I promise to have a willingness to change, a positive attitude, and high honor for myself and my squad. I promise to have high preference for those around me, and to play the thankful game when I’m about to be “bad mood Betty.� I promise to give feedback daily to those in my life, speaking into their character and Kingdom identity. I promise to prophesy as the Lord leads and I promise to pray like the Koreans, I mean Korean style when physical, emotional, and spiritual attacks happen. I promise to love my squad when I don’t want to, and I promise to let myself be loved when I feel I don’t deserve it. Above all else, I promise to live a life honoring to God. I would never call myself a prophet. Prophets are those old dead guys from Bible times. Prophets are like Christian fortune tellers, right? I have to be honest, before the Race, that was my idea of prophesy. And at training camp, prophetic speed dating (as I like to call it) was just plain awkward. I won’t go into details of what prophetic speed dating is for the sake of future racers, but just trust me, awkward. Especially for someone who has never done anything remotely close to prophesying. Fast Forward. Month Two: Uganda was not really the best month for me, I had a rough time. I lost my voice, see that blog here. There was so much spiritual warfare at our ministry location, and my team was partnered with another team. Long story short, a bunch of crap hit the fan, and it was emotionally and spiritually and physically taxing. But then, amidst the awfulness, something beautiful happened. The Lord started speaking to me. He gave me words and scriptures and encouragement for my teammates and the other team we were with. Then during team time, I was being told again and again that my words were powerful and that I had a voice. I was encouraged to keep using this gift. I was beginning to grow into my prophetic coat. It was a little big, I still wasn’t sure about it, I felt a little awkward about how I looked, but I still had room to grow. Fast Forward. Month Three: Rwanda was a better month, we taught cute little kids English, see that video here. At the beginning of the month, things were going well. Things were falling into place and I found a ministry that I actually connected with. Then, one day, God laid it on my heart to use my gift of prophesy to prophesy over the whole squad. I was excited to take on this project, but the enemy had other plans. The last couple weeks in Rwanda my back was hurt, and things with my team and ministry went from good to bad to worse. Needless to say, I may have said forget this stupid prophesy thing, I’m not doing it. As if rebelling against what God led me to do would “show Him.� Fast Forward. Month Four: It was time for a season of changes — new team, new country, switched up route. We were intended to go to Thailand, but due to recent flooding we were rerouted to The Philippines to work with KIM Ministries for six weeks. The first four weeks, I wasn’t having it. I had pushed down so many negative thoughts and feelings, I was chained to all these lies and I just did not want to be there. I tried getting back into writing prophesy for this new team, but after doing that it felt pointless. Who cares? Then throughout the month God began working on me. I had hit bottom, I was being ugly and nasty and just negative. I was upset and I wanted everyone to feel that. Then something changed. I can’t pinpoint what exact moment I realized truth about myself amidst the lies, but it happened. I think it was around the time our teams went back to Manila to see our original squad leaders off and to spend the last two weeks with the rest of our squad. I began receiving the truths God had to say about me, I wasn’t just blowing them off, I was hearing them and I was beginning to live up to my identity in Christ. When that happened, my desire to prophesy over the squad came back. The Lord gave me a vision for a night of prophetic worship. Our squad was already doing worship every Friday night and it just so happened that we had one Friday night worship left before leaving for Thailand (round two, blogs to come). So I had the stage for this to happen, I just needed to know what God desired this to look like. Originally I was just going to write a card for each person on the squad, but God took that idea and developed it into something much larger. Two hundred and fifty prophesy cards later; we had the resources for prophetic worship. There were pink cards for the women of Y Squad, blue cards for the men of Y Squad, orange cards with Scripture, yellow cards with Quotes, green cards with Prophetic Words, and white cards with Declarations. There were also extra blank cards for people to write their own prophesy cards. The Lord gave me so many words for people, either ones He inspired me to write or words that had been given to me that I felt inspired to share. Friday night came and the boxes were set up with the various cards for people to come up and take as they felt led, and then the biggest step by far for me was when the Lord gave me the confidence to stand before my squad (without notes, for those who know me I rely on reading from notes every time I speak) and tell them my vision for the prophetic cards and how the Lord had laid it on my heart to prophesy over the squad in this way. In that moment I knew that whatever happened, I had done what the Lord called me to do.
And … I have some good news … you can prophesy too, you have words to encourage the people in your life and the Lord does speak to you. You don’t have to be half away across the world to tell someone who they are in Christ. So speak life and you too may find your prophetic gift.
Semantically speaking …
