If you peruse World Race blogs long enough, you’ll start to notice a trend, especially in regards to training camp. People get just a little freaked out. They look around at training camp and see people raising their hands during worship. Apparently people don’t do that where they come from. And then to make matters worse, speakers come in and start talking about hearing God’s voice and praying for healing. If there were suspicions that these AIM people are crazy, it’s now been officially proven.
And then there’s me. If YWAM didn’t ruin me for the ordinary, then my church sure did. Hearing from God is a daily occurrence in YWAM, and if people aren’t dancing during worship then something’s definitely up. We learned to expect healing on our outreaches. It’s all as normal as it can be. Bible school at my church sealed the deal. I learned how to pray like I’m kicking the devil in the backside. Hard. Okay, so hard he’d wished he’d never messed with me in the first place. I also grew in praying in the Spirit. I could do it in front of all my friends, or my mom, or my pastors and not feel embarrassed. Let’s face it, praying in tongues is a pretty awesome gift. So no shame there.
It took all of one week on the field to realize that I was definitely the oddball. One of two oddballs really (yay for Colleen!). I felt stunned that people didn’t necessarily like to pray out loud, or for longer than five minutes, or actually feel the desire to stand up during prayer. I just sat there with my eyeballs popping out of my head. My brain could not compute what was going on around me. It was all so strange. I immediately felt the need to stifle the Spirit. Suddenly I couldn’t be myself around my team because I would do nothing more than freak people out. No one would understand because they already write off that kooky Holy Spirit stuff.
I knew I couldn’t survive living eleven months like this. So what’s the answer?
I will pray in the Spirit. I’ll be first in line to pray healing over someone. I’ll speak out what God is speaking. I’ll dance and worship with all my heart. I’ll kick the devil’s butt in prayer. I’ll live like the Spirit-filled believer I am. I’ll be the weird one, no apologies, no excuses.
