey Ya’ll!
Here’s my crazy 24 hour God glory packed experience straight from my prayer journal. Enjoii.
Sorry it’s long – it was a wild day 🙂
I had the wildest 24 hours of my world race experience. The most mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually spent I think I’ve ever been.
God gets the credit he repeatedly answered prayers, filled me up so I could pour right out, and carried me when I was exhausted. It is the most I’ve ever had to rely on Jesus consistently throughout a whole day. I was trying just to function but God had way more than functioning on the schedule, he put me on overdrive all day. Trying to stay fresh, stay fueled, stay wise, stay humble, stay joyful and stay me.
Let’s roll back time.
Pre-January 27:
Spent 730am to 430pm beach bumming it. After chilling, surfing, sleeping and skim boarding I was not only very tired but brick red. Crazy night too, leadership dinner with my OWN pizza! Then the men watched all our created home dance videos (details left out for the well being of 50% of the reading audience, The Legend Lives!). Laughed so hard, Ate way too much ice cream. By 12:30 am I was pooped, good day, headphones in – bed.
12:34-1:30am:
God had different plans. I got an email explaining unexpected team changes that involved us gaining my buddy Jon, thumbs up, and losing a Team Jacob family member Shanda, two thumbs down. It’s a part of the race, part f team leading, but so tough. So instead of getting sleep, I got angry. Texted my prayer warriors, they got on the prayer train and warned me not to act out of emotions. Too late. I had already sent a harsh, rash email back to the leadership explaining how upset I was. I wanted to keep our core together. Stress, angered and heart broken I tried to fall asleep.
5:45am:
I promised Andrew I’d wake up to watch the sunrise. I really didn’t want to, but pushed through the tired, angry feelings. It was BEAUTIFUL! We also tried to swim across to an island, but the rising tide smashing on the rocks smashed our idea.
6:30am:
Met up with Kate and Ashley worshiping on the beach. I met with God. Tried half-heartedly to dance in the sunrise. Things that normally seemed so easy became so hard because of my heart. After 15 min of praying about Shanda I realized I didn’t even ask what God thought of it. Unfortunately it turned out he’s a fan. He sees in full, I see In part. It was a team change he was behind. More on that later. I felt so much better, peace. Have the reigns to Jesus. Especially after Kate, unaware of my situation, prayed over me. Thank you Kate. God even opened a door to talk to Ashley all about my dad story and rocking life. How? A Fathers love.
8:45am:
Breakfast, praise God. Then off to team Jacob debrief. I got to spend the first 20 min talking to leaders myself. I cried, laughed and felt so lifted up after walking through some team issues and the team changes. Apologized for the harsh email. Learned that even though I’m passionate, I don’t need to be rash. Explained that God had done a great work in my heart that morning. I felt so honored as they encouraged me as Team Jacob’s leader. Gods favor unloaded a truckload of compliments. I cried and smiled more because I loved these guys so much, and I was in awe seeing what God was doing and how it affected everyone else. Jesus is running this team, I’m just along for the ride. Gods glory showed up and showed off. I try to say this with the most humble heart, I could feel how proud God was of me.
9:10am:
Team Jacob rolls in. An incredible display of love, joy, health, realness and humility. It was unbelievable. I cried more. I honestly have barely cried at all on the race, but I cried enough today for the whole race. It was super hard to see Shanda there blowing it up for Jesus, so recently freed and healthy, now a new person, but sadly knowing she was leaving our team. Jesus was in the building and on our team, it felt like a chunk of heaven, his presence SO thick. It was everything I prayed and DREAMED of with God about this team as a team leader. Everyone experiencing real freedom, everyone learning how to enjoy God :)! Everyone a son or daughter of the King. The upper leadership showered us with truth and blessings, we also learned lot on how we can be even smoother, to serve each other and get closer to God. Christ was tangible in that place, I was overwhelmed.
11am:
I pulled Shanda aside and had to tell her about the changes. About how I believed God was behind it. I told her who she was. That being changed was not because of an issue, but because of other teams NEEDED her, we were sending her as Paul sent Timothy. Taking what she has learned and what God has done in her and gifting it onto others now. Disciples cycles, My love and the teams love for her is so strong we just hugged and cried more. Gosh my head hurt so bad from crying all day. I’m even tearing up as I wrote this, it was the most heartbreaking thing I’ve had to do on the race.
