In reading my last blog, you would know that I was up sick from the hours of 11pm until 3am in Peru. It was during that time that my teammates were praying over me—never leaving my side.
Ever since I said yes to going on the World Race, the Lord has been revealing Himself to me through numbers. So you’ll understand if I paid close attention to the numbers 11 and 3. After leaving the hospital, I was in constant communication with God about these numbers, what they meant or could mean.
Ok God, I’m listening-keep talking.
For about a week, I heard nothing—or so I thought.
During the silence, the Lord was repositioning my heart towards my teammates. I love the way my teammates (on this all female team) have with each other. And I didn’t used to love it. When we gather, inevitably someone begins to rub someone else’s back. Hair gets played with. Merciful, tender, caressing, healing touches are given. Men don’t do this with each other. It is unique to women. When women gather, they ask meaningful questions. They want to know how you are. Women friends unabashedly dive into matters of the heart.
Ruth was speaking to a woman when she said this, “Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God” (Ruth 1:16). Female friendships flow in the deep waters of the heart where God dwells and transformation takes place. It is here, in this holy place, that a we can partner with God in impacting another and be impacted by another for lasting good. To have these women as my teammates is to relax into another soul and be welcomed in all that I am and all that I am not. It is a gift to know that you see as another sees, and immense pleasure to be understood, to enjoy the easy companionship of one you can let your guard down with.
Friendship with these women is a great gift. One to be prayed for and not taken for granted. When God gives a friend, he is entrusting us with the care of another’s heart. It’s a chance to help someone else become the woman she was created to be, to walk alongside her and call her deep heart forth. Friendships need to be nurtured, guarded, and fought for.
We need to call one another without waiting to be called first.
We need to ask how our friends are doing and really listen to their answers. Listen between the lines. We love our friends by pursuing them—we offer our hearts. Honest communication in love is the only way to live and grow in friendships. And believe me, there have been ebbs and flows. There have been real hurt and disappointment. But with the grace of God firmly holding us, reminding us that he is the source of our true happiness, it has been possible to nurture and sustain these deep friendships. We are designed to live in relationship and share in the lives of other women. We need each other. God knows that. He will help us—He already has. We have only to ask and surrender, to wait, to hope, and in faith to love.
We must also repent. I’ve had to learn that in order to enjoy relationships, I must repent my need for control and my insistence that people fill me. Fallen Eve demands that people “come through” for her. Redeemed Eve is being met in the depths of her soul by Christ and is free to offer to others, free to desire, and willing to be disappointed. Fallen Eve has been wounded by others and withdraws in order to protect herself from further harm. Redeemed Eve knows that she has something of value to offer; that she is made for relationship. Therefore, being safe and secure in her relationship with the Lord, she can risk being vulnerable with others and offer her true self.
I’ve spent many years as Fallen Eve. But, it’s been here on the World Race—amongst the poor, the orphans, the drug addicts, the prostitutes, the child soldiers, the homeless, and the single mothers that I have found the Redeemed Eve within myself. My teammates have offered gentle, tender acts of kindness. They have taught me how to better carry my own cross. The gift of friendship amongst these women is a treasure that I don’t take lightly. They have become the face of God—the face of grace, of delight, of mercy. They have taught me what it’s like to be the church.
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After all these revelations on self love, God decided to reveal the meaning of the numbers 11 and 3 when I least expected it and was no longer asking for an explanation. During month one in Colombia, the Lord appeared to me in a dream in which I was getting baptized. I mentioned the dream to our squad mentor in passing and ever since it’s been at the back of my mind. Until Peru.
It was my last week in Peru and I was sitting in a Starbucks googling random bodies of water. I was admitting to the Lord my desire to publicly admit I was forever His—but that I also had no idea what that would look like. I had clicked on an image of a lake nearby and the picture was on my computer screen as a gentleman took a seat next to me.
He looked at my computer and exclaimed, “Oh my word, that’s Lagoon de Piuray! It’s beautiful! Are you going there?”
I turned and simply responded with, “I honestly don’t know.”
He then went on to tell me that I should. That of all the places near Cusco, Peru—this was the place to go. He asked me if I knew what the word Piuray meant. I did not. He explained to me that Piuray stands for ideals, knowledge, spirituality, selflessness, sensitivity, compassion and generosity.
