**Warning: This blog is long, but please read it all the way
through. I’m praying that it brings as much freedom to you as I’ve come to
know!**
I knew that this month in Thailand would be huge for me. I
felt in my own spirit that I was really going to see God move and that He was
not only going to move in our ministry, but that He was going to move in me as
well. One of my squad mates even prophesied over me at the beginning of the
month that I had a voice that needed to be heard, that I needed to walk with
full assurance of who God was and what He wanted to do with me and walk without
fear or boundaries. I was excited, but hadn’t anticipated the extent of His
delight for me and His desire to see me walk in His freedom.
At the beginning of the month, we gathered for our 2 month
squad debrief. It was a time to catch up with our entire squad, rest and
prepare for the next 3 months. As our individual team met with our squad
leaders and coaches to go over the first 2 months of the World Race, Tiffany,
one of our amazing squad leaders, challenged us to work in prophesying over
each other. She wrote the names of every person at our table on little slips of
paper and passed them around in a hat for everyone to pick. We were told to
keep the slips closed and not peek at the name you had chosen. She asked us to
write out a message for the person on the slip of paper without knowing who it
was for…so I went about praying and asking God for something for my unknown
person. Along came a vision and I proceeded to write out the following message
for my person…
“There seems to be a massive wall in front of you. Turning
back is not an option, but this wall stretches as high and wide as you can see.
It’s not up to you to break it down, but turn to God who can tear down the
walls that are keeping you from fully walking in the path He’s placed before
you. Trust Him; allow Him to reign over every area of your life and He’s
faithful to provide the way. Look to Him and not to the obstacle that is before
you.”
This message could have been for the other 9 people at the
table whose name I very easily could have picked out of a hat, but somehow, I
knew that God was speaking to me. So, when I opened my slip and saw my name, I
wasn’t surprised…in fact, a part of me was super disappointed. I took a few
minutes and just tried to focus on God and not on the fact that everyone else
got an incredible message from someone else…affirmation of some sort…yet, I was
stuck with a message from myself to myself…I asked myself why, again, I had to
feel so disconnected from my team and be left out of more team-building
“stuff.” Clearly, this had been a thought I had been having a lot…me team knew about
most of it…but I tended to hold it all in for fear of seeming dramatic and
weak.
Within a few minutes, I got over myself and slipped the
paper with the message into my backpack…choosing to forget about the whole
thing…I’ll get back to this in a minute…
So life has gone on as normal. God has made Himself and His
power very evident as I’m sure you’ve seen through the last few blogs. Thailand
is, BY FAR, my favorite country. I have such a passion and desire for these
people that it’s overwhelming sometimes!
But all along, I’ve gone through a daily struggle of not
feeling heard by the people around me. I’ve felt disconnected from everyone
here. I’ve felt like a shadow that most people never choose to see or could
even if they tried. But, that hit a breaking point this past week.
I got an email from my best friend and, as encouraging as it
was, it made me take another look at my life here…and dread it. It became clear
to me that although my friends and family were half a world away, they knew me
more than the people I live life with 24/7. As I’m sure you can imagine, I
became disheartened and struggled a lot over the next few days. One night, I
brought all of this to my team and waited for their response. I wasn’t sure
what to expect, but I prepared myself to be met with opposition.
There was a little bit of that, but for the most part, my
team tried to delve into why I was still feeling so disconnected. I listened to
all of their advice, their own struggles with the situation and their
apologies…can I just pause and say I LOVE THESE GIRLS!
Anyway, one of the girls asked me something that became a
pivotal question for me: “if we’ve been together for 3 months, how come we
don’t know you?” I ended the night feeling better about getting my thoughts and
feelings out in the open and having a decent amount of open connection with
everyone. I got an incredible amount of affirmation, both good and bad, from
everyone and I went to bed that night just asking God to continue working it
all out of me.
The next day, I woke up prepared to face the day and
replayed the conversations from the night before in my head. Suddenly, the
question from the night before hit me…”if we’ve been together for 3 months, how
come the team doesn’t know me?” I began to have one of those conversations in
my mind with myself, answering questions and asking more…I figured out later
that it was God speaking. Here’s how it occurred:
“If you’ve been together for 3 months, how come the team
doesn’t know you?”
…because they don’t ask…
“Well why do they have to ask you before you feel free to
open up?”
…if they don’t ask, they don’t care…if they don’t care, I’m
afraid to speak because it wouldn’t matter anyway…
“How come other people feel the freedom to talk and you
don’t?”
…well, I don’t know…I think that you are supposed to talk
when people want you to…you shouldn’t talk if people don’t care to hear what
you have to say or care enough about you to listen…
And so it began…God broke me. He opened up my mind to
realize some major lies in my life…things that I’ve believed about myself for
years and lies I’ve listened to for as long as I can remember. Lies saying that
when I talk to people, they think “I’m boring,” “I’m stupid,” and “there is no
point in anything I’m saying, so SHUT UP!” I’ve believed that people have better things to
do than listen to me talk or try to teach anything. So for a long time, I’ve
shortened my stories that were “way too long” and I’ve shut my mouth when
“people have better things to say than me.”
