My life prior to age 30 has been very well defined by fear. Fear is the boundary line I had made to determine each decision of my life. I saw a choice and determined how much fear was involved with the options. Once the options were weighed, I would chose the option that weighed less with fear.
Naturally I've overcome many fears by being here in Swaziland and taking the journey I have taken.
But this month I've felt encouraged to challenge my fears even more. And I've challenged them through prayer. In Matthew 14 after Jesus was praying on the mountains, he met up with the disciples who were on a boat on the Sea of Galilee. Of course he didn't just catch up with them by another boat. He walked right to them. And when the disciples saw him they were afraid because they thought it was a ghost. And then Peter does the unthinkable. He asks Jesus if it is really him to ask him to come out of the boat onto the water. And Jesus said, "Come."
I love Peter's faith to ask Jesus to do crazy things. I've always loved his faith in that moment. But I've come to recognize that while I love Peter's faith, I've not been willing to implement that kind of outrageous faith into my own life. Not once have I believed God could allow me to get out of the boat and walk on water.
I have always prayed very nice and manageable prayers. You know, the basic run of the mill stuff: for him to protect me as I travel, for health and for him to take care of our leaders, etc… And I have always trusted Him for the outcome. But never have I been so bold to ask Jesus if it is Him than can I get out of the boat to walk on water?
That is until I came to El Shaddai in Swaziland on the top of a beautiful mountain. The first day we arrived I was asked to lead a team to work in the preschool run by El Shaddai. I had been looking forward to manual labor actually since I hadn't done much this whole year, but I thought I could still do both.
In taking on the task, I quickly realized that the preschool in Africa wasn't much of a cute and charming experience as one might imagine. The first two days consisted of working with a culture I didn't understand and being left without notice with 25 children who barely knew English in a stone cold room that didn't even have seats let alone a chalkboard.
After discussing with Katie, who has been working with the preschools in Swaziland from the Peace Corp, I found out that this preschool with it's bare walls and teachers that lacked passion and children that found all sorts of treasures to hit each other with on their way down the mountain to school like 2×4 s and got stuck in the barbed wire along the way is Katie's dream. And this dream is on the verge of closing down leaving all the children in that area with no beginning education to start primary school.
So we immediately came up with a plan and invested in a daily fight. Every day we went up and down the mountain with the kids fighting them all along to stay in line and together. We did this 5 times each day. 5 times a day I practiced my teacher glare, used my teacher voice and took 3, 4 and 5 year olds aside who were struggling to follow directions and give them my sad speech and taught them to apologize. 5 times a day I watched my other team mates struggle as well and watched them get frustrated with the fight.
All the while I had been reading Mark Batterson's book, The Circle Maker. It had been so timely for month 10 on the World Race and Batterson challenged me in this way. He says:
Bold prayers honor God, and God honors bold prayers. God isn't offended by anything less. If your prayers aren't impossible to you, they are insulting to God. Why? Because they don't require divine intervention. But ask God to part the Red Sea or make the sun stand still or float an iron axhead, and God is moved to omnipotent action.
There is nothing God loves more than keeping promises, answering prayers, performing miracles, and fulfilling dreams. That is who He is. That is what He does. And the bigger the circle we draw, the better, because God gets more glory.
And so that is what I began to do. I began to draw very big, specific prayer circles around Katie's dreams and the preschool at El Shaddai knowing it was on the edge of failure or success. And that circle grew into bigger prayers as the month went on. I found myself sitting on a mountain each morning sitting inside my circle I had drawn with a piece of coal and praying very big prayers – the get out of the boat and walk on water kind of prayers for Katie and El Shaddai.
While I prayed each morning I still saw the waves of doubt like Peter did. Thoughts telling me that what I was praying was crazy would rise up around my ankles and I would hold onto Jesus a bit tighter.
So what is your big dream? What burden has God put in your heart? And more importantly, how have you prayed for that dream?
Slowly but surely, we began to see God's hand in what we were doing at the preschool. We saw answers to what we had been circling in prayer. And literally when we walked in circles around the preschool and prayed over the teachers Tembine and Tengetile. And in the circle I sat in each morning.
But it doesn't have to be a circle like the circle I drew in the mornings. God is just honored by big and bold prayers and when we ask Him if we can get out of the boat to do unthinkable and crazy things.
And then he says,
"Come."
