Would loving parents be parents that never disciplined you?
…be complacent with mediocre?
…never push you to excel?
…never give you HARD WORDS to help you reach your full potential?
No.
God is a God that gives hard words, God is a God that wants to refine us constantly.
So HARD WORDS, are, in retrospect, ‘life giving’ words, they push us to be all that we are capable of.
One thing about the World Race culture is that we do this thing called, ‘feedback’, if you are alumni, you know exactly what I am talking about. For all you others…. feedback is a time we sit down with our teams and give each other positive and constructive feedback, usually about recent events. I would say, so far with my team, Nikao, it is sometimes hard to find constructive feedback but some would argue that it’s because we are still in the honeymoon stage… But I digress, soooooooo constructive feedback is not a synonym to negative feedback, let’s just nip that thought in the bud. This is a common problem with our society, we are afraid of confrontation because we have made it into a negative task through the problem of offense… we are afraid to confront someone because you think they will get offended, HHHHHHHHHHelloooooo Bait of Satan ! (nice little plug in for that book, read it). Constructive feedback is something out of love. I love my teammates so much that I want them to be the best version of themselves possible so I let them know those things they need to work on. It’s a normal part of life. Is it easy at first to hear those things? Of course not, we are a prideful bunch of specimens... is it beneficial in the end, heck yes.
So as I was saying, our team does not have a bunch of constructive feedback, which at first would seem as though that is a good thing, but if you look at it from a different angle, is it really????
Let’s say…….
-If constructive feedback, recognizes your willingness to love them enough to help them become the person God created them to be and find those areas of your life that need refined-
THEN, if that is the TRUE reason, why we have constructive feedback then, I want to CRAVE it. If we are people of Christ, then it includes a journey of continually striving to better ourselves, right? So we should ALL crave for….say it with me, constructive feedback. : ) I can feel your excitement. Lucky for us here on the World Race, we build it into our schedules.
Needless to say, Team Nikao had a constructive feedback break through the other night.
We went from having an insane spirit filled worship and Bible study night, where we pretty much wrote a legit 3 point sermon through our conversation, to a journey of refining each other. Can I get an Amen?
Now I will introduce you to what I jokingly called, ‘poor man’s constructive feedback.”
We decided to put one person at a time in the ‘hot seat’ and use one word to affirm them. Jamie(be sure to click on her name and ch-ch-check out her page) was the first one and we all affirmed her and then we decided to throw in one Challenge word (synonym of Constructive Feedback), then she got so convicted by them that she wanted to write them down……….. WHICH
led us to….
each persons name was on a piece of paper and one side was affirmation word and the other was challenge word, and we passed it around praying for a word from God for the categories for a minute each. Then at the end we gave everyone their paper with 6 affirmations and 6 challenges.
I got mine and I immediately could not stop myself from nodding my head. All my challenge words were spot onto what I knew God wanted me to work on. Was it tough to read, somewhat, did it motivate me in a new way, you bet. We then decided to share our words and I felt like God was telling me that we needed to declare each one of our challenge words over each other, so we would read our affirmations, and then on each challenge word we would read one, and stop, and would sit and if God gave a declaration to speak over that person we said it. No worries, I’ll give you an example…
One of my challenge words were- Vulnerability
Someone on my team might say this -“I declare that this year you will reach a new level of relationships with people and be open and vulnerable to who you are as a person, I rebuke any sense of fear you may have.”
After hearing five other declarations spoken over me, it empowered me to a new level since I have been here. I literally was brought to tears out of the love I felt from everyone. It reminded me of the quote, “God accepts you the way you are but He loves you too much to leave you that way.” (give or takeaway a few words) That is how I felt my team felt towards me.
-Shalom
P.S. (VERY IMPORTANT)
A few lil EXTRAS for YALL-
1) Feeding video with footage of Reuben is on it's way
2) Next month I will be in a closed country, meaning a few things
– I will most likely have little to no communication
– Please do not post anything on facebook about where I am going or any details about it, because it will endanger our contacts. I may even deactivate my Facebook Wall for that month but I have not decided yet, but that is a heads up.
