This morning I sat in a sun chair and reflected over this last month. I’d been looking at this last month through a lens of discouragement in how our team was functioning. God, however, reminded me this morning of a few simple things.
First, He reminded me of Mozambique and the words spoken over me in Swaziland. God had to bring me back to the word UNIQUE. During our stay in Nelspruit, I felt that because I wasn’t learning how to “soak” up the Holy Spirit, I didn’t have a legitimate relationship with God. If I didn’t sit and soak, I wasn’t where God wanted me. Or at least where my team thought I should be (even if they never said it, that’s how I feeling anyway). But something that God chose to speak to me today was that He’s teaching me, even if it doesn’t look like what everyone else is learning. He chooses to teach each of us different lessons. And my lesson at this point in my life, doesn’t look like theirs.
I guess what I started doing this month was what Scott and I had been taught by one of our mentors from home, Mark Fee. One of the illustrations he used was how we put up measuring sticks for ourselves, of what we think other people measure us by. Was I being a good missionary, good wife, good daughter, good Christian? Although totally inadvertent, I was starting to depend on what others thought of me, instead of what God thought of me. This is stuff that I’ve taught other people about and I was doing it myself. Talk about 2 steps backwards. But that’s exactly where God gets the glory.
Today, as I listened to God tell me who I really was, my heart started to fill up again. After a month of giving of myself, and feeling left empty at the end of the day, I finally got it. So, was the last month in Nelspruit wasted because I just (re)learned this today? By no means. I needed today in order to have this last month made sense. I am awakening to who I am, to who God created me to be.
The last night in Nelspruit, a few of the contacts we formed there spoke and prophesied over all of us. To Scott and I they said that we are in the process of becoming parents, that we will be natural as well as spiritual parents. That right now we are going through birth pains, and that it’s necessary to go through these pains to get to the reward of the birth.
And God is birthing some great stuff. This month, God has shown me a passion for young men and women awakening to their identity as sons and as daughters of Christ. That God has created us as separate entities, having this physical experience, as men and women. God has given me a heart that longs for men and women to embrace who God made them to be. And God has also shown Scott and I what that venue may look like. That it may look like adventure camps. That it may look like men discipling boys and women discipling girls through the outlet of recreation. We’ve seen it modeled in Nelspruit by Trompie and his wife, Susan, and we can see continuing a relationship with those two, as our dreams begin to take shape.
This last month, God was teaching me this, but I think the venue has been off. I was just throwing this stuff around willy-nilly, hoping it would attach somewhere. But, I look back now, and see that, I needed to listen to God first, instead of just trying to take hold of this stuff, I tried to make it mine, to be in control of it. As I put the measuring sticks down, I’m more able to be the woman God created me to be. I feel like the beauty, and that I can rest in that I don’t have the answers. I rest because I listen for God’s voice, and let Him tell me who this information is for. I can rest because I have a strong man of God, and a God who is bigger than any kind of discouragement I may face. I choose to hope. When I look at this last month in the light of eternity, I can certainly hope that our future is secure in Christ. I’m exactly where God wants me.
