This month in India our whole squad is together staying in a town called Ongole. We are working with an organization called India Christian Ministries (ICM). ICM has many different ministries and tries to reach many different villages in this rural part of India. For us to be effective while we are here, they have our squad split up into our teams and spread out. Some teams are working with orphans. Some are working with special needs kids. Some are tutoring kids after school. My team and another team have been tasked with reaching out to villages, encouraging the village pastor, praying for people, and preaching in church meetings every night. We split up and hit a different village each day. While going door to door praying for people for hours everyday gets tedious and my whole team gets exhausted, I love it. Praying for healing and speaking life have become very normal to me over the last year. It is something that I have become comfortable with. I didn't come on the World Race to stay in my comfort zone, though.
The way that God seems to like ripping me out of my comfort zone so far on the Race has been with public speaking. I have hated talking in front of people my whole life. In school when an oral report was required of me, I would skip that day and take the F on the report. Public speaking has been an area of great anxiety in my life, so I have always avoided it. Now God has put me in a place where avoiding it isn't an option. In Nepal we were required to give testimonies and messages in small house fellowships and church meetings. I reluctantly gave my testimony throughout the month and When I did God gave me peace.
Now we are in India. The church meetings we are speaking at are bigger and we preach over loud speakers to the entire village. I guess God wanted to shake things up a little. The first week I gave my testimony twice. It was received well and I started getting more comfortable with using a microphone. I'm pretty much a testimony machine after all.
Last night it came time to decide who was going to speak. Our team gives two testimonies and a message every night. I have avoided preaching a message for the entire first month and a half. I haven't spent my entire life in the church and I haven't been to bible college. I just haven't felt qualified to preach a biblical message (outside of my personal testimony) because I don't know the bible nearly as well as most of the people I'm with. I almost volunteered to give my testimony again, but God convicted me that it was my time to step up and preach a message.
Crap! There goes my comfort zone once again. I had nothing prepared to speak on. I had my bible and some sketchy notes on my iPad I had taken in Nepal on the Great Commission. I considered preaching on the Great Commission since I at least had those notes, but God said no to that too. He had a message for the people in this village and He wanted me to trust Him enough to let Him speak through me.
"Okay, I guess we are doing this thing God. What are we talking about?"
"Speak on the Holy Spirit."
Well, at least He chose a topic that I know a little bit about. Letting the Holy Spirit talk about himself seemed pretty logical too. So, I started going over what I was going to say in my mind and I grabbed a few relevant bible passages from my Great Commission notes. I thought I was prepared and it was time to preach.
Nate and Courtney gave their testimonies and I sat on stage praying that the Holy Spirit would give me peace and give me the words that He wanted spoken over this village. The peace came and so did the words. Most of what I had prepared in my mind got thrown out and replaced with stuff I hadn't even thought of. I explained the gifts of the Spirit and how all of us as believers have the same Spirit that rose Jesus from the dead living inside of us. I told them that it was an honor to have the opportunity to pray throughout their village that afternoon, but they also have the same power to pray for each other. God wanted them to know that He is with them and that He wants them to step into that power. He wanted them to know that it doesn't take a group of white American missionaries praying for Him to respond. The whole experience was absolutely amazing, but it turns out that God wasn't through blowing my mind.
This morning during breakfast I overheard a conversation that my friend John from the other team tasked with preaching in the villages was having. He was talking about how God had called him to stand up and give a message without anything prepared. It turns out that the Holy Spirit spoke the same message through John that He spoke through me in a different village at the same time on the same night. My mind is completely blown right now. I am finally starting to realize that when God asks me to step out of my comfort zone and just trust Him, he shows up in amazing ways. Thank you for reading my blog. I pray that each of you will have your comfort zone wrecked and experience what God has for you. Love Y'all!!!
