God has a funny way of working. I’ve grown up knowing God my whole life. I’ve been pursuing the Lord for much of my life, often learned from him, but seldom heard his voice. Coming into the World Race I’ve heard so much talk about the Holy Spirit talking. I started feeling an itch, a desire for more.
I want to hear his voice. I look at people like my friend Teresa who hears God’s voice in numerous ways, in dreams, in visions, in pictures, and in audible words. She is so in tune with the Holy Spirit that she’s spoken things over me that she shouldn’t have even known. It’s doubtless that the Lord uses her as a vessel of his voice.
The Bible promises that the Lord desires intimacy with us, and one way of finding that intimacy with God is through the Holy Spirit – God in us. In Exodus it says that Moses knew God as a friend and spoke face to face with him.
I want that.
So I began to pray. I began to immerse myself deeper into the Bible – spending intentional time reading his word. I also began something new. I began to sit in silence.
I am really bad at sitting in silence.
My brain is constantly going. I find it very hard to silence the ever-changing thoughts that run through my mind. It’s hard. I can’t always do it. I often have one or more limbs moving or tapping or I’m bumpin’ to the beat of music inside my head. I’ve often gotten frustrated with the radio silence I receive when I’ve nonchalantly asked the Spirit to talk to me. At training camp we had a night focused on listening for the Spirit to speak and I got nothing. It’s made me question if my faith is strong enough, if there’s something blocking the Spirit from speaking to me, or if I’m just not doing enough.
In our first week in Planeta Rica a pastor prayed over me in Spanish. Most of his prayer was not translated to me, but a part of it was. “The Lord is stirring a storm in you, the Holy Spirit is moving.” I wasn’t sure what it meant, but I was pretty excited about it.
So this month I’ve been praying for the Spirit to move in me and through me in a new way. I’ve been praying for a renewal of the mind and for the Lord to speak to me in whatever “voice” he sees fit. I’ve been praying to develop a keen sensitivity to His voice.
Have I got a story for you.
We left Planeta Rica a few days ago and headed back to Medellin, Colombia for our first of five debriefs this year. Debrief is a time for our squad to come together to rest, worship and get rejuvenated for the Kingdom work ahead of us. Our Squad mentor, Stacy, flies in to stay with us, and so do our squad coaches, Phil and Ruth. The three of them spend time with us in groups and one on one to check in with us, encourage us and to challenge us.
Yesterday some of the girls on my team and I found ourselves with a good amount of free time ahead of us. We had the option to stay at the hostel and rest or hang out with friends but we’d seen an adventure that one of the other teams in our squad had done, and we wanted in.
I have one word for you. Paragliding.
We met a friend named Gio, Gio is from Venezuela. Gio is a total hippy, friendly, outgoing, and always smiling. He offered to take me and four of my team on this grand paragliding adventure. We met him at 9 am with excitement and butterflies in our tummies. We began walking, not knowing how we’d get there or how we’d get back, when Gio turned the corner and we met 6 of his hippy friends. Some were debatably sober, and all were colorfully dressed and beaming! They told us the drive was about 2 hours and that we’d be going to a very beautiful place. We were nervous as we had to be back around 4 for a meeting, but we decided to just do it, and we turned to look at our vehicle.
A hippy van.
I got so excited. We piled into the blue van they called La Chiqui, and we set off. It was a very tight squeeze, but we were excited for the adventure and the unknowing of it all. Two hours later we’d driven up a few mountains and found ourselves on the side of a huge cliff. We were ready.
We were met by the paragliding instructors who asked us to write our names and ID numbers on a loose leaf sheet of paper and then they walked us over to the side of the cliff. “Okay! We will train you now!”
I sighed in relief, they were going to walk us through the steps!
“Walk when we say walk, run if we ask you to, and lift your feet to land! Okay, who is first?”
That was it.
A minute later, Olivia was in the air, and I was ready to go. I was matched with Fabio and he snapped my harness to his, (this is called riding tandem, with an instructor maneuvering the chute) which was snapped to the parachute, and he gave the chute a tug, and the wind caught it. I took one step forward, then another, and poof. We were in the air. We were swept high into the sky, riding the thermal currents up higher and higher. I was screaming and shouting and literally lifting up praise to the Lord because it was incredible. The world below me was getting smaller and smaller and then we were in the clouds. Inside the clouds. I was silent, in awe and also slightly terrified. I caught a moment on camera where we emerge from a cloud and I laugh and say “I don’t like it!” in spanish and then I ask Fabio if we can go lower and he goes “Really?” and I responded with “You’re right. Let’s stay up here.”
We soared through the skies, flying up and down the sides of mountains, going anywhere we wanted. The silence was incredible. I could see for miles and miles. I asked the Lord if he wanted to speak to me.
He said yes.
My beloved, do not forget who is orchestrating this. I am your tandem. I am steering your parachute. Never forget. I will not let you fall.
It’s good I was strapped in because I would have fallen over if I were standing up in that moment. God spoke! To me! He didn’t have to, but he did! I was overcome with the feeling of the Spirit, a feeling that I’ve slowly begun to feel in my body. Tingling, starting at my calves rushed up and through my body. He is real, he is stirring. That storm that was prophesied over me is just beginning to brew. I’m just a warm-front, but I am rapidly approaching. I’m developing into a hurricane, ready and willing to wreck anything that gets in my way for the name of Jesus.
And the story only gets better. (See my next blog.)
