If you’ve been keeping up with me, you know that Africa was rather stormy for me. My team, Freedom’s Fire, faced struggles and difficulties of every kind: malaria, typhoid, seizures, people going home, pain over the state of Africa, pride, disputes, isolation, lack of support. I personally went through a major tempest of sorts…which stirred up all kinds of emotions, brokenness, and issues I didn’t even know I had. And I got to face them. Up there on the surface of that storm, I got to confront all the muck I’ve been carrying around for years. It was painful, but it was good. Oh so good.
At our squad debrief in Nairobi, we switched up teams again. I was in complete shock when the names of my new team members were called. All five of them were people I was already super good friends with (Justin, Nathan, Elle, Aly, Stephanie). People who honestly just bring out the best in me, but who I know can also challenge me. Such a blessing. We all went to lunch and had to come up with a new team name for ourselves. We were all kind of tired of coming up with team names, as this was the third time, but we knew that whatever it was would be prophetic of the next season for all of us.
Almost all of us felt we would be stepping into a season of more. Of deeper places…in each other, in God, in ourselves, in the world. Water was a theme that kept coming back. If the last season was all about storms, we knew this would be a time of diving way under those waters, into the quiet, heavy Ocean of God’s love for us. Thus, “Deep Waters.”
This month in Thailand has already proven that true.
This is quickly turning into my favorite month on the race. Aly, Elle, and Stephanie, and I are here in Bangkok working with YWAM at a university. We teach English class, do campus outreach, hang out with Thai students at a coffee shop, and just love on and disciple the girls who live in the dorm (BJD) we are staying at. We’ve found that Christianity moves very slowly here because Buddhism has such strong familial and cultural roots. Thais will generally live like a Christian for a couple of years, finding out everything they can about it in deep community, before they will proclaim they are a Christian. They know that it is a radical choice, one that they must be willing to defend in their families, jobs, and social circles. Asia is almost the opposite of the African aphorism-“the church is miles wide, but inches deep.” Here the church is inches wide, but miles deep. Which means our conversations and our prayers with them must also reach far beneath the surface.
Time with Aly, Elle, and Steph has been incredible. Each night at feedback we are having life changing conversation…speaking to deep hurts, habits, thought patterns, and lies we’ve always believed. We are calling out the truth of who God says we are.
God is taking us down, way down, scuba gear levels down. Into deeper…
