When we were sitting in our small Serbian apartment, we were asked to pray and ask God where He wants us to go next. We knew we were leaving the next morning, but we weren’t sure where to. So, we spent the next five minutes in prayer just seeking God’s heart on where to go next. As our leaders, Chad and Amy, asked what we had gotten almost all of our teams hands shot up immediately! I heard Thessaloniki, as did a majority of the group. Everyone was just shouting excitedly “Greece!” “Same here! I got Greece as well!” An excitement exploded in the room. God had spoken, Greece it was! So the next day we set out for our destination, seeking God along the way, asking what He wanted for us in Greece.. Because the journey was long, we stopped for two nights in Skopje, Macedonia where we had contacts, and just spent some time regrouping and setting up contacts in Thessanloniki.
We arrived just a few days before the new year, and had a church in the city set up to stay in. That first night they had a small service and asked us to be in charge of the worship, share who we were, and a small message. During that time is when we found out that this church really wanted to start a 24 hour prayer movement in the city, and had been asking God how to make this work. Then, out of nowhere, a group of 26 people show up from the town of Herrnhut that was the birthing place of the 24 hour prayer movement. They were so thrilled, and saw us as a huge answer to prayer. I remembered that back when we still were in Herrnhut, I was praying that the 26 of us would be an answer to some one’s prayers… God did just that. Wow..
So, the following night they wanted us to join them in a time of prayer and worship. We started at 10pm, and went until 5am. That was my first time in doing something like that, and it was amazing.. I personally benefitted out of it a lot. God revealed Himself to me in ways I had never fully experienced and.. yeah.. just opened my eyes to a lot of things in my own life.. and to more of who He is.
So that was the night of the 31st, and had another similar service to bring in the new year. This was the first time I had ever experienced bringing in the new year while doing prayer and worship. And I have to say, it was such a fulfilling experience.. Here we were, a group of 26 people from all over the world who came to Greece by the hand of God, actually answering prayers from this church, spending the new year with their congregation from people from all walks of life and from all over the globe. The man who gave a message was from Nigeria, I believe. And wow, I’ve never experienced such power through a message. Think of an African American service, and times that by 10. He had us all on our feet by the end of it… that man is in love with Jesus.. really a beautiful time. And then we spent the next few hours just praying over the city, praying for 2012… BAH. It was just the best. I couldn’t think of a better way to ring in 2012, than through prayer. It was a night that will stick with me for, I hope, my entire life.
And that just got me really thinking about my time here, my time on outreach. Living life for God, living every day in pursuit of what He wants… there is nothing like it. There is nothing more fulfilling.. and I’m not saying I’m perfect at this… I’m very far from it and I feel like a mess 99.99% of the time.. But I’ve never experienced more freedom, or more hope for the future than I am experiencing right now.
I really want to express how much freedom there is in knowing and having relationship with God. Freedom. Think about that word for a moment.. I hadn’t really spent much time on the subject until I realized how much I lacked a feeling of freedom. Yes I have freedom in many ways, yes I have freedom in the country I live in… but what about freedom from the things that the world has told us, is life?
Anxiety. Fear.
Two of the biggest struggles of my life…
The past twenty two years of my existence have been saturated in anxiety. And although until I came to do this experience… I had never realized what a strong hold it had on my life. Anxiety is not freedom. Fear is not freedom. And in order for you to know the freedom I have experienced through the love of Jesus, you have to know where I came from.
I can remember from a very young age having anxiety, and worrying. With that has stemmed a lot of things. Early on I was a hypochondriac, so if I heard that somebody had certain symptoms of a disease, I would overthink it until I thought I actually had these symptoms and had the same disease as them. That is no way to live.. that is no way for a child to think.. because it creates fear, and in return, anxiety. Everything is intermingled. I don’t want to spend too much time on the past, but i’ll bullet point a few things that I’ve experienced just so you can understand where I’ve come from.
- I once feared that my own saliva had too many germs in it, so I would stop swallowing. And in return would end up drooling on myself… and looking quite foolish. But I didn’t care, because I wanted to do anything to avoid this idea of germs entering my body.
- When I was twelve, I decided one day that if I ate food, I would choke.. so for a few days I didn’t want to eat anything simply because I was afraid of choking.. and in this time I had convinced myself I had like three different diseases.. and just layed on the couch not having the desire to move.
- That same summer, I really felt the anxiety.. and didn’t want to do anything that involved being around crowds of people.. I avoided it at all costs.
- I remember several shopping trips my mom had tried to bring me on, and when we would pull in the parking lot I would get nauseous because.. I didn’t want to be around a lot of people.. and just the thought of doing anything out of the ordinary at this time freaked me out.
Oh the stories go on, and on, and on, and on.. because every year it was something different. Luckily, I was blessed with an amazing family.. that worked with me and had quite a lot of understanding no matter how ridiculous it seemed to them. But I don’t think anybody, maybe not even myself, knew how weighed down I was with fear and anxiety. I’ve had periods of time where it’s not been so bad, but this past summer it hit me worse than I’ve ever experienced… It started as soon as I graduated college and didn’t have anything left to distract me from anxiety. It was staring me blank in the face, consuming my every move. There were days that I would wake up, and just the thought of going to the grocery store would send me into a complete state of nausea. I couldn’t do anything it seemed, without getting nervous. Some people knew, some people didn’t. I would avoid friends because even the thought of being social would consume me and I couldn’t handle it. All I wanted to do was be at home… be in my bed, or doing something that caused me to be so busy I didn’t have time to think about being nervous. It was most definitely, the worst summer of my life. I wasn’t living. I didn’t know that there was even freedom to be had from this. I thought that this was just something I would live with for the rest of my life, and that is an absolutely lie.
My first week of being in Germany, I encountered God in a whole new way, and ever since have been experiencing freedom. Ever since I gave up, and let God take over.. Everything changed. There is no way that the person I was this summer, would be sitting in Romania, eating strange food that I once would have feared an allergic reaction from. There is no way I would have the boldness, the strength, the will, the desire, the.. anything, without God. He has shown me what freedom is, and every single day since, I have received a piece of that freedom. Every single day He holds my hand and asks something new of me.. I am blown away at the life He has given me. I am blown away at the daily freedom I can now experience. I’m on a journey, a never ending walk with God, and although I may encounter bumps and problems along the way, I always have this experience and this promise that through Him there is always freedom, through Him I never have to feel anxious, I never have to have fear because He is bigger than both of those things, and they do not intimidate Him. They do not hinder Him. They don’t even phase Him. Whew! The power of God is unlimited. And if He can take away my anxiety, if He can work through that with me… the thing that has held me captive for twenty two years… mmm. My God can do anything.
So, yes, I’m in Romania and we have bountiful ministry opportunities here. We just arrived after 25 hours of travel, at 5:30am. The drive was beautiful.. Mountains are my most favorite to be surrounded by.. I could stare at them all day and they would never loose their luster. It’s amazing to me how you can be in a car with 8 other girls for that amount of travel time, and still want to snuggle up next to them in a sleeping bag as soon as it’s time for sleep.
I love this.
