Read Giving Up Part 1 first.
Like I mentioned in Part 1, Africa is an interesting place to wrestle with you faith. Mozambique is an interesting country to find yourself in when you aren’t sure if God is for you. Why? Because the forces of good and evil are so evident here.
For about a week, I wrestled to the point of exhaustion with these thoughts. Then on Wednesday, we were doing some home visits in a community where a new church had been planted (it was the first church in the community) and where the witch doctor previously ruled. On our last house that we visited, the woman had lost her husband and it was suspected that she had been to the witch doctor to find comfort. Right before we began to pray, God told me to pay attention. So I did. And as normal with house visits, I kind of just stood and waited to see if the Holy Spirit would give me something to pray. And He didn’t. But others were praying and the woman began to manifest a demon. And God didn’t hold back speaking to me this time. “Pay attention to this woman. This is what is out there outside of me. Is this really what you want?”
Reality check. Of course that wasn’t what I wanted. And as I began to focus more on why I was wrestling with these things instead of focusing on the actual wrestling part, I began to just cry out to God. I began to cry out for God to come through for me. Because I wasn’t able to fight Satan on my own. And suddenly the Bible became a huge comfort in my life. It wasn’t until a few days later that I realized that God made the word my comfort because in the midst of being played with by lies, He was feeding me truth. And even though God didn’t come through for me in the way I thought I needed Him to, He showed up in the way that He knew I needed it.
And the truth was that I was never going to actually give up on God. I know that there is nothing for me outside of Christ. That without Christ, there is no reason for life. And so it begged the question of why was I even thinking about giving up.
Yesterday, Pastor Eduardo prayed over each one of us and as he prayed over me, he prayed that God would give me the desires of my heart. And in that moment, I thought of what my heart’s desire were. And honestly, it was to walk all my days with God. So now I have to wonder that if that is my heart’s desire, why in the middle of this walk was I even considering giving up?
And the only answer I can give to that question right now is this: God is taking unhealthy and destructive life patterns and restoring them to what He wants them to look like.
Without walking through that experience I wouldn’t have realized that giving up when things get a little tough or it’s the easy way out or when I begin to trust things other than God is a pattern in my life and it’s not a healthy pattern.
Change: it can be difficult and tricky at times but when God is orchestrating it, it’s always good.
