Supernatural lavishing of His love, Idaho

 

idaho 

*Nothing I hold on to (I will lean not on my own understanding, My life is in the hands of the Maker of Heaven) – if you want, listen to this song to accompany this blog 🙂

When the world breaks my heart, what if I just surrendered? Just gave up?

Wait what if I did that? Then it would have to be God, then it would have to be God, then it would have to be God that was the solution, not me.

What if I gave up my eyes and heart for his? What if I gave up my life for Him

Journal Entry: July, 26th

 

“Show me your wounds”

 

Yesterday, like Thomas, I needed to see them due to the fact that my mind was existential, and my heart divided in fear. Somehow you can live like 7 years with endless wounds, aka endless proofs, of God and still doubt, you still sometimes find it hard to return to restful intimacy with your Savior. With your best friend; the only One who has been by your side leading you through the whole time

This journal entry marks my state of mind at the beginning of World Race America. After Idaho, I can honestly say that the wounds of Jesus’ crucifix and resurrection have never been so clear. In the desires of my heart, which God sees, I wanted more proof if I am really going to continue giving myself over to the “unseen” God.

I just didn’t think He was good enough to show me even more….

like supernaturally

like “always wrecked in Idaho” as our group chat with our hosts is now named

 

Simultaneously, I have never felt more loved and honored and seen by Him, tattooed with a permanent ink of identity. 

Taste and see that the LORD is good (Psalm 34:8)

I remain confident of this: I will see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living (Psalm 27:13)

to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory (Ephesian 3:20-21)

 

Kenz and I started doing a Bible study with our friend Joanna from Indonesia.

In Ephesians 1, we read “He chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight …with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us…he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ”

It is God’s pleasure to lavish us in love, and “the one who blesses others is abundantly blessed” (Proverbs 11:25).

 

 

Let’s start with…

The day we asked the Lord and did street evangelism

Watch this video Kenz made and see the beauty of spreading Jesus when it begins with letting the Holy Spirit go before you and through you.

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The Spirit leapt inside of me to talk to this blind man when I saw him cross the street.

Kenz encouraged us to go, and Raquel and I went walking after him. We helped him cross the street. He said he could find his way from there on. 

A little bummed out, I looked at Raquel. Suddenly, I remembered the note I wrote that morning…

John 10:10 popped in my head so I wrote it down, I also felt slightly led to draw a light bulb and right “in color.” The whisper came into my mind what if someone who couldn’t see the note, received it? 

Raquel shed compassionate tears in that moment as I told her about it. Raquel moved me to see the note was clearly, abundantly for him. It was her that gave us the courage to chase after him again.

We prayed for him, and he was so receptive and eager to share about his life.

We had thought he was closed off from our first interaction, but in reality he was in the middle of a homework assignment for a school for the blind he’s attending. The teacher stood by the door as Raquel guided the conversation so beautifully. 

What really stuck out to me was his embrace of the cup he has been handed.

When we asked to pray for him, he said “God could make me see, but I have this so I can grow strong.”

I was sinking in exhaustion at the end of my backpacking trip this summer, meanwhile Mark has backpacked much more than me and raised up 8 kids and many jazz students. That’s amazing.

 

Our last night, we met a couple that has a refugee ministry in Boise. He couldn’t stop emphasizing how it is relationship over service (made me think of how amazing Indonesia was), learning over teaching. His wife, a counselor, found that people need a friend over someone trying to heal them. He prayed a portion of Grace over us.

 

He said “The poor are just waiting to bless you”…

Nearing the end of our day we went to a skate park with the poor lining the streets. There began hardened hearts to God, shattered souls like Z who just was released and has a daughter in custody of the state.

We came to a halt, but I knew we weren’t finished yet. God highlighted this other area earlier. Now was the time to go there and give out snacks.

 

All 7 of us walked up to one man sitting outside a rescue mission.

It was awkward at first, but one by one more filtered in. The ratio of 7:1 turned into like 7:7.

It was full on fellowship and breaking of bread like one of them said. The truck driver (Annie in the morning felt like we would meet a truck driver) prayed over Lauren and called her an angel after she prayed for him.

 N discussed theology of spiritual gifts like tongues. Kylie, Annie, and I sat on the ground looking up to him as he became our teacher. From Satan worshipping background, he found the Christ that calls us to be humble.

 

The Lord’s outpour to us in previous days enabled us to outpour onto beauties like Sarah.

As I came running back with Annie and her letter, Sarah was already in overwhelmed and beaming with awe tears talking with Raquel.

Her frustrated day, on her break from working, turned into one where she was enthroned with specific words from God written to her in Annie’s letter, Raquel’s tiara, and Kylie’s flower. She couldn’t wait to post this picture on social media:

 Let me tell you, it was out of the corner of my eye, I saw her.

May we be willing to act on those inklings, because you never know what blessing is on the other end!!!!

For instance, I felt like I needed to write the verse about being a prized possession on the back of a watercolor I made for a teammate. I gave it to her and come to find out that exact verse my other teammate felt led to share with her that morning.

God wants to lavish us in the Truth of how loved we are!

 

Our day in downtown Boise began with Kylie proclaiming the armor of God over us (Ephesians 6). As she did, I imagined God dumping a bucket of water over us. Exodus is what the Lord led me to read, even when I didn’t want to. Lauren, Raquel, and I are all being fueled by this book right now.

That morning, I read how Moses went down from God’s consuming presence and glory to bring Aaron back up to it. I felt as though God was calling us to the same; the days preceding this one had been an overflow of His Love, more known and honored than we could have dreamt up for ourselves…

 

 

The day Candace and Patti claimed us royal

The best of times happened as a result of divine appointments, not planned by man.

