Last month in Rwanda, our ministry looked like: preaching five days a week, door to door getting to know people and praying for them, and teaching english at a school of 3-5 year olds. It was great! We lived in our hosts’ house, whom we called Dad Africa and Mom Africa, with their three boys. They have two churches and are both pastors. They live their life on mission, always singing worship songs, praising and thanking God, living lives of holiness and righteousness, and are raising their boys to live the same. We learned so much from them. As a family, they are always speaking truth and laughing often, they are seriously some of the absolute funniest people i’ve ever met. They were the greatest family, truly. I feel so blessed and so grateful to have had the opportunity to meet them and spend a month living and doing ministry with them.
The second Sunday of last month I got the opportunity to preach at Mom Africa’s church. Now if you know me, this is going to be hard to believe and maybe even a shock (it’s a shock to me as well, it’s fine), but I absolutely love preaching! As a squad leader, i’ve had a lot more opportunities to preach, share my testimony, teach, or give an encouraging word on the spot. Before squad leading, you would have never heard me saying those words! Even at the end of my Race, I was more comfortable with it, but definitely didn’t love it, or even really like it still. I’ve hated public speaking my entire life. I always blamed it on the fact that I’m an introvert. I really didn’t think there would ever be a time where I wouldn’t hate being up in front of people talking. Going on to my Race, I would have said that I wasn’t much of a fearful person. But, wow, the Lord revealed so much to me during my Race. The reality is that I’ve actually lived a lot of my life in fear — Fear of failure, fear of man, fear of what people think… just a whole lot of fear. Once the Lord revealed the fear that I was living in, I had a realization that blaming it on the fact that i’m an introvert was just an excuse for the real underlying root, which is fear. Holy Spirit has done a great work in and through me, since the end of my Race and even since launch with S squad. Praise the Lord for growth, change, and fearless freedom! Right now in this moment, I can say that I’ve found the true freedom that there is in Christ, and the true freedom that comes when we not only know who we are in Christ, but we actually believe who He says we are. The fact that I love speaking in front of people now is actually mind blowing and a bit hard to believe sometimes! It’s astonishing what can happen in us and through us, when we walk in our authority and live out what the scriptures say in Hebrews 12 verse 1, which is, in my own words, to throw off everything that hinders us that’s not of God or from God. Fear is not from God, and I’ve surrendered and laid down my fear of public speaking, in order to grab a hold of His peace! It’s marvelous, His supernatural peace. I used to be fearful, and even anxious, just preparing for whatever it was I was going to share. For the past few months, there has been no fear or anxiety, only peace, even in the preparation.
I started preparing for this sermon the week prior to the Sunday I would be preaching. I sat and asked the Lord what He wanted to speak to the group of people that would be at church on Sunday. I got nothing. Day after day after day, nothing. On Friday afternoon, after praying and working on it for a few hours, I finally had a topic and scripture for my sermon. Although I was thankful to at least know what the Lord wanted me to preach on, I only had a day to come up with a thirty minute sermon. Yikes. And last month, Saturday’s were my Sabbath day of each week, and I didn’t want to spend my entire Sabbath rest day working on a sermon. I felt complete peace though, so I knew the Lord was up to something greater than what I could understand.
I spent the next day resting in that peace and trusting that the Lord knew what He was doing. Also, in this season of squad leading, the Lord is teaching me a lot about complete and total dependency on Him and what it looks like to live day to day from that place of dependency. It wasn’t at all surprising to me really that the Lord wasn’t giving me the whole sermon, because I knew He was trying to teach me more about dependency in Him. After spending a few hours on Saturday, the Lord told me to share part of my testimony, He revealed a few more scriptures that He wanted me to add, and a few revelation truths that He had spoken to me that I felt like this church congregation needed to hear. He also told me to give an altar call at the end. I’m the kind of person that wants to have every word that I’m going to say written out, but I’ve been pushing myself to not do this for a bit now. It’s brought me to a place of humility to admit that I can’t and don’t want to come up with the words to speak on my own. So, even though I still didn’t have an entire sermon written out, I felt pretty confident after hearing Him speak those few things to me. I had a little bit more to work with now.
