Wednesday brought a bit of a split in our group. In the morning, the boys were sent to go do some macho-man lifting and moving appliances, which left us ladies some time to bond! We did our first workout (which we've continued every couple days. We are all very aware of our muscles now... ouch...) and then spent a good chunk of the morning having some solo time, just silencing ourselves in front of God and journaling.
God has really been speaking to us all through our journaling. It's been a great way to organize our thoughts and be in dialogue with Him while being able to go back and reanalyse what God has spoken to us while we wrote. I've found that I hear God most when I'm writing. I find that as I write or come up with questions, I'll immediately answer them with what I can only describe as words from God flowing through my pen. I also tend to write out things that I hadn't even realized were on my mind or that I've been carrying with me. During orientation we were asked to listen for God to tell us if there were people we needed to forgive, and I realized I had been holding a lot of unnecessary grudges. Journaling and listening have helped me lighten my load and come into serving with less baggage. I really encourage all of you reading this to spend some time today, just a few minutes, to ask God who you need to forgive. It might not be anything big, but I can guarantee you'll discover a grudge you've been holding for way too long or that you didn't even know you still had. Ask for forgiveness for harbouring these bad feelings and give mercy to those who have wronged you as Jesus gives us mercy.
For the past few weeks I've been really struggling through not emotionally feeling like I'm connected with God, and not feeling in my heart the desire to be near Him. It's something that has been weighing pretty heavily on me since a large part of my connections and conversations with Him in the past have been through compassion, immense joy or tears. This dry spell has brought up a lot of questions and doubts surrounding if God has still been there. Orientation helped a bit to teach us different ways of how God speaks to us and how we receive and are used by the Holy Spirit, but what has recently given me new encouragement is what happened Wednesday morning when us girls met back up to chat. As it turns out we have all been struggling with different forms of how we can hear God apart from emotionally and how we can keep our thoughts centred around Him. Our wonderful leader Joanna had brought up to me a couple days earlier a devotional she had wanted to show me that helped her through a similar rough patch as I am going through. It turns out she had it ready so she read it to the three of us and we were amazed at how clearly God was speaking to us through the same passage in different ways.
The devotional (above) talked about how our minds are God's greatest gift to us and we should be using it to connect with Him. Wow. Here I've been upset that I've been knowing God is there in my mind but not feeling it in my heart. I should be rejoicing and placing my thoughts on Him! Today I've had a song stuck in my head with the lyrics "I could just sit and wait for all your goodness, hope to feel your presence. I could just stay right where I am and hope to feel you, hope to feel something again. But you have called me higher and you have called me deeper." This has really struck me. That's exactly what I've been doing for a long time. I've been just sitting and hoping I'll feel God again. But He's called me to a higher purpose than that. God doesn't call us to wait for Him to deliver things to us, we are called to seek Him out and go out as labourers into His harvest. This is something we've all been discovering in our ministry here in Portugal. Not having projects going 24/7 doesn't mean we can be taking a break, we need to be intentional about where we are placing our thoughts and praying for all the missionaries here. Being here is giving us such a huge opportunity to grow in our own faith walks and we need to make sure we are placing our thoughts on things not of this earth, as we should learn to do in everyday life. To my prayerful supporters, I would ask for you to pray for me to mobilize and to have the strength to seek out who God is, who I am in Him, and how I can learn more even when I don't have the strong emotional desire to.
Yesterday we ran a short kids program in a park in an area called Frielas. We spent Friday sitting in the park and walking around praying for the neighbourhood and the way the Holy Spirit is already moving there and will continue to move there through us. But we weren't just praying for fun and safety and learning. We were really spending time listening to where God was leading us to pray. Something that came to mind for me was that they needed sight. We've been working through Mark as a team and something that we've recently read was Mark 4:12 (which is referring to Isaiah 6:9) - " they may be seeing but never perceiving". Another verse that came to mind was 2 Corinthians 1:9 - " Indeed, we felt we had received the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead." For those of you reading this, I would ask you to join us in praying for the people in Portugal to have eyes to see God working around them and to have the faith to rely on Him as they are going through a time of economic crisis.
Our event in Frielas went well, between 10 and 15 kids showed up which was about what we expected, but only two were previously from one of our churches so it was an incredible opportunity to connect with new families! We have another event planned for June 7th so hopefully we'll see some familiar faces and some of their friends!
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