This past month has been a tremendous month of growth for me. For those of you who don’t know, I have always had a fear of speaking whether public speaking or relational. I grew up always stuttering and fumbling through my words. As a result, I believed in my mind that what I had to say was not worth saying and I grew up most of my middle school and high school years not really ever speaking what is on my mind. It was honestly like a prison. I kind of hated myself because I felt like I was trapped in my body and couldn’t speak. Over my high school years and going into my college years I started breaking ground and gaining more freedom. I started to become intentional in building relationships with people. After a while I began to feel like I wasn’t really building strong relationships with good connections. This caused me to believe a new lie that I couldn’t build any connections with people. I believed myself unworthy of having true friends and I believed I didn’t have a voice.
This month has been a huge eye opener for me and God has dispelled those lies from my head in drastic measure. For those of you who do not know, I have spent the last 2 weeks in Medellin, Colombia working with a ministry called Ciudad Refugio. I am not quite sure if this is on purpose or if the American demographic is actually this way, however, in a squad of 44 people, I and one other girl are the only fluent Spanish speakers on the whole squad… You can see how God stretched me this month. I have always preferred taking on secondary roles in ministry, more behind the scenes service and quiet contribution to ministry. This was partly because of all the lies I was believing in my head and partly because of my personality and the abilities I feel God has given me. Almost all of our ministry involves speaking to the people we are ministering to. Whether it is prayer, an invitation to church, evangelism, kids ministry or just edifying the church, words are always involved.
1 Corinthians 12: 12 “Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ.” I have literally never seen this so clearly as I have this month. I have always considered me lack of speech to be an impediment to the Kingdom and revered speech as the Only Way to minister to someone and the fact that I wasn’t a strong speaker meant I couldn’t contribute well to the kingdom. I now realize what a falsity that is. The mouth is important, true however, every part of the body is necessary to have a functioning body. I realized that this month. Because of the language barrier most of my squad mates have had, I have had to step into a role I normally do not have and now have a new perspective. As I look around at my squad mates, I am just blown away at how God has moved through them despite the barrier of language. I have seen God heal people through my squad mates, I have seen people genuinely and completely open up to some of my squad mates emotionally despite language barriers, I have seen grown men and women melt in tears because of all the Love the Father has lavished on them through my squad who doesn’t even speak Spanish. I learned that there is one universal language and that is the language of the Love of God through the Holy Spirit.
A big part of my internal conflict was a conflict of comparison. But, then I realized how ridiculous it would be for the hands of the body to get up and say I wish I was a mouth. Each part of the body has its own specific purpose and is necessary in order for the whole body to function. God, finally solidified the lesson this week for me.
This Friday our whole squad went to a school and we spoke about the power of words, identity, purpose and how to deal with sex, drugs and alcohol in a saturated culture. This was just amazing because we had the opportunity to talk about Jesus in a public school. I spoke on the power of words and the words I had believed for so much of my life. I spoke the testimony of how words had wounded me but Christ and his words broke everything I had ever known about myself and gave me a rooted identity in truth. I was just reflecting on this today and I was just remembering how a year ago I had so much fear about even just speaking in public. Just looking how God has dispelled the lies I believed for his truth. Yet, it isn’t anything anyone can boast in. We are all members of the body of Christ and were selected to be used by God not because of our gifts and talents but because of our weakness. God wrapped up the work he was doing in my heart with a message given by Pastor Douglas, the man who God used to start the ministry of Ciudad Refugio. God literally chose to use me this month as a mouthpiece not because I was a strong speaker, but because I was weak Pastor Douglas was talking about the passage in 1 Corinthians 18-31 and how all glory for everything belongs to God ultimately. In an environment where everyone is serving the Lord to the maximum of their ability, it can be tempting to compare yourself and wish you possessed different talents and abilities than you do, but Pastor Douglas explained that it is not our abilities plus God’s will that results in God using us but rather it is a willingness to submit plus our weaknesses plus God’s will that results in God using us. I realized that if I wanted to see God move more in my life, I needed to stop comparing myself to others and start submitting my will to his.
Check out the video link at the bottom to see more specifics about the different ministries I have been doing this week.