Sunday morning, I woke up early, to have a little time to pray over my sermon and to spend some time reading over it and asking the Lord if there was anything He wanted me to change about it. After reading through it, I began to get slightly worried. It was not a four point, or even a three point sermon. It didn’t feel like it flowed at all. And I felt like I was preaching two different sermons that I was trying to force together to be one. There were a lot of thoughts and doubts running through my mind an hour before we had to leave for church. I spent a few minutes telling the Lord all about these doubts and worries of mine. He spoke gently to me and asked, “Do you trust me?” Well yes, yes I trust you. Again, “Do you trust that I will speak through you? That I knew way before this Sunday morning that you would be in Rwanda preaching on this very day? This day isn’t a surprise to me and I’ve placed a message inside of you to speak and encourage my people with this very morning. You can trust me.” Woah, ok then. Worries and doubts were gone and my peace came flooding back. I spoke it out loud. I said, “I trust you Jesus.” And that was it. I closed my Bible, put my notes away, and simply trusted Him.
We got to church and worshipped for awhile. I fell on my knees crying out to the Lord, telling Him that I couldn’t do this on my own and I didn’t want to try to. I asked Holy Spirit to take over and to use me as an open vessel for His Spirit to freely flow through. It was my time to go up on stage to preach and that’s exactly what happened. Holy Spirit took over! Besides sharing what the Lord told me to share, I’m honestly not sure what else I said for forty five minutes. I had my notes of what I wanted to say, but I didn’t even go in the order of how they were written. Every word coming out of my mouth felt so natural that I knew it wasn’t me speaking, it was Holy Spirit.
At the end, I still felt it was important to give an altar call, so I did, and eight people came forward and received salvation!!! It was incredible. Mom Africa led them through a prayer and I just stood there and smiled looking at my eight new Rwandan brother’s and sister’s in Christ. I could feel all of Heaven celebrating with us and could sense my Heavenly Father smiling down to me and whispering to me in a still small voice, “You can trust me.” : ) Of course I already knew that I could trust Him, but I’m so glad that I didn’t try to come up with more notes or try to preach directly from my notes in the order that I had them written. I’m thankful that I chose to trust and depend on Him; instead of trying to rely on my own strength. It led to experiencing a deeper dependency in my Father and an opportunity to see and witness His glory put on display.
So today I celebrate! For the quite a few months now, I’ve no longer been living a life of fear when it comes to public speaking, but instead, a life where I’m eager to share my heart, my story, and God’s love and word with others. A life of saying ‘yes’ to all of the uncomfortable opportunities that the Lord invites me into, because it’s in those moments where I come to the end of myself and to a place of fully dependent on the Lord. And that’s the greatest place I could ever be. What I’ve been learning and reminded of constantly over the past two years is that, when we know He’s good, we’ll trust Him. And when we trust Him, we’ll obey Him. And when we obey Him, we’ll see and know that He’s good.
I’m sure there will still be times throughout my life where I will get nervous before speaking in front of a crowd, but I’ve seen that He’s good and that I can trust Him, so when those moments come, I’ll choose to still walk in my freedom and peace, instead of letting fear paralyze me.
My prayer in sharing this story and this part of my own personal testimony, is that maybe you too can surrender and lay down whatever fears are holding you back, and grab a hold of His peace and receive the freedom that awaits you today.
In freedom,
Mads
One of my biggest prayer requests right now is fundraising! I have about $6,400 more to fundraise for this season of squad leading and my deadline to be fully funded is September 1. Will you please prayerfully consider donating? If you would like to donate, you can click the “Donate!” button at the top of the page to do so OR you can venmo me “@madisonthompson-‘. Thank you all so much for the support I’ve already received! And thank you for continuing to follow me on this journey. I appreciate each of you!
