Hey everybody! Ok, so month 5 was spent in Guatemala. Right before the month started, our entire squad went through a transition of team changes. That meant that we were no longer with the people we had been serving with for the first 4 months, but we were now on a new team. And I love my new team! While change is always difficult, I couldn’t ask for better people to do life with.
This month, our team’s ministry was ATL (Ask The Lord). This basically means that we don’t have a set ministry. Instead, through prayer, we let The Lord lead us where He wants us to go. Going into this month, I thought it would be full of crazy God stories! And it was. We became friends with beggers, we worked at a pastor conference, we prayed healings, loved on beautiful children with special needs and were able to meet up with and share the gospel with a girl who contacted us through Instagram. It was great! But honestly, the game changer for not just that month but for my entire Race (maybe even my entire life) happened our last week there.
Our last week, our team stayed at the AIM (Adventures in Missions) base in Antigua. Such a blessing! These people, who had already done the World Race and were now serving the Lord in Antigua, were lavishly pouring out their love and wisdom on us.
Now, here’s a short recap of where I’d been at up to this point on the Race. Honestly, I was a hot mess. The Lord broke me my first few months on the Race. Hard. But I’d been learning that sometimes when life breaks us, we put ourselves back together the wrong way. Then the Lord has to come in, break us again, so that He can then put us back together in the perfect form that we were always meant to be in. So here I was, month 5, no longer broken, but still pretty fragile. Not wanting to rock the boat. Not wanting any more challenges until I was firmly on my feet again. So you can imagine when I felt the Lord whispering words like leader and lion to me that I was hesitant (ok let’s be honest, augmentative) to believe that these words were true. Pssh!! Me? A lion?? Yeah, ok…
Flash back to our last week in Guatemala at the AIM house.
So the whole time we’ve been at this house, this one guy, Noe, kept asking me if we knew each other. I told him no. This happened about 50 times. He was SO sure that we knew each other! On one of our last nights there, Noe pulled me aside and told me why he thought he had the feeling that we knew each other. He said that he has the spiritual gift of seeing people the way God sees them, and he wanted to tell me how the Lord saw me. It was a pretty intense conversation but I’ll sum it up for you guys. He told me that I’m not flying under God’s radar. That I have a gift of knowing God’s will and that I need to share it with others. That God has called me to be a leader and that when God looks at me, He sees a lion. Sound familiar?
This conversation alone was impactful enough to change my Race. But God’s the type of guy who likes to repeat himself when it comes to really important things. So a few days later, our entire squad was together for a few days before we all traveled together to Asia. During these few days we had some teachings from our squad leaders. For one of these teachings, our whole squad went to the AIM base. After our squad leader Ryan was done teaching, he said that he had had a vision of Noe talking in front of our squad. So he called him up front. Then Noe got up there and started talking about how The Lord was giving our squad a word. And that word was small. He said that God uses the small people. He also said that as a squad, it was our job to speak life into each other and call out what we see in each other. That’s when, without any warning mind you, Noe decided to call me up in front of the entire squad and have them speak life into me. This was probably the most awkward yet totally the most rewarding experiences of my life. People spoke words like Fierce, Steady, Favored by God, Leader, Wise, Daughter, Woman of Influence and more. Blew. My. Mind. Basically, God was holding me by both my shoulders and shaking me and saying, “I TOLD you! Now walk in this new identity that I have given you.” This day was the game changer. This day, God opened the door for me to no longer be fragile or a victim but a strong daughter of the Lord Most High.
Oh, and in case I still hadn’t gotten it. The Lord told one of the AIM girl to write down her word and give it to me as I was leaving. When I opened it, guess what it said,
Lionheart
So I guess when the Lord tells you you’re a lion, you better believe Him.
