Hey family 🙂
You want to know how cool God is? Cool enough that he knows exactly how I work inside and out. (Psalm 139)
You want to know how personal God is? Personal enough that he speaks my language and trains me to KNOW his voice. ( John 10)
I hear God’s voice in three ice cream cones.
~~
A few weeks ago I went through some interesting situations with God. You may or may not believe me or agree with me in this, but I really feel like God spoke to me right up my ally on this one.
Sunday afternoon I was waiting with Kate to go home. We both had a lot on our plates and wanted to get home quickly, But were stuck waiting for the rest of our team for some time. Two of the things she had to do was get a lot of team money out of an ATM and then break the huge bills into small ones. One of the things I had to do was de-stress Kate, so I thought why not do them together. We decided to do it at a close grocery store while we were waiting.
Previously to this I had been really struggling over some things in my mind. The night before we hung out with this powerhouse pastor of Vietnam. I say powerhouse not because his name was big, but because he CLEARLY had Jesus all over him. I respected him and his family a lot. I’ve never seen one family show Jesus so clearly from the parents down through the children. At the end of the night he prophesied over us. As he laid hands in me and prayed I felt the obvious power of God, but what he said was very unexpected, almost none of what he said sounded right. What he said was truth, it just didn’t seem to fit. But the pastor was such a rockstar I felt odd questioning it.
Next day, Sunday church service, a pastor flew in from the states to preach to the international church in Da Nang, Vietnam. He talked about casting out demons. His obvious familiarity with it astounded me. But even so, I felt odd about. I couldn’t tell if I was just off, or if something was really going on. Again the pastor spoke truth, but it just seemed a little off. It wasn’t presented in love, and it just didn’t seem to remind me of the Jesus I know.
Key: The Jesus I know.
Sometimes people can make up their own inaccurate version of Jesus. I am not talking about that, I’m talking about the John 10 – Jesus is the good Shepard and his sheep KNOW his voice type.
All this stuff didn’t sit well with me. So I asked Kate on the way over. To my surprise she totally agreed. She said she thought right off that the prophecy over me was WAY off. She also said she had huge problems with the sermon this morning.
Relief.
I respect Kate a lot. To have some one I highly respect, that lives every moment of the daytime with me, agree with what I thought was was off. I take it as truth. It sounds more like how the God I know would communicate with me.
I was about to be confirmed more that I knew it was Jesus. He spoke my language. Neither cryptic nor English, just Jake-ish.
Let me remind you that Kate and I were stressed, and confused about these religious encounters.
“The Shepard walks right up to the gate. The gate keeper opens the gate for him and the sheep recognize his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he gets them all out, he leads them and they follow because they are familiar with his voice. They won’t follow a stranger’s voice but will scatter because they aren’t used to the sound of it.” – John 10:3-5
Kate and I walked into the store, used the ATM. It worked which is a miracle in itself. We looked for a way to break the bills, in foreign countries they don’t usually just make change like they do in the US. Our plan was to buy some small snack, instead we saw a Lotteria (Vietnamese version of McDonalds). I remembered that they had ice cream cones there for the equivalent of $0.15 USD. Perfect :).
I was giving my order to the clerk in my usual inaccurate southeast Asian accent. I wanted to know if the ice cream cones were really 3000 Dong? She said “Three? Yes.” She gave me my change back, I realized she was a little off but I thought I’d tell her when I got my cone.
She came back, with not one, not two but three ice cream cones.
At first I tried to clear it up, but then I decided what’s wrong with eating three? I couldn’t give Kate one because she had to break her own big bill. The rest of the team was who knows where. Why not? God’s blessing ;).
When we we sat down we talked more about these troubling religious moments. It hit me. It seemed wrong because what I had heard the last two days went exactly against everything I know about Jesus and how he interacts with me. He wouldn’t give me a sermon or prophecy that was WAY different than what he’s been telling me in my time with him everyday for five months.
I don’t want to discredit or dishonor the pastors involved, or what they said. It was probably great for some one. Five of my teammates felt like their words of prophecy clicked for them. That’s awesome.
But, What better way to let me know that I’m still on track than speaking my language through three ice cream cones :).
I know my Shepard’s voice, and he obviously knows me.
Have a great day, get some ice cream,
Jake
Sent from my iPhone
