One Word: Incredible

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?