Blogging can be a difficult thing for me. As the days and weeks pass, new lessons are learned and encounters are had. Three or four weeks go by, and I have so many things I want to tell you that I can’t seem to say anything at all. I’m in India sitting in an A/C apartment in the hottest month of the year. It’s way past midnight here. I’m beyond tired after spending the day cleaning squatties and watching teammates de-lice screaming kids. I crawled on my sleeping pad, next to four other teammates, and tried to go to sleep…but I couldn’t. Thoughts and reflections of the past nine months are flittering through my mind. I started wondering if I had made any sort of difference on this race, or had I just traveled around the world…somehow missing the fullness of what God had planned. As my mind whirled and my heart started to feel heavy, I heard that gentle whisper deep in my inner being- “Go back and remember.” I wanted to fall asleep, but I knew he had something to show me. I started going back through each month of the race- each person, place, and experience I had had. I asked Holy Spirit to help me remember, and show me more insight into some of the things that had occured. You see, this whole year has been a season of consecration, a wilderness season for me. A time where I purposefully walked away from everything and everyone I knew and loved to seek more of God and his kingdom. This wilderness season has held some pretty intense refining fires. Throughout the race, I have experienced more pain and suffering than I expected. I have had boils, lice, infections, UTI’s, parasites, bruises, cuts, stomach problems, allergic reactions, hospital trips, little sleep, demonic attacks, spider bites, ant bites, all kinds of bites……. I have been laughed at, mocked, yelled at, cussed at, pushed, harrassed, robbed, cheated, and gossiped about… I’ve slept in lice, cockroach, and spider infested rooms….all my least fav’s in the whole world…. I have deeply missed my community at home and have gone through intense loneliness… I have been broken on the race more than I’ve been whole and have been challenged more than I thought I could handle…. BUT I have seen God move in many ways! I have seen the importance of one on one discipleship, juveniles in prison experience joy and acceptance for the first time in their life, the power of life giving words and chains falling off simply by saying to a girl ‘you are beautiful.’ I have seen a lame woman walk, demons tremble and leave by the prayers and worship of God’s saints, prostitutes in Thailand feeling worthy and pure, the men buying the women encountering the fierce love of Abba God…. I have felt generational curses lift off of lands and people, and orphans sleeping peacefully for once because of the intercession of the saints….. I have shared my testimony all over the world and have seen God use it in some pretty crazy ways, I have walked through inner healing and have been set even more free by the power of Jesus…….. I have sung and held dying and disabled kids, painted murals, planted grass, cut paper hearts, cleaned toilets, taught english, de-liced kids, shoveled dirt, picked up trash, ran a food festival, preached, and walked hours up mountains simply to share the message of Christ to Buddhist monks and nuns…… I have seen the dry bones get up and breathe life, and the lives of those around me transformed in their pursuit to know God more… I have learned to let God fight for me, and through that, have seen God break through a Muslim man’s logic and release a wave of truth and light into his soul…. I am learning to give freely as I have freely received…. I am learning that when you are at the end of yourself…you are in the most beautiful place…. I am learning love in new and life changing ways… I am learning to dream again…. I am learning how to lead in weakness and brokenness… I am learning to rejoice always…. It’s been prophesied over me a lot on this trip that I am like Paul. The first time I didn’t understand why. Here I am…month nine..and I understand now. When Paul (Saul) is blinded by his first encounter with Jesus, Jesus gives the prophetic declaration over him that he will show him how much he must suffer for his sake. The passage struck me…and it has stayed with me ever since… Paul learned the treasure that comes through suffering. He says in
More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us
When we willing deny ourselves- when we are willing to do whatever it takes to know God more- we surrender our rights, our comforts and conveniences, our family and friends, our priveleges, our plans and expectations- all for his sake. I am no longer my own- his glory and his name matters more to me than anything else. I want nothing more than to know my Abba Father more, and for the world to know him. I want to see the church arise and call for their beloved. I want to do whatever it takes…to go where he goes and do what he does….
This race is producing in me character, perseverance, endurance, hope….
It’s teaching me how to be obedient, how to have faith, how to trust….
So here I am, on my little mat, brushing off the ants biting me, and realizing that I didn’t make a difference…but God made a difference through me.
This journey IS worth it. I don’t exactly feel that way right now… I am tired, ready to go home, with 3 months still left….but I know in the end, it will all be worth it. Every trial, every tear, every miracle, every push…it will be worth it.
I want to be found faithful. I want to hear the ‘well done.’ I want to finish well.
Pray for us as we begin one of the hardest seasons of the race-the final push. May we, R-Squad- finish well and run with endurance and with the power and strength of the Holy Spirit. May we love not in our own strength, but of the Father’s…and may we rejoice always, knowing that our Jesus is MORE than worth it!
　
“The way of God is the wilderness, it’s always been the wilderness, the way of God is weakness, it is voluntary weakness ” -misty edwards