Noon-2pm:
Hitting my exhaustion wall. Leadership lunch. Pushing in. Up to this point God had really been allowing me to pour out onto others, but he cranked it up another level. Questions were asked and at times it seemed like all eyes turned to me, wondering how our team got so healthy. I again don’t want this to come off as arrogant, but humble I’m so pumped and in awe that God would want to use our team to point others, specifically other S SQUAD members to him. It was exactly what I had been praying for, something I talk to my team about often. Be positive and make Jesus famous with how you talk and act, our team will shine for the kingdom. It happened before my eyes that day over and over again. All the answers were similar, Team Jacob chases Jesus first and always. We also insist of having fun while doing it. Love rampant and truth guiding us out of the world’s layers of lies. What’s more enjoyable and simple than God having a loving relationship with us while we become more like him. We let God’s joy and laughter ooze out of us onto others. That’s why Jesus died so we could live abundantly in him. That’s what Team Jacob is doing, and will continue to do. Getting recognition doesn’t mean we’ve made it, but just that we’re headed the right direction. Amen. Now we get to humbly lead the way, pointing others toward life in Christ.
2-4pm:
MANTIME. We talked a lot about purity and becoming more men of God. We have such an opportunity to lead our teams our sisters and each other just by taking what Jesus has laid out for us as men of God. It was great to get refocused. Just when we were about finished, It was asked how everyone’s intimacy with God was. An hour and a half later we heard the most real, best answers from men. Refocused and ready to rock :).
4:30-630pm:
You’d think it would stop. Nope. Moving past the 10th straight hour of emotionally pouring out onto ppl and getting refilled for the next thing. We had a team meeting. Shanda wanted a chance for closure and to say loving goodbyes. It was so emotional. I cried again. Everyone did. Lots. Jesus was moving so much, Shanda individually met with each team member, apologized and forgave offenses. It was so unbelievably Godly. I felt like I was WATCHING Jesus. I could almost taste the presence of the Holy Spirit in the room. If Shanda was healed like this ONLY to be great for a new team – perfect. If this all happened just so I could see this new picture of love – perfect. Because I can honestly say my perspective has now changed. I can no longer look at Shanda without wanting to make her smile or atleast hug her. She’s now truly my sister. We charged Shanda, praying 2 Timothy 1 over her, prayed over her and sent her out to bring the real Jesus she had experienced to another team. #teamjacobdiscipleship
7pm:
Session. I was so so shot by this point. I slept/rested in worship. I kept feeling like God was saying that he had more for me that night yet. I kept thinking how is that possible I’m so shot. So I prayed for his energy. This day ha been the most I had to rely on God to make it through and still minister well. Natalie killed her talk. But I don’t even remember hat it was about now bc I was too tired to store it in long term memory. Then Hope came and talked about deliverance and casting out demons. I believed in it but was still in a very much observing state. We prayed to test the spirits. It sounds wild and nuts but basically it’s just a few simple questions to determine if anything is keeping you from fully believing and living in Jesus. I didn’t have any which was great 🙂 but God kept telling me to pray for another teammate privately. Sure enough I looked at this teammate and they have me the head bob that said “Yes, Me. Let’s pray now. I need it.” So we went outside with our prayer coaches and prayed over her. I was really there just to bring life, light and be an extra set of hands. It was great. Like an hour later we had walked through praying off like 20 different spirits or versions of spirits. Again sounds wild, but I just remember smiling the whole time, thinking “this is it? This is what everyone get worked up about? It’s so light, easy and peaceful. And the demons are so weak :)” My squadmate was so much lighter afterwards.
Sometime later:
We finished. Did a great talent show. Kate, Zach and I played free falling on the guitar as the whole squad that wasn’t being currently prayed for sang along. We announced the minor team changes and I thought we’d e finished…Ross came up to me in the most giddy ecstatic Ross face told me how pumped he was about this stuff. I was so pumped for him but confused, maybe he was talking about the guys planning on going swimming. He wasn’t another guy on our aqua had needed a lot of prayer and Ross had been battling and prying over him for over an hour. All the men went upstairs and laid hands on him. It was awesome we threw more demons out. This time the demons spoke back and forth with this guy and us men. We kept at it and an hour later we were finally finished. Jesus had set so many people free. Crazy night.
11:15pm:
Kate and I finally got to Skype with Haleigh. We had been trying to for so many days an it finally worked. But it got cut short because of circumstances as the guys making me go swim. I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to swim LESS in my whole life ha. But I went and we had a ball (I will leave out the rest of the details for the betterment of 50% of the reading audience) It was freeing and bonding 🙂
1:30am:
Finally bedtime. I rolled into bed all salty, more exhausted than I had been all race.
3:45am:
Wake up! Off to India! Nuts.
Sorry for the length of this blog. I felt like I could not leave out any of the events – enjoyable, teachable, new, interesting, God moving, emotional, pleasant, tough – they were all used to make me rely on and thank God.
His glory was put on display for a full 24 hours 🙂 Praise The Lord.
Have a stupendous 24 hours,
Jake