If people don’t ask to hear from me, I automatically assume
they care less about me. So my walls go up…
At home, I have a voice. I have people that seek me out and
ask about me. I have people that somehow think and understand me and they push
to show me they care. That’s comfortable!
Here, I have a God who’s trying to break down every possible
ounce of comfort in my life. He wants to tear down lies and strongholds in my
life and show me that living in fear and bondage is not ok. He wants to show me
my voice. He’s speaking and He’s using my team to do all of this…and He’s tying
it all off perfectly with a beautiful bow….let me explain…
As I began to focus on God in worship that morning, He spoke
very gently…”you have a voice. I’ve given you a voice and I’ve heard your
voice. I didn’t bring you from the brinks of death so that you could be silent.
You have a voice…and I want you to use it.”
I fell to my knees and cried. I couldn’t do anything else but soak it in
and just listen. Here I was to worship Him and He was ministering to me with so
much care and love, unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. I wanted to shout it
out. I felt like I would burst with shouts of victory…not using my voice to
fight the enemy like I’ve done for years…not using my voice to defend myself
and my walls…but using my voice to shout with every ounce of my being that God
was and is and always will be the lover of my soul, my redeemer, my stronghold
and my life-saver.
To go back a few years, I went through a time in my life
where I battled severe depression. It got to the point of me having suicidal
thoughts and eventually, I got sick of trying to fight it on my own. I asked my
family to get me help and it was the first step in the battle of taking hold of
my identity and my inheritance. At that time in my life, I stood on 2 Samuel
22. I went back to it almost every day and believed that what God said there
was a promise to me in my life. I can’t even begin to explain to you how much
of that scripture He’s fulfilled in my life!
So, on this specific day, head in my hands, snot going everywhere,
ready to explode because of what God’s speaking, He brought my mind back to 2
Samuel 22. He said “remember when ‘the waves of death swirled about you, the
torrents of destruction overwhelmed you, the cords of death coiled around you,
and the snares of death confronted you? (2 Samuel 22:5-6)’ Do you remember how
I saved you from all of that? Have I not given you a voice to speak into lives
about this very thing? Have I not saved you for a purpose? Have I not redeemed
you for you to have a voice?”
As worship ended, He kept speaking. I went out to read 2
Samuel 22 on my own and was reminded that “from His temple He heard my voice;
my cry came to His ears (2 Samuel 22:7b).” HE heard MY voice! My soft, quiet
voice that I’m scared for anyone to hear…the voice that I don’t think anyone
wants to hear…the voice that the enemy lies to me about every day and doesn’t
want anyone to hear…
God hears my voice! And He “reached down from on high and
took hold of me; He drew me out of deep waters. He rescued me from my powerful
enemy, from my foes who were too strong for me…He rescued me because He
delighted in me (2 Samuel 22:17-18, 20b).”
If God can hear my voice, part the heavens, make the
foundations of earth shake, and thunder from heaven with the resounding voice
of the Most High, how much more should my voice go out unto the earth to
proclaim His love and mercy for us all??
Whew…that’s A LOT! But powerful for me…and hopefully for
you, too!
So, this brings me back to the vision I saw at the very
beginning of the month…the wall. Right after these revelations, as I was
basking in the freedom and truth that God was pouring out on me…I found the
message on a folded piece of paper in my backpack. Immediately, I realized that
God’s vision for me was completely, blatantly true. With the lies I’ve listened
to for years, I’ve grown accustomed to immediately putting up walls with
people. My teammates have been perfect examples of this! I began to ask God
about the vision…of course, I hadn’t seen the wall break in the vision…it was
just there. Now that I was aware of this spiritual and, somewhat literal, wall
in my life, I wanted to know how to get past the wall…I turned, once again,
to…yeah, you guessed it….2 Samuel 22.
“With Your help I can advance against a troop, with my God I
can scale a wall (2 Samuel 22:30).”
I’ve realized that this isn’t going to be an easy thing to
overcome. I’m not going to bust through it, find a shortcut around it or a hole
through it. I’m going to scale it. I’m going to rise higher and higher up this
wall to more and more freedom in my life. I’ve already begun scaling it…it may
get harder as I go…I may get more tired as I climb more…I may continue scaling
for a while, only to find that it seems I’m no closer to the top than when I
began. But God says that “with Him” I can do it.
And as I climb, I will shout! I will look for God at every
level. I will open myself up to the storms around me…because it’s in those
places where God is working and bringing freedom. I won’t give up or go back.
There is nowhere to go except up the wall…and I will scale it until I step foot
on the top. And there, I will hold every piece of inheritance that has been
stolen. I will walk with everything that God will equip me with on the way up.
And I’ll shout!
And shout!
And shout some more!
Because I have a voice that needs to be heard! And it WILL
be heard!
