I’ve never been the type to know what was going to happen next. Some people have been able to say, “God told me when I was twelve that I was going to be a teacher…” or the equally annoying; “When I was seven a man prayed over me and prophesied that I would be a missionary.” I think God has almost laughed at my attempts to uncover His plans for my life.
- “Ok, my Myers-Briggs personality test says that I am an ENFP, so that means I would be a good counselor, teacher, social worker…”
- “Ok God, if I was my future husband… what World Race route would I sign up for?? Come on Jesus, move my computer mouse by the power of your Holy Spirit! I could be one click away from meeting my husband!”
- “Wait, you had a dream about me last night?! Where was I? Who was I with? What was I doing? Tell me everything!”
I trust God, but sometimes I get a little jealous of His mountain top view of things. And despite all of my hunger to see more than five feet in front of my face, God in all His sovereign wisdom has never thought it necessary to reveal more than the next place for me to put my foot and entrust me with obedience.
Someone told me once that God would never show us all that He has planned for us because we would get scared, say “Heck no, I could never do that!” and bolt 90mph in the opposite direction.
But last month things started to change… I started to hear things and see things that I had never experienced before.
God started to tell me what was going to happen next. But I did not believe Him.
I was on our roof the first week we were in Haiti. Taking in the sunset and thanking God for another day filled with love and laughter; another day that I got to encourage the sisters around me and invite them to walk with me into the Father’s wide open heart.
“Thank you Lord for these women. Thank you for filling me with your love for them and burdening me with your desires for us and what you want this month to look like. Thank you for giving me the honor of being a team leader and pulling strength out of me that I didn’t know what there. Thank you for seeing that in me, thank you for putting that in me…”
Beloved, there is more. I see more and I have put more in you.
“Really? But these are already really big shoes.”
You are going to be a squad leader.
Shut down… Ok Becky, why are you making stuff up like that? That can’t be God’s voice. Push that out of your mind Becky. Just keep thanking God and maybe He will overlook that crazy thought you just had.
Over the next week all of these thoughts kept coming to me…
“Man, squad leaders have the coolest job ever. They get to travel all over the world from team to team and just encourage people and call identity out of them. That would be so cool! I could totally do that. That is what makes my heart race. Dang it! I am thinking about it again… rebuke rebuke! No selfish ambition or vain conceit in Jesus name!”
So, I told God, “Listen, if by some crazy chance that this is you, I cannot handle it right now. I need to be present for my team. And I need to control my thoughts. So, please take this away. I am placing it at your feet and walking away."
The next morning, my squad mate Andrea approached me: “Becky, I had a dream about you last night… You were called up into leadership over all these teams…”
Really Jesus, really?! Why can’t I get away from this?
For I know the plans I have for you…
I would be so exhausted by the end of the day from my ping pong thoughts that I tried to shut off all the time. People would continue to bring it up around me and I felt like I was going to explode.
So I prayed, “Lord, I need a friend. Please give me someone to talk to about all of this. I can’t tell my team. I don’t want them to think that I thinking mutiny. And I don’t want to seem self-centered and egotistical. Or be that girl that walks around flipping her hair and snapping her gum, “Yeah, God told me I am going to be a squad leader. People have been dreaming dreams. I am kinda a big deal.”
A few days later, Ashlee and I were sitting in our hammocks at the back of our house in Haiti. I had just asked her what was on her heart and gotten the honor of hearing her honest answer and then she turned to me like it was my turn but instead said “So, squad leading…? I’ve known since month one.”
Did you know that if you experience panic and joy at the exact same time you burst into tears? True story. And then the tears are followed with profuse word vomit at an exponential speed. It is a powerful combination that I would not recommend to the emotionally faint of heart.
God had given me a friend.
We got to Thailand and things continued to progress despite my intentions of keeping things on lock down. God began placing these intense burdens on me for the squad and the current and future squad leaders. I would be in the middle dinner and God would say, “Go pray for Erin and Chelsea.” Really God, you know how much I love Phad Thai… “You heard me.” Ok Jesus. (I think the kids from my ministry in Thailand would remember me in three ways:
- My crazy huge curly hair.
- My elephant call that could bring silence to a crowded mall food court.
- The way I would prayer stomp across the bad mitten court during dinner for large chunks of time.
After five weeks of this God said, “You have to tell your team all of this. They love you and will not let you fall.”
So like a dog with my tail between my legs, I told them about the mental battle I had been fighting for the past month, expecting outrage. When I looked up they had all gathered around me and all I saw reflected on their faces was love.And then I exposed the root of what I was struggling with:
What do you do when you feel like you know what God is saying, but what He is saying is so good that you take your heart and clutch it in your hands because you don’t trust Him with it? What do you do when you realize that deep down you are not sure if God is truly good? Or that you know He is good to other people but maybe not to you and you just keep waiting for that moment when you say, “See I knew it! You are just a big meanie!” Or how do you submit to the idea that you are hearing God’s voice and stand confident in that while risking the chance that if you are wrong you are going to look like an idiot and hearing Satan say, “I told you so.”
These things are hard to say out lout. But you want to know the crazy thing? God is ok with all of these thoughts. He loves it when His children get real with Him, when we present the thoughts we are ashamed of. He is not worried about His own reputation. He can soften the hardest hearts with His love and faithfulness, and two words, “I AM”.
As for my thoughts about my own abilities, he knows how to handle those too:
“Lord, what if I don’t think I can do this? What if I don’t think I have what it takes?”
That does not matter. Anything you lack I have plentiful of. It does not matter how you see yourself or your own abilities because I see you a lot clearer than you see yourself and honestly know you better than you know yourself. And when we get down to it, my opinion is the only one that matters. My thoughts are higher than yours.
Dang, harsh but true.
“Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly, abundantly above all that we could ask or even think by the power that is at work within us.” –Eph. 3:20
This is the verse that flashed through my mind last week when our current squad leaders Erin and Chelsea formally sat me down and extended me and two others on my squad (Clair and Robert), the invitation to become the next squad leaders of J-squad.
“The Lord has been very clear in pointing out you three for this position. But more than that, we see this in you and fully believe that you have what it takes. But we don’t want you to just take what we say. We want you to take some time to seek the Lord to get your “YES” from Him for yourself.”
Silence… Shifting glances…. More silence.
Robert breaks the silence; “God told me in Haiti that this is what He has for me.”
Clair; “Me too, in Haiti.”
Me, laughing, hearing God say, “I told you so.” Ok, I’m all in. “Yes.”
We didn’t need time. The Lord had been moving in all three of us. He had been using His voice and those of the amazing individuals on J-Squad to prepare the way for his plans. He had been giving people dreams, prophetic visions and just encouraging words of life that were all preparing and equipping us for what the Lord had up His giant sleeves. He had even used our own voices to pray for and prepare each other, even if we were not sure who it was we were praying for.
He is ABLE, even when we feel like we aren’t. And His plans for you and for me? Exceedingly, abundantly, above all that we could ask Him to give us or even think up for ourselves!
Sometimes, all that He requires of us is just a breathless exhale. A breathless exhale combined with a three lettered one syllable word to say "I hear you. I trust you. I trust your plans and I trust your thoughts about me. I trust your feelings for me more than my feelings for myself. You are God and I know you are good."
I said yes. And it has changed everything.
To find out more about what the rest of my Race will look like and what exactly a Squad Leader does, check out my next blog, “God asked me to be a Squad leader and I said YES!”
