Hóla de Guatemala! I am sitting in Blitz café (one of the few spots I’ve found where the internet is as consistently amazing as the coffee), looking out the window at Guatemalans walking by, and trying to put into words what God has done in my life in the three short weeks I’ve been here.
Before embarking on the World Race, I knew who Jesus was and knew that I loved Him, but I expected a relationship with him to miraculously happen without much work on my part. Training camp was the first time I’ve ever heard of listening prayer, which is a belief that our life isn’t solely composed of us talking to God but that He actually communicates back. The idea that God not only hears my prayers but that I also have the ability to hear back from Him baffled me. As soon as I heard stories of other racers having real-life, two-sided relationships with God, I craved it. I would shut everything out and listen but would hear only traffic outside and eventually doze off. I would close my eyes and hope to see something but would see only flecks of light. I started to believe that perhaps a genuine relationship with Jesus wasn’t in the cards for me and grew increasingly frustrated but decided to press in and not give up.
Our first off weekend in Guatemala, half of my squad visited the beautiful Lake Atitlán. There wasn’t a church close to our hostel on Sunday, so we decided to host our own worship service. A fellow racer invited us to tune in to God and to speak whatever was on our heart. Doubtfully, I decided to try (for the millionth time) to just listen. Have you ever seen nature so miraculously beautiful, such as an ocean view or a sunset, that every piece of you was so filled with wonder that there was no room to doubt God’s existence? As I sat in a hammock and absorbed the view of the crystal clear lake hugged on all sides by luscious green volcanoes while bright orange flowers dangled from the terrace above me (see pic above), I was at a loss for words at God’s creation. All of a sudden, the thought crept into my mind that as beautiful as the sight I was taking in was, God considered me even more beautiful. I was his most beautiful creation. The thought branched off to say that I should see myself, both inside and out, as being just as breathtakingly wonderful as the nature around me, and that this should also be what I see/the way I feel when I look at others because everyone is a beautiful creation of God.
I’m smooth with words sometimes but never that good, and I was pretty darn sure that my thoughts came straight from the big man upstairs. Everything in me was screaming to share what was in my heart with the group, but because I doubted my ability to hear God, I decided to stay quiet. Less than a minute later, one of the girls on my squad stood up and said exactly what I wanted to so badly. After she spoke, another one of my squadmates rephrased what she said. Then a third squadmate stood up and said, “I’m not going to repeat the same thoughts, but God was speaking those words into my heart as well.”
My stubbornness can be an asset and a flaw, and my negative self-talk left me continuing to doubt whether God was speaking to me. (I know, I know. I imagine God in heaven with his head in his hands saying, “Margot… just get it already!”). Later that night after returning to Quiché, I was recounting this story during team time, and my teammate Laura told me that though she was on the other side of the Lake, she received the same words from God around the same time in the morning while she was kayaking. Folks, that’s what it took for it to finally click.
Now I believe that God is speaking to us more times than He’s not, and no one person is more special/worthy of conversing with God than anyone else. I’ve learned to trust in words spoken to my heart and the ideas that I “know deep down in my knower” are God, and I look forward to learning to hear from Him more each day for the rest of my life. God doesn’t want us to think of Him as some mystical, unattainable being in the sky but rather a Father whom loves us and wants us to know Him as much as He desires to know our hearts. Sometimes all it takes is to press in, ignore the distractions of life for a moment, and simply listen.
