If you know anything about the way the Lord works, you know that He dwells in what we think is the insignificant. I have found that out while on the race. The moments that I think are monumental and I will always remember soon fade into the background of my mind, but the seemingly insignificant moments resonate in my mind every day. Here are three completely different “little” moments that still blow me away to this day. I will go in chronological order.
1- This moment is brought to you by the Dominican Republic. One day as we were walking to our ministry I saw a man walking down the street about 100 yards away, and we made eye contact. What was weird is that I usually don’t pick people out in a crowd from that far away, simply because I have a short attention span so I like to people watch. The man was walking the opposite way so we kept getting closer and closer. I soon noticed that he was staring me down. His gaze was solely locked into my eyes. I was obviously creeped out. This man stared me down for 20-30 seconds. After we passed each other, I looked back and he kept staring me down. My prayer during this time is that he would see the kingdom of God in my eyes. About a month later, one of my teammates told me that God told her to read from a certain day in her journal. The words she read were, “Today you were protected” (not sure if those were the exact words, but pretty close). I soon realized that the day she said was the same day that I had this “stare-down” with this man. I knew something was up with this man. He just had an evil presence about him. Usually men in the DR fix their gaze upon women, so I believe locking into his eyes prevented him from doing anything to my teammate who was walking right next to me on that day.
2- While I was growing up I always thought there was a certain path that my life was supposed to follow. One time I heard a man preach that there were multiple paths that our lives can take depending on the choices we made, and how intently we were following the Lord. He said that there was a “path a”, “path b”, “path c”, etc. Well after screwing up quite a bit while I was growing up I felt like I was likely on “plan m” or something like that. Well one day while I was walking down the street in the Czech Republic the Lord whispered something different in my ear. I can tell you pretty much exactly where I heard this, but I couldn’t tell you who was around me. I know there were people there, but looking back on the moment it seems as though I was all alone. Anyways, the Lord whispered, “You are back on path a.” That took me back, because I hadn’t even thought about the multiple path theory in quite a while. It was so encouraging and relieving to hear that from the Lord. By simply choosing to obey one calling that He put in my life, it remedied millions of other times that I did not listen to His voice. Let this be an encouragement that no matter how far down you are on your respective path, He can still call you back to the one that brings Him the most glory, and the one that brings you the most fulfillment.
3- This is a story about the universality of the Holy Spirit. In the Czech Republic, we were going to a church service in a different city than the one that we were living in. Well, half of our team could fit in the car with our contact, the other half rode on a bus to the town. I was one of the three that rode on the bus. Well, simple mistake, we never figured out where to get off of the bus, so we just rode the bus to the end of the line figuring there would be a moderately sized station there. Wrong! We got to the end of the line and all that was there was an abandoned factory. Well as we were looking around figuring out what to do or where to go an old man approached us. He came up to us and was speaking German to us. I said the only phrase in German that I knew, I said, “I don’t speak German” to him. That did not deter him though, because he just kept rambling on. After that Lucas and I started messing around to burn time to wait for the next bus because we had figured out where we needed to go, but Christy kept attempting to carry on a conversation with him. After about 15 minutes one of the guys from the church showed up in a car to take us to the church. Before we left the Lord said to go tell the old German man some things. After a second of wondering how he would understand me I decided that it didn’t really matter, so I went for it. I just started telling how much of a great plan that the Lord still has for his life even though he may feel like he is too old to achieve greatness. I told him the Lord still wanted him to serve Him. Remember, this man speaks no English. While I was telling him these things he kept nodding his head yes and looked into my eyes the whole time I was speaking. When I was done telling him these things he responds, “Yes, I know” and just walks off. So much for language barriers…huh?
Just thought I’d give you a little glimpse at the “little” moments of the race. I really enjoy these moments, and I hope to compile a lot of these stories. I feel when the race is over and I look back, these are the moments that will have changed me the most.
