The deepest places of our beings we barely mention. We hold the most fragile reckonings of our lives in secret, pondering them in silence.
This has been my journey. For the last dozen years I’ve kept in secret a conversation between myself and the Lord. A conversation about traveling the world speaking life-giving words, encouraging words; giving strength to many many people.
When I was first brought in on this conversation (at God’s initiative), I thought I was nuts; that I must be imaging things, that this vision and possibility couldn’t really be for me.
For starters, the initial vision and idea came at one of the worst possible times in my life. I was a full-time Mom to five young kids, my husband at the time, had just come out of a number of intense years of drugs and alcohol addiction; I was fragile to say the least.
My world had shrunk down to survival mode, I was exhausted and emotionally spent, and into that small shrunken space came these visions of my words touching a multitude of people around the globe.
Who, me? Really? Are you sure?
I’ve always been a deeply spiritual person. Always in tune with the movement of God in my life, attuned to the Spirit’s direction and leading, with the testimony of ‘God in me’ always the same. Ever since a teen, time and again I’ve been told something to this effect, “I still remember what you said to me years ago, it has never left.”
The mix of God in me has always been about words. It is where the supernatural intersects the natural, where the finger of God takes normal and makes it into something so much more.
Every one of us has a place and an expression like this. Where the living God intersects our ordinary and makes it extraordinary. I don’t know where this is for you, but for me it has always been in my words.
So when I began sensing that I was to impact many with my words, and though I initially thought I was nuts, the evidence of likelihood was just enough to have me tentatively believing the visions and prophecies. Just enough to move me forward bit by bit.
For we can only ever move forward bit by bit. Nothing in life comes of large leaps. There is always a process of growth and faith and personal integrity (and so much more) that must happen to support and nurture any work of our lives.
Nothing ever just happens.
(So if you are waiting for something to ‘just happen’, you are wasting your time, get in there, engage in action, put your feet to the pavement)
I know that my own actions in light of this call to Africa seem nuts. Here out of the blue Cyndy is off to Africa. And not just once, but multiple times… But it has not been out of the blue. And in fact, though it looks like high risk, it isn’t.
There have been so many thousands of words, verses and passages, multiple visions after visions, with so many encouragements and prophesies by others, that to disbelieve and to reject the invitation… that seems nuts to me.
And I wonder about your own journey; about what the living God might be inviting you into?
Fact is, we don’t have to do a thing with these invitations. We all have free will. We don’t have to take God up on anything, ever. It is our choice.
With no recriminations either. A number of times along the way I’ve been asked by the Spirit, ‘Do you want this?’ and ‘Are you sure?’ and ‘You do know what this would mean for your life don’t you?’
‘You don’t have to do this’
It is all an invitation.
But I’ve said ‘Yes.’ And the work is exploding around me (this has been prophesied too), and so though I am overwhelmed and stretched in many ways, none of this is a surprise to me.
The Pastor Training in August, in a small village in Uganda has gone from fifty participants to five-hundred registered. Just like that. And we’ve mapped out the next year: six trips, eighteen weeks of travel to eleven centers in six countries and on two continents.
To sum it all up. We don’t have to do a thing with the prophesies of our lives. They don’t have to happen. And in fact, they won’t happen, unless we participate.
This journey of walking alongside God is not a ‘have to’ anything. We can say ‘no’ at any time. But that is scary to me. That is nuts to me. Why would any of us say ‘no’ to the Living God.
Whatever journey God is inviting each of us to, it will not come to be without adequate equipping and preparation and attention to detail. Looking back on my own life I see how every single little piece, every random everything, has been preparing me for what is to come; preparing me for this assignment.
And I have truly only just begun. We are still easing into this work, still warming up. Still easing into full stride.
There is no way to predict our futures. No way to know the full extent of anything, where it will take us, and who we are becoming.
But we are given glimpses. Like a curtain that is pulled back just a touch, giving us a small view of something more than what we’ve known. An invitation to something we never would have imagined for ourselves.
What are you being invited into? What does the curtain pulled back reveal to you?
And how might you participate, stepping forward bit by bit; how might you put action to faith, one very very small step at a time?
I’ve been learning about miracles. Waiting on the Lord for miracles. Been anointed time and again for signs and wonders.
My heart is quaking within me. I have no idea what to write. Overwhelmed and with too few days to accomplish all that is necessary I am merely going task to task, email to email, blog to blog, daily thought to daily thought, meeting to meeting, prayer to prayer…