Freedom Reigns in this Place

We’ve woken up, gone to breakfast, had our morning session which included talking about the Missionary Focus which is:

“Join God in the work He’s already doing in bringing worship through knowledge of Jesus among people from every people group!”

This really spoke to me because sometimes it seems that we want to go and start something new; maybe we thought of an idea or a way to be used that the Lord hasn’t thought of. Um..hello? God has thought of everything, orchestrated every move; we are to be active in the way he has called us to be. He has already done a work in the world and within every generation has moved people in their gifts he’s given them to work for His glory. 

We also learned that God’s purpose was:

Universal reconciliation for universal worship

I had never heard this term but it made total sense. Since the fall of man the world has been trying to “do good”, but do good our way and not God’s way. We continually fail at not only reconciling with each other but reconciling with the Lord. 

I would say our morning session was pretty awesome. A lot of awakening and eye opening moments for me.

Before we go to lunch we are told that the our luggage was “found”, remember previous blog that our first scenario half of each squad’s luggage was “lost.” Well thankfully it was found.

Into day 4 and our culture food for the day is Eastern European. We had some yummy food (picture of lunch below). After lunch we had more sessions, squad time, and our next scenario! Cue nervousness in our group! Ha! This scenario involved sleeping in a big room divided guys and girls. We can deal with that, especially when it is cold and rainy outside, we were all very happy to be inside for a night. Rewind a couple hours before this big sleepover to our worship session. Worship so far has been AMAZING! We are singing and worshiping and I can feel the tears coming and I’m like ugh why can’t I stop crying? The flesh and spirit battle begin and I don’t want to cry, however, I can’t help it. I find a squad mentor (who we all adopted into our squad), and she tells me that the Lord has already given me freedom, I don’t have to sit with the chains on, they are already broken, all I need to do is get up and walk out. I go back to singing and this sudden overwhelming attack comes over me and I can’t catch a breath so I step outside. Take a few moments, was checked on by my coach, talked with her, go back into the evening session, and after my squad prays for me (we will get to that later).

Before I continue just have a side story. Our speaker talks about how we are born to be loved by the Father and hear the voice of God. So the speaker continues on to tell us about healing and his wife having a migraine and that he prayed over her and she hadn’t suffered from that in 20 years, Whoa! So he says someone in the room has a migraine and my stomach drops. I turn to my friend Eva and tell her, I have a migraine. She says I need to raise my hand and go up there, well I don’t. I have suffered from migraine’s my whole life and in that moment I was terrified of being healed. There are many false prophets in the world who abuse the power and of course by no means am I saying this man was, he definitely was not, but those fears arose and I couldn’t handle it. However, in that moment it was made clear to me that these gifts are real and still here. There was, however, another young lady with a migraine and praise the Lord she was healed that night from the pain.

Fast forward to after the session and my squad is asked by our coach to pray over me. I tell the group that I have been depending on God’s people far too much than on Him alone. Don’t get me wrong, we need community, God’s people are so important and we are the body. But my ultimate source needs to come from the Lord and I was missing that part. In this moment he was calling me to freedom and surrender. I needed to surrender fully. So my team starts to pray over me and while they are I have a moment to pray and tell God that I surrender, to do what he wants, say and change what he wants (which I personally think is bold to say). Through tears I muster up strength to tell God that I am ready for the freeing surrender that is found in Him. In my 28 years of life I know that I am wanted by the king. Has that always been the case? Of course. Has there always been doubt? Yes. With this full surrender I understand. This was the biggest step of faith and man was it good! The Lord is good y’all. Accept that freedom and let it happen. Freedom reigns in this place!

The end of the night is just such a high! Surrounded by a team that I just met yet pours out support, and surrounded by a God who created me, loves me, and wants me.

The next day is filled with more goodness. Tune in next week to hear about travel day, new culture foods, and meet my team!

Thanks for reading!

Check out below:

my wonderful squad, where we took cold bucket showers, and yummy europe food!