Month six of the race, the make-or-break halfway marker, fell on the month that my team and I were in Thailand. I must say, as soon as we arrived to our ministry location the first day, it was like breathing a sigh of relief. “Ahh thank you God, this is a wonderful change of pace.” It was everything we could’ve hoped for in the long-awaited arrival to Thailand. We had AC pumping through our rooms at night, beautiful bug-free bathrooms with real showers and toilets, a common area, wifi, and we lived under a coffee shop owned by the foundation. CMON really?! What a dream. Not to mention we were just outside the tourist trap area of Phuket in the Phang Nga province, and every bit of scenery we passed never ceased to take our breath away. Being vastly different from our previous month, we felt pretty spoiled.
But the best part of this month was the people. We worked alongside a foundation called “Share the Love”, and it was evident that these people had earned a reputation of love in their community. Everywhere they took us for ministry, they had already built beautiful relationships with the people, or God had just opened up a door for them in His wonderful favor. We were thrilled with the detailed schedule they had planned out for us, and all the opportunities we were given to participate in all sorts of ministries: beach cleanup, landscaping, putting on English camps, performing skits, Christmas caroling to our neighbors, visiting and praying over the elderly, making hospital visits. We got to share testimonies in a Muslim high school and preach the gospel message to a group of women in prison. It was incredible and refreshing and one of my favorite months by far.
However, about two weeks into ministry, the Lord began to reveal something about my heart to me that I hadn’t really paid much attention to before. I realized, after being in this World Race paradise for half the month, that I have been very much lacking in thanking the Lord. He so gently peeled back some calloused layers around my heart one morning in church and began to reveal areas in which I had been lacking joy because I had not been grateful for this life I am living and ALL the ups and downs that come with it. Let me just break it down for you how good God is in the ways that He knows how to speak straight to my heart.
We were gathered for worship on a Sunday morning service. My team and I had run down the street to get some Thai milk tea before we started (liquid gold, that stuff is). It was a normal Sunday of World Race ministry… we would sit in the service, worship through the English and Thai songs, and then go help out in Sunday School. But before we began worship Pastor Yui explained her plan for the following Sunday, which would be Christmas service. At the end of the service she wanted everyone to gather around the room and sing this old worship song, both in Thai and English, kind of like a closing blessing for the whole service. So we stood around the room to practice, and the worship team began playing. As the first words came, memories of growing up in church flooded my mind. It was one of those songs that you’ll always know well, but you forget about as the years go on, one that I remembered my mom singing around the house as she did chores. It went:
“Give thanks with a grateful heart, give thanks to the Holy One, give thanks because He’s given Jesus Christ His Son… And now let the weak say I am strong, let the poor say I am rich because of what the Lord has done for us… give thanks.”
In that moment, so many things that I had not brought before the Lord the past few months came forward, and so did the tears. I had spent so many days the previous month struggling to sort through some conflicting personal emotions I was dealing with and still trying to seek the Lord through a lot of distraction and detachment from where we were at in ministry. I was not all there, and looking back can definitely say it was not my most proud month of the race. I was still upset at some of my circumstances and instead of taking it and surrendering it right away to the Lord, I probably stayed at my pity party long after everyone else had left. There’s a difference between a grieving process and just sitting in your grief and letting it fester. Most days I just felt like I preferred to shut my mind off rather than engage in even the smallest efforts to love those around me better. Even as I write this, I can remember what it felt like and pray the grace of God over me to not allow me to go back to that place again.
The truth is, although at home most of what you see are the pictures of me playing with kids and touring the countryside and snapping selfies with the locals, it gets rough out here. Our battle is not in flesh and blood but in the spirit, right? When we are not praying for healing and taking authority over sickness, or casting out demons, or praying over the principalities of a nation, we are still waging a war for our minds and hearts. But what’s fatal to a growing faith is when we choose to focus on our hurts and problems because we feel like being coddled in our injustice instead of asking the Lord to heal us so we can keep going. Unconditional intimacy with the Father is the biggest weapon we have available; out of this relationship comes authority and boldness and a joy that can cut through any stronghold, can hack away effortlessly at every shade of evil the enemy tries to throw. Satan is well aware of how dangerous a believer is when they REALLY believe who they are: a son or daughter of the King of Kings.
So rewind to my sob moment in church (if you’ve ever gone to church with me, you know I have a LOT of those.) Because I love to worship, the Lord most often speaks to me through lyrics and moments in His presence with music. This song hit me like a runaway freight train. “And NOW let the weak say I am strong, let the poor say I am rich because of what the Lord has done for us”… I so often am able to thank the Lord for things when they have already passed… hindsight is 20/20 right? “Thank you Lord, for bringing me through that thing years ago that made me who I am now.. it sure sucked at the time, but I can see what you did there now, so thanks.”
But whoever said that thankfulness only results from having complete understanding?? In fact, here’s a verse you might recall: “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with THANKSGIVING, let your requests be made known to God, and the peace of God, which surpasses ALL UNDERSTANDING, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.” (Phil. 4:6-7) What if recognizing thankfulness before you FEEL thankful at all changes everything? What if we praised the Lord for the things that suck because we trust in our Father that He has a purpose for all things? What if everything is falling apart but we can still say “thank you God” because He is good and will always be good and that’s all we need to cling to for things to shift in the atmosphere? How powerful of a witness can we be to others by being at complete peace even when we don’t have a CLUE as to how that happens but by the grace of God? How much ground could we take for the kingdom of God by simply learning how to praise a God who is worthy to be praised extravagantly at ALL times?
As we practiced this song, I excused myself to the bathroom and just cried. Not trying to make this a dramatic confession here, but what a weight off your shoulders it is to just say “I’m sorry Lord for not acknowledging you sooner. Thank you for still loving me through my stubbornness and show me how to draw closer to You in these moments from here on out instead of running away. You know what I need so I trust You.” Amen. That’s all there is to it, and those are some of the most powerful prayers.
Read this blog and learn from it. My biggest regrets in life have always revolved around my stubbornness, in trying to get things my way in my own time. And the most poignant things I have learned have been the ones I wish I’d surrendered to sooner. But at the same time, I don’t regret it altogether because it’s just another way that the Lord has shown me how gentle and patient He is while He’s teaching me these things. There will be a million more things in this lifetime I’ll have to learn, and most of them I will not get right the first several times. But through all of it, I will say that I am learning how to GIVE THANKS. Because it changes circumstances, it changes your attitude, it changes relationships.
But most importantly it changes you.
