Don’t let fear of the future keep you from celebrating what Gods doing now.
Because we know the character of God is constant, we can celebrate in our suffering and know our God is faithful. We know what He says of us as His children, which empowers us to shut down the voice that tell us we are anything less than what He says. We can rejoice as we pray big prayers, before He answers them.
Sunday night we had house church and our amazing squad mentor Kate (seriously she’s the bomb) taught us about the Jewish new year aka Rosh Hashanah. She was raised Jewish and now as a Christian continues to celebrate Jewish holidays. As a part of this celebration, we ate apples with honey- a double sweet treat to symbolize all the sweet things this new year will bring us. Then we broke up into our teams to pray about this coming year together and celebrate.
My team huddled up outside and began to go around praying big, beautiful and powerful prayers over this year. Seriously, such beautiful prayers of hope and joy. Yet as our prayer came to an end the feeling did not match the tone of our prayers. I couldn’t figure out why this time of celebration and looking forward to the new year felt so somber. I debated saying “woo yeah celebration time” but decided rather than trying to force excitement into the moment I should just stay quiet to see what was going on.
As we sat silently I waited and wondered how long it would be until something happened. A couple minutes later our team leader Olivia (also the bomb) brought attention to what I had just noticed and pressed in to see if someone was holding onto something that could be the root of this tension.
As it turns out, there were some fears and worries in our group that were keeping us from celebration. In order to overcome these things we spoke them out and declared truth over each fear and situation. In Team Hope, declaring truth means standing up on your chair in a super hero stance as you proclaim truth boldly. I know it sounds silly but it is truly empowering.
For me this process meant admitting my fear that there is something wrong with me. That somewhere hidden deep inside I am broken. That undiagnosed I will never be complete, whole, or enough. So after sharing this I stood up on my chair to declare the truth that there is no broken piece in me that God will not fix, He has started a work in me and he will carry it out until the day of completion (paraphrase of Philippians 1:6). I am His child whom He loves too much to leave me the way I am. That He will break me just to rebuild me fully and completely. And that I am ALWAYS ENOUGH, I am chosen and loved by the King of the universe. And something I’ve realized is even when you don’t believe the words you’re saying they still carry weight. The words you say and the things you tell yourself matter and there is power in simply saying words (even if you don’t yet believe them).
And it’s funny how God likes to connect things together. As I’ve been reading through the Psalms I’ve noticed over and over again King David chooses to praise the Lord in the midst of his struggles. As I’ve read these heart wrenching laments where David is crying out to the Lord, it always turns back into praise. He has not yet experienced deliverance from his suffering but it doesn’t matter because he knows God and trusts who He is and that He will always help his children. So we are free to pray big prayers, to pour our hearts out to God in any circumstance, and still turn it all back to praise because we know our God and His heart for us.
