This last week our ministry focus took an unexpected turn when monday night Gideon told us that the Lord had laid on his heart to start working with the street kids here. He and his church have never done anything with them before, so this was a whole new thing for him, but he said that he was sure the Lord was speaking to him about their needs and wanting them to be involved in ministering to them. So, tuesday morning instead of going out for door-to-door evangelism, half of the team went out to find street kids. Gideon said that what he really wanted our help with this week was making contact with the kids and finding stuff out about where they live and who their leaders were. He told us that it might take all week to do this because they are usually scattered all through out the town's shopping areas and what not, so going into that morning we weren't expecting much other than a few conversations for the day. However, about 45 minutes after the girls from our team and the church members they were with went out we received a phone call from them telling us we had to come now.
We hopped into Gideon's car and sped to where they all were and were greeted by one of my team members, distraught, 40 plus street kids all sitting in tattered clothes, some huffing from the bottles they got high off of, many screaming out all the things they needed, others so high that they weren't even really there but just dazing off, and everyone else from the team in the midst of them trying to get everyone settled down enough to talk to them. We were expecting and kind of prepared to meet maybe like 5 or 10 them, but we were learning a lesson really quickly that the Lord doesn't promise to give you what YOU are prepared for, but He will always give you what He is preparing for you… even if you don't always feel ready for it right when you receive it.
I'm learning that in a lot more way this week than just with the street children. More than just situationally, or physically, this week I feel like I'm beginning to get a lot more spiritually than I think I was expecting or kind of prepared for coming into this trip. And I'm going to tell you about some of them, knowing that it might possibly freak out some of you all back home. That's okay though, it should, it freaked me out too. But just because it's bigger than me, completely different than what I've experienced before, and puts me in a place I've never been does not mean it is to be refused or doubted. If I functioned off those feelings, I would never have come to know an almighty God through His son who sends His Spirit to dwell in us…. something that is definitely way beyond me to understand fully. A piece of what the Lord is speaking to me, even right now, is that if I had wanted to just experience things I could "handle" or "make sense of" then I maybe shouldn't have invited an all Holy, all powerful, just, good God to dwell inside me and ask Him to do His work through me, and on top of that I definitely should not have left America.
I've heard it said before about the spiritual warfare that's happening in America, that it is a very subtle type. In one of the most impacting sermons I've heard, John Shirley, preached about how 40% of Christians, in America, strongly agree that satan is not a living being but is only a symbol of evil and that, and on top of that about 38% believe that the Holy Spirit isn't a living presence but just a symbol of God's power. I'd venture to say, though, that even more wouldn't actually say those things if asked, but if put in the face of their realness would be consumed with mad amounts doubt and refuse to believe the tangibility of those two beings. Because in America there is beyond a doubt spiritual warfare happening, but the greatest victory of the enemy has been that he's convinced us he's not even real; for the majority of us we don't see him manifest in the ways he does for the rest of the world because instead of making us frightened by the realness of spirituality and picking a fight that way, he's made us feel as much as possible completely unspiritual and content with living in a limited experience of God. We doubt the gifts of the Spirit, like speaking in tongues, miraculous healing, the casting out of demons, prophesy, and the likes because they seem so far removed from our daily life. I know I doubted all those things, even after seeing some of them, because they straight up weirded me out. I never once really stopped to think about why they weirded me out; I mean, if these are things that Jesus and His disciples did all through out their lives here and that Jesus said we would do through His power, and I'm a follower of Jesus…why do these things freak me out so, so much? They seem so far removed from our lives, I think, because they are being removed, but I firmly believe now that it's not the Lord that's doing the removal… I think He's in fact trying to do just the opposite.
And I feel wholly unprepared for that; the problem with that now, though, is that I don't have the luxury of believing that satan is not real and does not move in the ways I've previously only heard about. And I have to try a lot harder to doubt the the gifts of Spirit when He begins to lay them upon me. For instance last week while praying for the sick we came across one of the boys that had become sick very suddenly in the middle of the night and the pastor that I was with said he believed that a demon had come upon him and was inflicting this illness. I'll be honest when he first said that I felt myself kind of back away; it was a bit much for me to handle. And then he says were going to pray right now and looks at me and says Rachel you need to pray for him, can you do that? Even though I was more than wee bit apprehensive, how would you really say no in that situation? So I begin to pray for the boy and I literally began to realize that I had no words.. I had no clue what to pray or say or ask for, so I begin to ask for that first. I begin to just ask the Lord for words and for Him to reveal to me what to pray for, for this boy. And then the strangest thing happened, something I had only heard people do before and seriously thought would never happen for me because I doubted it for myself so much. I began to pray in a language, words, and sounds that I did not recognize. This was NOT what I meant when I had prayed for words, I was very much thinking and asking for good ol' english words that would be meant for this boy. I did not feel ready for something like that and even after we finished praying and went home I did not feel like I fully understood or grasped what had just occurred. But as I began and still am in the processes of processing all this stuff, the Lord kept speaking comfort over my heart and His authority over my life. This last week I'll admit I've had moments of thinking back on it and being like, what was that? was that really me praying in tongues?? and in those moments I hear the Lord speak to me over and over again that I asked for His words, not mine, and that He gave me them. On top of that He keeps telling me to expect more too. I don't know what that means yet, but I do know that He keeps reminding me of what I wrote at the end of my last blog, that when we come into the fullness of His presence these things are the ripples that follow and that if I'm out here looking for the splash I better be expecting the ripples to come too.
