Last week was rough. It wasn’t easy to listen to a sermon with every 4 sentences being in the native Filipino language and every 5th one in English. Worship was difficult with Moses crawling up and down out of my lap and trying to take off his clothes in the middle of worship. It was hot. It was different. I was uncomfortable.
We began walking to church this Sunday. I prayed to God that I would be able to worship as the Filipinos do, that he would give me their heart for worship. That I would look and see God the way they do. We arrived at Jesus Christ’s Church of the Valley. (Last week we had attended a different church and was honestly expecting a service much like the one I attended the week before.)
Worship began.
By the third song, I was speaking in tongues. (Note- the speaking of tongues was between me and God not in front of the entire congregation. Big difference.) Worship continued for over an hour. I remained speaking in the spirit. As the pastor began to speak the Lord had asked me to move from my seat to the ground to worship him.
“What?”, I thought to myself. “God, this man is in the middle of his sermon. I don’t want to be rude. Are you sure?”
“I am sure. Move to the ground.”
I have been working on obedience, and when I hear God immediately responding. Needless to say, I sat on the ground. I continued to worship during the service and then I was informed by God, “Take off your shoes. The ground you are on is holy ground.”
Knowing that people were going to be asking, “What the hell is this girl doing”, I did exactly as I was instructed and took off my shoes. There I remained for the rest of the service, humbled before the Lord in such a capacity, that I could barely enable my body to do anything but worship. In my 27 years of existence this was the most intimate time I have ever spent with the Lord. We speak of intimacy in Christ, but I honestly had no idea what that looked like until this past Sunday when he gave me the eyes of the Filipino people. My God continues to woo and inspire me daily.
This worship time also brought out in me my performance issues. Why do I care so greatly about what other people think? I noticed also on Saturday when we were at Jason’s and Launi’s that Satan used that foothold to make me question what others were thinking about me while I was praying for Launi. This is not allowed.
Last night during our team meeting, I told my team, “There is still something here that needs to be spoken out. I will stay here for as long as it takes. We can’t give the enemy any sort of control. It doesn’t matter how stupid we think it is. It needs to be brought out. I will sit here 4 days straight if I have to.” I honestly didn’t it think I was the one who need to bring something to the table. We continued in prayer and I knew that I need to bring my performance and my care for what other people thought about me and surrender it fully. I DO NOT want it to affect me, my ministry, or my team’s ministry.
