“With sweat on my brow, I wasted my ink on questions that weren’t ready to be answered.
I asked God all that I did not know in an attempt to gain control of what I could not wrap my mind around.
He waited patiently as I wrote. He didn’t sigh or check the time. He waited.
When I was done, He gently reached for my pen and responded with a list of answers that I wanted to hear.
Once He was finished, He wrote another list of the plans that He, Himself, carried for me.
This new list looked completely different than what He had first written. The plans He had were nothing that I could have thought of on my own.
His were better. They were always better.”
This past month on the Race has been filled with a lot. A lot of beautiful moments, testimonies, and memories.. It’s also been challenging. I’ve been learning a lot about the act of surrender. God has been teaching me how to surrender my control, my feelings, my thoughts, and my energy.
We are now in Peru, but our last few days in Ecuador were spent at an Awakening Conference in Quito. This conference is where World Race teams gather work alongside one another to encourage the body. We combined three squads to lead in different ministries for the conference such as evangelism, worship, hospitality, intercession, and story-telling. The Lord used that weekend to really kick off this journey of surrendering all to Him.
One thing that the Lord spoke over me over and over again at the Awakening was rest- the one thing that I convinced myself that I had no time for.
My mom is one of the strongest women I know. She won’t admit this to you, but that’s one of the things that I admire about her the most: her independence and her drive. Last year, she had surgery and was supposed to remain in her hospital bed, but when she was told that she had to switch rooms and they were going to move her bed from one room to the next, she was the one to move it. Her work ethic and her longing to serve others was what caused her to do this. Her doctors wanted her to remain while they took care of it, but she knew that she could handle the weight.
Sometimes (a lot of the time), I feel like how my mom did in this moment. I’m being encouraged to stay back and rest for my best interest, but my desire to serve- to go, holds me back on this. I don’t want to feel as though I should do nothing while the world is passing by. I am the type of person that will go and won’t stop until absolutely necessary. It’s one art that I’ve never truly mastered.
For those that know me well enough know that I’m always searching for a lesson when it comes to God. I’m a pretty analytical person when it comes to the world around me; I’m always trying to piece life together as if it’s some sort of puzzle that God’s laid out before me. I don’t really stop; I just attempt to go at God’s pace. He teaches me a lesson and I immediately seek out the next one. I ask Him for a new challenge and I find myself taking on more than I can handle. I want to grow, so I tell myself that I can hold weights that are too heavy to bear. But God isn’t forcing me to learn every lesson that life has to offer so rapidly.
We were doing an exercise at the Awakening where we would write down all of our prayers, put them in an envelope, and then people would pray over it and write down something that the Lord would tell them. We didn’t know what the people had written or who the people were, so it was all God speaking.. As I received my envelope, one person’s words really stuck out to me. They talked about how this journey has had major highs and lows, but God wants me to ask Him for REST. To slow down. To just be.
I never really thought of actually asking God for rest when I need it. Like I said, it’s one lesson after another for me. I didn’t think God would want me to slow down on that. I thought that in order to make Him proud, I just needed to grow and grow and grow- not tell Him to stop teaching me for a moment. But He WANTS us to rest in Him. He wants us to lean on Him and not try to do it all on our own. Isn’t relying on ourselves practicing the same religion that Christ died to break?
Hebrews 4
“Therefore, since the promise of entering His rest still stands, let us be careful that none of you be found to have fallen short of it.”
So that night, I asked God. I asked Him to give my heart a break. I asked Him to take the control over my life that I longed to have. I asked Him to help me surrender my wants, my needs, my everything. I was tired of doing it all on my own when I didn’t need to.
And He was faithful to that.
The next day, after a night filled with praying to slow down and for a lack of control over my situations, I found myself alone with God. I was on the storytelling team at The Awakening, so one of my jobs was to help with a video we were making about how God was using the conference to glorify Him in Ecuador. I was asked to help interview one of our hosts while all of the squads were out doing evangelism. Everything in me wanted to go with the evangelism teams, but I knew that this video was important- even if it meant I had to stay back. We took about 20 minutes to interview our host, then everyone left. The evangelism teams were going to be gone for another three hours and I found myself alone. The only people outside were the people who were working at the church. I went down to my room to go lay down for awhile and I found that our door was locked. I didn’t really have anywhere to go. They locked all of the doors to the other buildings and it was pretty hot outside, so I sat by a tree and waited. I only had my camera and a bottle of water on me, so I knew that God was immediately answering my prayers. God was wanting to speak. He had gotten me right where I needed to slow down and listen for a few hours. As I sat out there, I realized how much of a struggle this was for me. Why was I having such a hard time resting? Why did I feel this desire to have so much control over where I was in each moment and over what I was doing?
God taught me a lot through those few hours. Since that day, I’ve been praying the same bold, messy prayer on repeat. “Here it all is. Take my control. Take it all. Help me slow down enough to listen to what you have to say.” Each time I pray for this, I feel relief. That prayer is an act of surrender that lifts spiritual weights off of my shoulders. I don’t need to have it all figured out. I don’t need to take every aspect of my life and piece it together. I just need to rest in Him and trust that HE has it all figured out and that His plans are so much better than my own. I need to let Him be the Father that He so desires to be for us. Through this surrender of control by resting in His presence, I’ve also learned a lot about thankfulness. I find myself constantly thanking Him, especially in the moments where nothing seems to be going right. I thought that praying these prayers to lose control would make me FEEL as though I’ve lost control, yet it’s done the opposite. I have the God of the universe taking care of it all and actually trusting that is the most relieving feeling. In just a week, my perspective on what rest is has shifted and God’s the One to thank for that.
He has taken my efforts and replaced them with REST.
He has taken my control and replaced it with FREEDOM.
Matthew 11:28-30 MSG
“Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me- watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.”
Fundraising Update:
I am almost 75% of the way to being FULLY FUNDED! God is so incredible, guys! I am so thankful for all of you who have played a part in this. My fundraising deadline of $13,000 was supposed to be met a couple of weeks ago and I still have about $500 to go! My next deadline is to reach the overall goal of $17,400 by April. Wanna help make this possible so that I can continue on with this crazy journey?! If you feel led, my donation link is on my World Race homepage. You can click on the little “Donate!” button and it will take you right there. You can choose to support one-time, monthly, yearly, etc. But before you donate, pray! Ask God if this is how He wants you to best steward your money. 🙂
Thank you guys so much for your support and for reading this blog about what the Lord is currently doing in my heart! Message me if you have any questions! Love you all.