He then gave me a look as if he was staring into my soul and said, “Only by giving value to yourself can you receive it. There is a belief by the people here that those who enter the waters there leave loyal and honorable and always respecting their peers.”
Holy. Crap. I started to tear up. I get it God, the time is now.
“Oh, my name is John by the way,” he said.
That’s it. John 11:3. I needed to read John 11:3.
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So the sisters sent word to Jesus, “Lord, the one you love is sick.”
John 11:3
This is exactly what my teammates were doing for me when I was sick, between the hours of 11pm until 3am.
Jesus didn’t want me to stop there, so I continued reading.
When he heard this, Jesus said, “This sickness will not end in death. No it is for God’s glory so that God’s Son may be glorified through it. Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. (John 11:4-5).
My sickness did not end in death. But instead God wants to use it for a living testimony to glorify His Son.
So when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was two more days, and then he said to his disciples, “Let us go back to Judea.”
“But Rabbi,” they said, “a short while ago the Jews there tried to stone you, and yet you are going back?” (John 11:6-8).
I stayed in the hospital for two days. When I was told I would be discharged, I wanted to go back to Cachora—right away. My squad leader, Teagan, suggested I rest up in Cusco for another day and not rush back to Cachora.
Jesus answered, “Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Anyone who walks in the daytime will not stumble, for they see by this world’s light. It is when a person walks at night that they stumble, for they have no light.” (John 11:9-10).
But Jesus confirmed in my heart that I would be fine. That I was healed. That I was strong. That I needed to get back to my team and the kids in Cachora.
After he had said this, he went on to tell them, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep; but I am going there to wake him up.” (John 11:11).
I had been asleep my entire life. God sent me to Cachora to wake me up. I knew I needed to be baptized, and my team would be the people to do it.
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The role of the church is to be a witness to the presence of the Kingdom of God. Jesus said in Luke that the Kingdom is here (Luke 17:21). Yes, there is a not yet aspect to it. But Jesus himself said, The Kingdom of God is near, it’s here—you can touch it. In other words, it’s Him and He is the King. So if He is here, if the King is here—the Kingdom is here. So what does that mean? What it means to exercise dominion in a godly way is to exercise it in a way that fans the flame of the image of God in ALL. That affirms the capacity and the call of all humanity to exercise dominion. And so it means setting the oppressed free. On every level, it means those who are oppressed within themselves. The good news is that Jesus came to set the oppressed free from the lie that only some were created in God’s image. That only some were created with the full call and the capacity to exercise dominion. Jesus came and squashed those lies.
If you want to be the church and really see what the early church does, read Acts. The people of the church go out and go into the temple. The temple at that time, that was the very place where the people ruled who killed Jesus. It was not the place where they went on Sunday to get their worship on—it was the place where they felt the least safe. But what did they do? They went in and they ate together, they sang together, they exercised community with their enemies—people who were going after them at some point. They shared all things in common. They broke down the class, the gender, the racial barriers that were between them.
The most repeated phrase in the Bible: FEAR NOT. Second most repeated phrase int he Bible: REMEMBER. So how do we fight our fear? FEAR NOT by REMEMBERING that you are a child of God. And as such you are free to dream and risk and love and fail and lose and rest and try again, forever. A child of God’s birthright is: Forever Tries. So that’s what I’m doing—I’m doing whatever it takes to remember that I’m a child of God. From this point forward, I will be a brave child of God and remember that so is everyone else.
“…for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:27-28).
I am currently serving in a closed country and because of legal matters and the safety of the ministry here, I can’t disclose many details. In this culture, the majority of the population is Muslim and we can’t publicly talk to others about Jesus. With all of this said, the Lord has assured me that my baptism will be public. It won’t be behind closed doors. It won’t be in someone’s backyard. And it won’t be in a Christian church surrounded by believers. It will be at a major tourist attraction. I will be surrounded by children of God, both believers and non-believers.
So the next time you hear from me—I will be seeing the world through baptized eyes. It will be my teammates surrounding me as I come up out of the water. I can’t wait.
Below are pictures of my sweet teammates and I. I will never have the words to fully express how grateful I am for each of them.
Kaitlyn and I
Paxtyn and I
Kirsten and I
Monica and I
Erika and I
Kenna and I
