I have been trying to write this blog for almost a week now and have seemed to fail every time for different reasons. Sometimes I can’t find the words, sometimes I get terrified of judgement and sometimes I simply become a perfectionist and hate everything I write. Now this is me choosing to put all of that aside and simply try my best. So here we go…..
Training camp was indescribable. It was physically, mentally and most of all, spiritually challenging but in the most amazing way possible. It has opened my eyes to so much that I didn’t know I was missing before. If I were to tell you every story and every detail of it, we’d be here all day so I want to tell you about 24 hours of it that was too good not to share.
The first couple days of camp I was honestly taken aback. I had a million questions and a million things I wanted out of camp, maybe not a million: 3 things to be more specific. At the beginning of worship one night they told us to talk to God. They reminded us that the Lord isn’t scared of our questions or doubts or worries. They told us not to be scared of big prayers, nothing is too big for Him to handle. So I asked him for my 3 things:
1. My first prayer- There were so many people talking about how God was directly speaking to them and giving them images and I was just sitting there like what? I have never experienced anything like that and I really wanted to see for myself what that was like. I am naturally a skeptic and read too much into things until I experience them myself. So I prayed and prayed and prayed for God to show me these images and to hear these words that everyone was so excited about.
2. My second prayer– I had been struggling a lot with my past. I hadn’t made the best decisions throughout high school and I kept shaming myself for these things. It was tearing me apart and I truly believed for a while that I was less “qualified” to be a follower of Jesus because of my choices. I felt unworthy to be taking this journey and I felt less than everyone who was around me. To clarify, no one made me feel this way but my own self. No one even knew about my past choices until I had already dealt with my emotions. So, I wanted God to speak to me on this, to help me understand if my thoughts were true or not.
3. My third prayer- Healings. This is the big one. Before this week I had never had any experience with healings what so ever. I didn’t know about healings, I certainly wouldn’t have believed in them if you would have just told me you could heal someone with prayer alone. We had a lesson on them, we learned all about them and got told so many amazing stories. At the very end of this lesson, Deon (the man speaking), called up someone who had a migraine and put his hand on her head and started to pray the pain away in Jesus’ name. Once he stopped, he looked at her and asked if she felt any pain. Her eyes teared up immediately and was in complete shock that every ounce of her pain was gone. Everyone started praying over specific people who dealt with pain. It was amazing to watch, but like I said, I am naturally a skeptic. I wrote in my journal for Jesus to show me clarity because I didn’t know what to believe.
When worship began I prayed SO hard for these things. Half way through the first song an image came to mind, it looked like a blurry circle of light. Kind of like when you look at Christmas lights and unfocus your eyes. Then immediately after the word “light” was just replayed over and over again in my head. I couldn’t figure out if this was me trying to hard to hear from the lord or if he was actually speaking to me. If he was actually speaking to me- what the heck does “light” mean. What am I suppose to get from that? I concluded it was me overthinking, just dug back into the music and forgot about it.
I started to think about my past and an overwhelming amount of emotion came over me and I got super upset. My teammate Carissa then came up to me and told me “I don’t understand what this is suppose to mean but the Lord just gave me an image of you running down a carnival and there were so many lights and the lights brought you immense joy. He then told me to tell you your actions do not define the love He has for you”. I just starred at her and then began to cry harder. There was NO way for her to have known that the word “light” came to my mind or that I was struggling with actions from my past because I hadn’t told anyone about it yet. Not even a minute after, another one of my teammates (Gracylen) came up to me and said “The Lord really just put on my heart to tell you your actions don’t define you”. WHAT!!!! There is no denying that was God.
The night ended and I was thankful that the Lord answered 2 of my prayers, but I can’t lie, I was disappointed I didn’t get clarification on healings because that was the one I was most conflicted about.
Earlier in the week I had scrapped the top of my foot really bad, but it hadn’t been bothering me too much. The morning after the worship, I woke up to my foot SUPER swollen and throbbing. I ignored it as best as I could, but it started getting to the point I was limping and hurt constantly. My team was praying over our countries we are about to visit and I was so frustrated the whole time because I couldn’t concentrate on anything but my foot throbbing. Once we were done praying I looked at my teammates and began to tell them it hurt and that I needed to go sit down. My teammate Tes (Taylor but we call her Tes) dropped so fast and slammed her hand on foot and started praying over it.
Honestly, I was too distracted over the fact she had slammed her hand into my foot to even process that she was praying over it. When she had finished I hadn’t even thought twice and I just said “thank you” and began my mission to find somewhere to sit down. One of my other teammates stopped me and asked if it still hurt. So I stopped and paid attention to my foot and just starred at it in disbelief. Every. Single. Ounce. of my pain in my foot was gone. Two seconds before, I could barley walk without crying and then ALL of the pain was gone after Tes prayed over it. I also know I wasn’t tricking myself into thinking the pain was gone because I was extremely skeptical over it to begin with.
So in conclusion, I learned that no prayer is too big for the Lord to handle. Also this was all a sweet and beautiful reminder of the fact the Lord is faithful and lives up to His promises.
I’m sorry this was way longer than I intended but if you made it this far, thank you and I hope you got something out of my story.
Until next time, Sam <33
