God loves His people

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This blog is going to be a little different than the previous ones 🙂

What I’m doing here is the exact opposite of what the devil wants me to be doing. I’m spending every waking hour devoted to serving gods people, sharing gods word, learning more about god from others, worshipping god, chatting about god, hanging with gods people or reading gods word on my own. It’s amazing and frankly I’m a little worried about going home and getting back into a schedule where I don’t get to be in 24/7 church mode. I’m praying a lot about how I can live my life on mission when I get back and take what I’ve learned here and not let it fade. I pray that this time here is only the launching pad into a lifetime of personal growth with the Lord and more of knowing God and walking in step with his spirit. I’ve learned how little I really even know of God, and my hunger just keeps growing. It’s great, but it’s also really hard. Not to be cliche, but flowers don’t grow without rain :’) It’s been a real battle here. My first battle was distraction. Shortly after being here I grew fond of a boy here, and had to fight and surrender my thoughts about it everyday. The devil knows how badly I desire to be married one day. My focus has been on God each day, but it’s also been on the struggles of liking somebody that lives in the same 100 square feet of me and not being able to do anything about it. I’d been surrendering it every morning and even throughout the days as well, but I still couldn’t get my thoughts captive. Just when I thought I did have them captive, I had a dream that just sent me right back to where I was. I know for a fact Satan can affect your dreams through my own experience. So Satan took back all the process I made and even made it worse maybe. BUT, God is better. Monday night we spent time praying for each other and taking turns praying for the person next to us. While others prayed, I prayed quietly on my own in the background. When I got baptized I was blessed with the ability to pray in tongues, so that’s what I’ve been doing here when I’m unable to pray out loud. This happens at almost every house visit and I see the Holy Spirit move so much afterward. Anyway, I spent lots of time Monday night praying in tongue. For anybody who is freaked out by that, it’s literally just asking the Holy Spirit to pray for you and then allowing sounds to come out of your mouth. It’s not a big weird thing that some people make it out to be, it’s actually really peaceful and sweet. And any Christian can do it. Who better to pray for you than the Holy Spirit itself?? (If you have questions, I’d love to talk). Okay so then Tuesday morning I prayed for lord to help me keep my focus on Him, which is a common prayer for me I guess. A few hours later we did an activation with some of the staff and a few of the things they taught stuck out to me. They asked if we are present or if we are distracted and then reminded us that the enemy attacks with a spirit of distraction right before something holy is about to happen (makes so much sense right). They pointed out that there’s so much more to God than just the hour or so you get with him in the morning. God DWELLS IN YOU. You have the ability to speak to the God of the universe at any given second of the day. How can I recognize that? So, I took these two together and have chosen that the key to my distractedness is to be talking to God constantly!! I’ve always heard “be in constant prayer,” but it meant something more this time. Ok y’all stay with me things are getting good. After the activation we went out to do house visits. My group consisted of me, one guy who is so spiritually wise and has been teaching us a lot, another volunteer for Hope, and a young girl from out of town. We talked with the family for awhile and gave them some words of advice and wisdom about God. When we were done we asked if we could pray for them and what they needed prayer for. One girl was pregnant and another girl had been sick and had pain in her body and her head. The young girl was the one that prayed, and I again prayed tongue quietly in the background. I heard the mom weeping and the girl starting to pray louder so I decided to stop praying and watch. The leader was giving me a little of what she was praying and said she was prophesying over her and saying a bunch of things about her. They must’ve been true because the lady was a mess. She prayed for the other sister and then lastly prayed for the girl with pain. She prayed for about 5 seconds before the girl dropped straight to the floor. I’d heard of this before, and in Revelation it always says “and they fell on their face before God” in more or less wording. I was so excited to finally see this. Ugh, y’all it sent shock through my own body and left me speechless. The young girl told me later that she was getting many things from the Holy Spirit telling her what to pray and showing her a spirit of death coming out from the woman’s ears. Ugh, just wow. I don’t have a ton of words for this other than I’m so thankful God allowed me to see it. It showed me how little my faith is and how much more I have to know about God that I don’t know yet. I will say that I was envious that the young girl and our leader both heard from God what was going on but that God didn’t tell me anything when I’d been praying for him to tell me. Later the girl told me that she prayed that morning that God would help her know that their relationship hadn’t been broken or something. I don’t know specifics, but she needed that moment with God for her own personal story with the Lord. God healed the woman, removed a spirit from her, and restored relationship with his loved daughter all in one moment all while showing me more of his power and ability to move in our lives.

My second battle has been physical health. I am usually at a consistent battle with my stomach because it’s sensitive to literally everything. The first week of ministry when we stayed at the host family I had a stomach ache every night. The base cook makes food that doesn’t hurt me though, praise God! However, when we drive to ministry we spend about an hour in the van driving through the mountains. Guatemala doesn’t have many traffic laws so the driving consists of a lot of stopping quickly and starting quickly. Almost every day after driving to ministry or any other town, I had gotten car sick. Some days I would throw up, some days I wished I could throw up to feel better. Some days I was dizzy the whole day. For the first month this was how I felt. I used different techniques and hints to avoid car sickness, I’d sit in the front seat, eat salt, stare out the front window at something not moving, essential oils, try to sleep, take Dramamine, and tried pressure bands. Sometimes these things helped, but never truly prevented it. On Friday we had arrived to ministry again and I went straight to the bathroom to throw up. It finally hit me how sad and frustrated I was that I was getting sick every day for ministry. That morning we read Luke chapter 5 and Jesus healed so many people. I think that’s what caused my emotions. So I decided to just ask for healing for the car sickness and to stop getting sick every day. It’s now Thursday of the next week and I haven’t gotten car sick ALL WEEK YALL! I even rode the bus today and looked back and talked to people and still didn’t get sick. God healed me of that. On Tuesday I was like “yeah I didn’t get sick yet this week so hopefully I’m healed,” and was quickly convicted to have some faith in my God and recognize that I’m not sick and I’m joyful and declare that God did indeed heal me. I feel so relieved and giddy and joyful and grateful that God heard my cry for healing and saw my tears of frustration. Thank you Jesus for your healing hands, thank you God for your power and thank you for caring about me in all parts of my life. Praise the Lord!!