Last week I was blessed to be out in the field leading a mission trip to Philadelphia. The entire week was full of challenges and opportunites to demonstrate patience, grace, and love. To say that I felt tested would be an understatement. The entire trip started off on the wrong note, and that pattern continued through the week. The purpose of this blog is not to focus on the negative week I had, or to list all the things that went wrong. Instead, I want to share with you how our God spoke to me in the midst of my challenging week. In the middle of feeling discouraged, exhausted, tired, and frustrated…our God was faithful to show up!
During a listening prayer exercise, each of us drew a name from a hat and without looking at the name placed it into our pocket. The instructions were to go and spend the next 20 minutes simply praying for the unknown name, and asking God to speak to you about that person. As God revealed things about whoever it was on our piece of paper, we were to write them down so that we could later share those things with whoever we had on our piece of paper.
I went into the sanctuary of the church we were staying in and laid in my back starring up at the ceiling. I found myself extremely distracted by all of the things that had gone wrong that week, and all of the things I needed to get done. I was struggling to be still and simply listen for God’s voice. As our time ran out and I was preparing to get up, I called out to God with a rather irritated and demanding attitude telling God that He needed to speak to me and reveal to me what He needed me to tell the person I had drawn. God immediately responded by convicting me to tell the person that their sacrafice was not enough. I was a little confused about what this meant, but wrote it down anyway thinking the other person would know exactly what this meant. After writing that down, I continued to see an image of an old wooden slave ship. As I started to write down that I had seen a slave ship, God spoke to me that it was not just the image of the slave ship that was important, it was that this person was ON the slave ship and needed to get off! Lastly, as I was starting to get off the floor I felt like the person needed to know that God was delighted in them, and that this person needed to start believing that with confidence. As I wrote this last thing down, I found myself frustrated because I felt like that was my own voice speaking and not God’s. Afterall, I have repeatedly reminded people that God was delighted in them as I prayed for them. I told God with the same demanding attitude that I started my prayer time with, that I needed for Him to give me something that would confirm it was in fact His voice speaking and not my own. I needed something that only the other person would understand and would affirm all of these things. Just as I prayed this, I began to see an image of a large pineapple. I thought to myself that this was crazy enough to be the image I needed to share with the person. It made no sense to me and was unrelated to anything I had written down, so it must be confirmation in some way.
Back with the group, we each went around the circle and shared what we had written down. After we shared what we wrote, we pulled out the name and told the group who we had. It was incredible to see how God moved through this exercise and spoke very directly to each person in the group, through the other person writing down what God had revealed to them. I was last in the group to share. However, being last in the group means that I had the advantage of hearing everyone else’s stuff, and to see who got who. What I quickly realized was that nobody had pulled my name. Nobody had shared with me what God said to them about me. I immediately realized I had pulled my own name. As this began to sink in, I looked back at my list in awe that God would have spoken these things to me!
God has been trying to tell me the past couple weeks that my sacrafice of moving from California to Georgia has not been enough. He is wanting more from me! He is wanting more boldness from me. I needed to stop thinking that I had done some great thing for His kingdom, and hiding behind that as an excuse to not step out in faith even more. It was like a dagger to my heart because I knew it to be true. Second, God told me it was time to get off the slave ship. What I believe God was telling me was to stop being a slave to our culture and selling out in order to fit in. God wants me to be bold and confident in who I am…to stand strong in that no matter what the price. Lastly, and the one that had the most impact was that my God was delighted in me and that it was time I started believing that for myself! I had prayed over hundreds of people and reminded them that God loves them and that He is delighted in them. But I have never genuinely believed that for myself. It is time that I start believing that not because it sounds right…but because MY God has told me so!
I was so in awe that MY God spoke to me in ways that He knew I needed to hear, that I almost forgot about the image of a pineapple and how it tied in to the whole encounter. As I sat there in complete awe of my creator, I began to realize what the pineapple meant. Last year, when I was in Haiti, I only knew how to say 1 word in french, and it was pineapple. Any time the kids wanted to get my attention or they wanted to speak to me, they would call me Mr Annana (Mr Pineapple). It was humerous and playful, but at the same time served a purpose of getting my attention. Well, once again someone needed to get my attention and they did so in a way that only I would have understood. My God was calling out to Mr Annana and needed for me to hear what He had to say to me.
I came home completely moved by our God, and the intentional love that He has for us! Our God surely still speaks!!
Thanks for sharing…so encouraging.
So powerful!! I wept as I read how preciously determined our God is to speak to our greatest needs in a way that is unmistakable. God DOES indeed still speak. Lord, give us ears to hear. Thank you so much for sharing this.
He is so good to you. You are truly His beloved son, Steve. I wish I had more words to communicate that to you.
Also, thank you for serving me at the project leader training. No doubt you’ve been stretched emotionally and I wanted so badly to give you words of comfort. But in the end, your Abba Father did. 🙂 And He will continue to speak to you.
Amen!
He does still speak.
Glad you had the courage to listen 🙂
This really spoke to me. This is completely encouraging and so inspirational. Thank you so much for sharing!
re-reading this today to be reminded of how to pray for you. The part about sacrifice triggered a word the Lord spoke to me in a time of experiencing that “It’s all been for nothing” feeling. He spoke that I did not own the fruit of my sacrifice…He did. That any sacrifice that served any purpose in my own heart other than demonstrating obedient trust in Him was misguided and would enslave me to expectation. Understanding this really helped to restore joy and intimacy with my Abba.