I Trust Your Hands.

 Let me tell you about a moment that changed my life. A time I saw my King do something that I never thought would happen. Let me tell you about Training Camp for The World Race on August 8, 2018.

 I LOVE writing. And recently… to write this post it’s been like pulling teeth. I firmly believe that Satan doesn’t want my words to be out for the world to see because it gives proof of Who our King is and what He is capable of doing. Lie after lie after lie was poured into my head by him, saying that my words weren’t good enough, or my story doesn’t matter, or I didn’t really experience what I did at Training Camp. And so I struggled. I didn’t want to write this post because of how lame my words would be or how stupid I would sound. If I’m being honest… I haven’t opened my Bible once or written in my prayer journal  more than once because Satan has been hitting hard. I mean… I definitely played the fool if I thought he wouldn’t hit hard after 10 days of spiritual development.

 So here I am… writing a blog post because I know that Satan won’t win today. Because what I have experienced is breathtaking and beautiful. And I will not let him take His story away from me. Today, I choose to let Jesus speak through my words, no matter the lie that is screaming in my head right now.

 I came into Training Camp extremely nervous. The longest I had ever slept outside in a tent was 3 days… and that was with people I KNEW. I remember thinking that I would be spiritually ahead of every single person there and I just wanted to go do missions and this was the requirement. I was hoping that it would fly by so I could get back home. When I arrived, I didn’t want one person to come up and talk to me… but it was inevitable. So many people came up to me and spoke to me (the introvert in me wanted to run back to my car and never come back.) When we went to our first session… I felt like I was hit by a firetruck. I had never seen so many people on fire for the Lord. I wish I could tell you I sat down in humility. Instead, I judged hardcore, not realizing that I was the reason I wasn’t on fire for my King.

 The sessions we encountered were extremely intense. The morning session would be about the Sabbath, the next would be about communication with the Lord, and then the next would be about forgiveness. I remember feeling absolutely dazed all day and needing 24873897 cups of coffee in order to keep up. I remember wanting to quit and leave because I had never been so spiritually exhausted in my life… and I did camp work AND lived in a preacher’s home. Everything that was said in the sessions were amazing and I wrote so much… I just didn’t know how much more I could possibly endure. Yet, every day I would wake up and be able to hear something else.

 I saw people love Jesus in a way I never have before and all I knew was that my relationship with Jesus was missing something. I saw people worship God with their whole being… meaning I saw people dance before the Lord, I saw people get on their faces, I heard people shout out to the Lord, I heard a chorus of people singing a song of their own to our King, and I heard people shouting out in surrender. And at first… I thought that these people were crazy and needed to get their theology right.

 I was completely judging people and how they worshipped our King. The next morning, I was doing my quiet time and I realized that I was being so hypocritical towards people… and I decided to just have an open heart to anything. I was seeing people worship God on a whole a new level and they were SO infatuated with Him… instead of being distracted in worship… I began to worry. I didn’t know what these people had that I didn’t… I was seeing a side of worship I had never experienced before.

 That night in session… I wrote over and over in my journal:

I trust You. I trust You. I trust You.

 …Because I wanted to experience what these people were… and I felt like I had been missing what worship actually meant. But I trusted the Lord because I knew I needed to be still for Him to communicate with me. During worship that night, one of my squadmates went up and announced that her leg was healed. My mouth dropped… because I was skeptical about it but also because if that was true… how come the Lord didn’t heal my back?? (For those who don’t know, I shattered my L2 and chipped off my L3 vertebra my freshman year of college… which resulted in getting two rods and eight screws in my back.)

 I became frustrated all over again… but stopping myself because I knew that I trusted Jesus. And I knew miracles are things that happen today.

I trust You. I trust You. I trust You.

 A couple nights later, a guy started preaching and he began to talk about healing… like physical healing. Moments later, he asked if anyone had a migraine that wouldn’t leave. A girl who had migraines for 7 years came on stage. He told the audience that it was nothing he did, no words that he said, or the placement of his hands. He said that for someone to be healed, you have to ask the Lord and BELIEVE He can heal if He wants.

 It made sense. But I wasn’t sure.

 He prayed over this girl and her pain went from a 7 to a 3. He prayed again, believing that God could take all of it away. When he asked her the pain she had, she said “None.” She fell on the floor, weeping. My heart ached for that kind of relief.

 He went on to ask if anyone in the room needed physical healing from something. I wanted to pee my pants as I rose my hand. That night I had 3 girls pray over me. Tears started flowing down from my cheeks as I realized that I hadn’t trusted the Lord to heal me physically.

I trust You. I trust Your hands. I trust You.

 Those three words weren’t just statements. I was saying them from the bottom of my soul. Begging the Lord to heal my body from the torment it was under every single day. I didn’t realize until this moment how much I wanted to be healed by my King. So I found myself at the end of my rope. When we are at the end of our rope and feel lost, it’s definitely when the beauty of Christ is revealed the most. I stood up after prayer, feeling no pain. I wish I could tell you that I jumped up with joy and screamed. Instead, I walked back to my tent, not saying a word, and went to bed.

 I went to sleep that night, begging the Lord to make it real. The next day was the fitness hike (we have to hike 2.2 miles in 38 minutes with our big backpack on) and I was nervous due to the fact that my back was in shambles.

 The next morning I woke up, packed up all my stuff, and headed on the hike. On August 13, 2018, I completed the hike and when I took off my pack… there was zero pain or inflammation. Y’all… this hasn’t happened since I broke my back. All I could do was stand in amazement at what God just did. He took the pain I had for 4 years and stripped me of it. Something in me changed that day… and if that’s not a sign to go on the World Race… I don’t know what is.

 You can take what you want from this blog post. But I saw Jesus heal things that had been broken for YEARS. You don’t have to believe me. Heck, sometimes it’s hard for me to even believe what happened… but when I wake up every morning and feel the flatness of my back, I smile because my God chose to heal me. He didn’t have to. But He did.

 When it comes to God’s character, He is totally predictable. But when it comes to what God DOES, He is totally unpredictable. And I experienced it first hand.