As I reflect on the first four months of my World Race, I realize God has taught me some really valuable lessons that I would like to share with you.
During my first month in the Philippines, God began to break through the barriers I had placed in my heart and speak truth to the lies I believed about myself. For over half of my life, I had told myself that I was not worthy of love. I believed that I was never good enough for anyone or anything. I became a people pleaser and learned that doing things for others sometimes led me to feel accepted. Ultimately, this caused a lot of pain, but because it was such a defining part of me I had held on to it for years. Through the prayers and support of my team and the love of the children at New Faith Family Children’s Home, God shattered that lie. I now understand that through Jesus I am 100% loved and accepted. I can do nothing to make Him love me more and I can do nothing to make Him love me less. What an amazing burden lifted when this knowledge finally reached the depths of my heart!
My second month in Cambodia was a difficult one. As I shared in a previous blog, I had an overwhelming sense of heaviness almost from the moment I entered the country. I had no explanation of the cause and no matter what I did I could not get rid of the feeling. When I finally reached my breaking point, I cried out to God with a sincerity I had not felt in years. At that moment God began to minister to me, but because I was in so much pain I was not able to recognize it. A few days later, again through the prayers of my team, I began to feel some of the heaviness lift and I was able to enter into true worship for the first time since being in Cambodia. Through this experience, God taught me that worship is the key! Worship is a choice. It is a lifestyle. Basically, what God showed me is that it does not matter what I am feeling; as long as I hunger and thirst for Him and worship Him with all I have in me, at THAT moment He will always meet me where I am. He is faithful. He is good. His love never fails.
As my time in Cambodia was coming to an end and Malaysia was fast approaching, I asked God to show me the things in my heart that should not be there and I asked for him to consume those things with his holy fire so that I could be more like him. It was then that God revealed to me the source of the heaviness I had been feeling. It was a deep sense of rejection. It saturated all of my relationships. I lived in fear of doing or saying the wrong thing and losing the ones I tried so very hard to hold on to. He told me that the reason I had so much fear of rejection in my life was because I put other people in the place in my heart that was designed only for Him. As long as I did this I could only experience rejection. When I began to give God his rightful place, the heaviness lifted and I have been able to love those in my life from a place of joy and freedom I never felt before.
