This winter break was incredible: incredibly random,
incredibly different, incredibly busy, and incredible impactful. Like an insane
college student, I registered to take a class over the break between Christmas
in New Years. (DUMB) However, this class required a trip to St. Louis for one
of the biggest student missions’ conferences in the world: Urbana 15. So we
loaded the 12 passenger bus at 4 o’clock in the morning two days after
Christmas and headed on a 10 hour road trip through the rain and freezing cold
weather.
(Side story: on my way back to school, I was literally
running away from all the tornado-producing storms. Praise the Lord, I made it
to campus BEFORE all the tornado alarms went off and we had to run to the
shelter. AND that one of my amazing neighbors was home to give me a hug to calm
me down!)
Ok, back to Urbana. They took such good care of us! We were
spoiled with a suite to ourselves at the hotel we stayed at in downtown St.
Louis! Nothing like a king sized bed, a sweet suite mate, and a view of
downtown all to myself for the week! (Rough life, I know…)
The week was impressively organized and one of the best
conferences I have been to! They literally thought of EVERY detail. Worship was
amazing as we learned how our brothers and sisters all over the world worship
in their cultures! Since diversity in cultures intrigue me, I was having the
time of my life! Not only did we learn the songs in their language and their
meanings, we got to dance in church! (The Baptist kids didn’t know what to do
with themselves! I DO believe there WILL be dancing in Heaven. Get ready!)
God anointed so many godly men and women as they spoke
during the general sessions and I learned something from each one of them. The
seminars I got to choose where equally helpful! But what happened Wednesday
night I will never forget….
The focus of the main session that night was on praying for
the persecuted church. The message was about Jesus praying in the garden just
before he was arrested. He took some of his disciples who fell asleep while
Jesus was agonizing over his coming persecution. Jesus pleaded with the Father
to take the persecution away, but ended with “Yet not MY will be done, but
YOURS.” Three times he wrestled with it and surrendered until he completely accepted
that he was the Fathers.
Like the disciples, we are tired of suffering and are
overwhelmed, so we turn away and fall asleep. We are overwhelmed, yet Jesus
went straight to prayer. The challenge: Don’t fall asleep, rise up and wait
expectantly for God to act! His will be done. What is the temptation? To lose
hope and to not trust in God. The victory is clear, there is a resurrection.
Always! Wow.
This opened up for an opportunity to pray for an hour for
these countries in a variety of different ways. On the floor around the stage
they had scattered banners hanging from the ceiling with the names of
persecuted countries. I decided to go down and kneel before the Kenya banner,
with my missionary friend’s voice in the back of my head, “When kneeling in
prayer, eventually your heart catches up with the position your body is in.” However, after 10 minutes my legs were numb,
so I stood up and starting wiping the tears off my face. In my prayers I was
asking, “Lord, please teach me to pray
fervently and fearlessly for my brothers and sisters. Break my heart for what
breaks yours.” Tears started flowing when God brought specific people to
mind, my friends who I met and spent time with in Kenya. As I was wiping them
away, a guy who was sitting about 10 feet from me walked up and patted my arm
as if to reassure me that I was not alone and it was going to be ok.
About this time I thought I heard a girl wailing, except
there were words. She sounded upset and she kept getting louder. “Go find her,”
the Holy Spirit kept prompting me. I followed the sound and found her next to
the banner, kneeling with her face on the ground. I knelt beside her, put my
hand on her back and began praying for her. In mid prayer, she sat up. Her face
was wet and her hair was sticking to it, so she tried to clear it off so she
could see me. I leaned in and asked her, “What is your name?”
“Christina.”
“Christina, can I pray with you?”
“Of course, sister!”
At one point we stood up, my hand on her far shoulder and holding
her arm in another. I started praying until I couldn’t finish a sentence due to
choking back tears and then she began to pray. When she couldn’t pray, I
started praying. I cannot even begin to describe what kind of a bond we had
that night. I have never met this chick before in my life! We stood there holding
each other weeping, crying out to God on behalf of our brothers and sisters on
the other side of the world.
At one point Christina prayed in Arabic and then in English,
she prayed, “Father, thank you for giving me the courage to unashamedly call on
your name! Thank you for allowing me to have a relationship with you God!” She
yielded, signaling for my turn to pray, I paused and quietly said, “Father,
please give me the courage to pray with passion and to live unashamed for you.”
What happened next brought an ugly cry… Like the
tear-falling, snot-dripping, ugly sob… She began praying for me. This was a
sister who shared the same Father and the same struggles. God was using her in
an incredible way in my life that moment.
Then the hour ended and we were encouraged to go to back to
our seats. She gave me a big hug and said, “Thank you for praying with me
sister! God bless you!” As she walked away, I thought to myself, I may never see her again on this earth, but
I know we will have a sweet reunion in Heaven one day! Before heading to my
seat, I knelt down one more time and asked, “God, WHAT WAS THAT?!”
You asked me to teach
you to pray!
Wow. Incredible. The only word I can think of to describe
what happened. It is incredible to serve a God that loves his people enough to
have intimate moments like this with us. Because of what Jesus has done, we are
allowed to have communion with him on a level only priests could be at! Incredible. My question to YOU, dear friend,
is how are you taking advantage of this incredible opportunity to talk with God
on an intimate level?
