A few weeks ago, I went to training camp for the World Race, where I met my squad for the first time, was put on the team that I’ll be travelling with for 11 months, and learned a whole lot about myself and God. BEFORE training camp, I was super nervous. I had a fear that I wouldn’t fit in with my squadmates, or that I wouldn’t like my team, or that I wouldn’t be able to keep up. Let me tell you, at the end of training camp, I couldn’t believe that I had only known my squadmates for 8 days! And I love my team SO much! Look at their pretty faces!
Me, Kate, Laurie, Abigail, Jenn, Kayla, and Kay!
And check out Y-Squad!
Before training camp, I had another fear that I was fighting down: the Holy Spirit. I know that seems like a crazy thing for a Christian to be nervous about, but I was.
Here’s a little backstory: When I went to college, I joined to a charismatic ministry, and for the first time someone explained to me a little about how the Holy Spirit works. For the next several years of school, I learned a lot about the gifts of the Holy Spirit and what scripture says about Him. However, something about the Spirit made me feel… snubbed. I kept hearing about all the amazing things He enabled people to do, about how He made believers bold, how He gave incredible gifts–healings, tongues, prophesy. I read scripture, and I could see that the things I was learning aligned with what’s recorded in the Bible, and I wanted to be a part of that. However, it seemed that no matter how many times I prayed or others prayed for the Holy Spirit to empower me, nothing ever seemed to happen. I couldn’t understand why He wasn’t active in my life the way He was in my peers’ lives. I began feeling like maybe I wasn’t good enough, so I just shut down. Whenever I walked into a service at church, at a conference, or in the ministry where they were discussing the Holy Spirit, I would quietly sneak out the back. I pursued God in every other area of my life, but I refused to explore the Holy Spirit at all.
In hindsight, I can absolutely see how He was working in my life then, using me to teach and empower others, and giving me a better understanding and connection to God. But still, talk of the Holy Spirit has always made me a little defensive. So walking into training camp, I was nervous. I was afraid that I was going to experience the same old feeling of inadequacy. I felt a little like a child walking into a room of spiritual heavyweights. Pretty early in the week, that wall I had put up against Him came down. I realized that the Holy Spirit is personal–He meets us where we are, He speaks to us in ways that we understand. The way He works in each of us doesn’t look the same from person to person, and that’s ok. A handful of people from my squad started a study on the book of Acts together at camp, and we’ve carried that study and discussion on ever since. When I first heard about the study at camp, I almost bailed–I knew that Acts talks a lot about the gifts of the Spirit, so I had been avoiding the book altogether for some time (guys, I’m serious. I AVOIDED the Holy Spirit. That’s crazy.) What I’ve learned through reading the book this time though has totally revolutionized the way that I look at Him though.
Here’s what I’ve realized: Acts talks a lot about the amazing miraculous gifts of the Spirit–people get miraculously healed, people speak in tongues, people get insane boldness to preach, one guy gets teleported–and every single time the Holy Spirit shows up and moves, the Gospel is presented and the church is advanced. Every time. Peter is one of the apostles in Acts who, pretty much everywhere he goes, crazy spiritual stuff is happening around him; he’s healing people, he’s getting busted out of prison by angels, he’s preaching in streets and jails and synagogues. Peter, the same guy who, before the Holy Spirit, denied Christ three times. And now he’s got this incredible boldness and power and shamelessness to spread the Gospel across countries. As I’m reading this, I feel like something clicked for the first time: I’ve spent years focused on how the Holy Spirit works, but I’ve completely neglected why He works. Jesus said before He died that He was sending the Spirit to be with us, to testify about Him. Why do we make it about anything else?