Candace will always be one of the most important divine appointments to me.

She is the most radiant, on fire for Christ, prophetic, infectiously joyful women I have ever met.

Our new friend Jey, at the food pantry – you’ll hear more about her, invited us to her church (her son’s the pastor).

This woman introduced herself to Raquel and I at the beginning of a refreshing church service. Little did we know, she would shoot arrows of prophecy hitting the center of the target every time before we left the building.

The crazy part was that this was hers and our first time ever going to this church.

Read my about me tab, if you want to read about the prophecies she spoke.

Knowing nothing about me, she said my creativity and painting on canvases isn’t commonplace but holy; it will release people into God’s freedom.

Candace and her friend Patty then proceeded to invite all six of us over for an “activity” days later. Oh how we underestimate what the Lord has for us.

After she met Raquel and I, she saw a vision crowning our team with tiaras, washing our feet with red roses scattered, and chocolate bars.

Patty’s house and testimony are novel and inspiring. The lunch she made filled us to the brim. And never could I have imagined that God loved me this much. His heart for all of us is royalty as His children.

They played worship and served us, claiming it is a blessing to bless others. Candace went around to each of us and like a translator for the King of Kings told us what God has to say. I’m telling you she knew none of our stories, yet she knew all of our stories.

From one’s love of dancing on her own time, to Annie’s call of writing love letters that has been spoken over her 4+ different times, to living water like an ocean that she saw in my belly which has been spoken over me now like 5+ distinct times, to one’s exact family situation that God wanted to breathe hope into, to an exact lie that God wanted to shatter with truth, she showed us that God hears and cares about the cries of our hearts and the smallest details of our personhood.

 

He is the Good Good Father.

Some of us were brought to tears of healing, some just awestruck.

 

She made me abundantly excited to live this life.

She starts with “Radiant Splendor” over me, funny enough splendor = lavishly decorating/adorning, magnificence.

In Utah, I had just decided to begin praying for a husband again, when I felt God asking me to make a decision if I wanted to choose singleness forever (1 Cor 7)…and at the lunch table, she saw an image of my husband, man of God, with big letters “Adventure” over his head…

 

Can I tell you that the beginning of Idaho the enemy’s lies started creeping into my head like they had in Malaysia? That, before all this, I just prayed that God would help me to see prophecy how He wanted me to, because I was weary of it?

He allowed everything bad that happened to happen, because He knew eventually, I’d be here

 

Not only do I believe that the Bible is the living Word and truth to depend on daily for fullness of life and identity, I also believe God is still speaking and the sheep will know the Shepherd’s voice (John 10:27).

The Holy Spirit can move in our imaginations.

Our hosts, Jace and Lo, are incredible World Race alumni.

Lo had us do an imaginative exercise where she set up the scene and we let our imaginations go.

Every part in the exercise symbolized something; we didn’t know until after. We were shocked once we found out the meaning, how accurate and deep our imaginations had gone.

 

For instance, she had us imagine a body of water.

The depth of it symbolized the depth of where we will go with our emotions. If we crossed the water, we are willing to face/deal with our pain and emotions. This is what I imagined:

…The body of water that appears is a large lake, the moon beams have a wavy reflection in a line towards me. I start to walk in, my feet sink into the wet sand. And there’s a canoe and a man pulls me into it. He disappears and it’s just me paddling across. One side after another you can hear the splashing sound, but the landscape seems great. You seem small but big. You know you have to keep going, a high level of wonderous alertness. My canoe beaches the shore and the water slips past the sides. I step out of the unsteadiness and see the bright gold key hanging. I wonder if I should take it, and I hear “I want you to have it” and trumpets sound in a row of people…

One day, early on in Idaho, I felt like I need to cry hard before an important dinner our host planned for us.

I almost sat the night out, but I went outside and asked the Holy Spirit to give me strength and the fruits of the Spirit to enjoy the night, and not miss it; to choose my team rather than the enemy’s lies. (fyi anything that is condemning or self-deprecating is not of God!).

It was amazing how much I would have missed if I didn’t rely on God as my strength when my flesh is weak; I think the man in the canoe is God helping me to deal with the depth of emotions I feel.

Lo made us a Mediterranean meal of fellowship in a conversation over racism and the state of our country with a humble African American man of God named Malcom. 

 

The Food Pantry

They served 300 families during Covid, which is more than triple what they usually serve. The days we were there we fed around 79 families.

Samuel, the leader of the ministry, proclaimed that they give physical and spiritual food, that prayer is the oil to our lamps, that we can’t neglect Nineveh’s (read Jonah).

The first day working at the food bank caused me to write: There’s a quake in Boise Idaho of the Kingdom of God.

Raquel immediately connected with two volunteers Delores and Jey.

The two insisted that some of us come to work in the back with them, loading up a month’s worth of food per family. 

Meanwhile, everyone, but Raquel and I, got to ask people receiving food if they needed prayer.

Kenz, Annie, Kylie, and Lauren had moments with and visions for people that were supernatural (Read about them in Lauren’s blog!).

For instance, my teammates were worshipping. And a woman with dreams of creating a traveling choir asked them to sing for her. Annie felt led to sing “It is Well” for some reason. Turns out this was her mom’s, who just passed away, favorite song. This caused tears to roll down the woman’s face. She encouraged them how needed our work is right now

What was just as remarkable is the unique and sweet volunteer Rebecca who told Raquel and I, with watered eyes, that we were fresh air and that we filled her heart so much.

Or the final time I spent with Delores…of all the incredible people we had to say farewell to, Delores is the one that made me most emotional to leave. 

Maybe it was my heart for old people especially in these times, maybe it was remembering my Grandparents, maybe it was her fire for the Lord. After walking the garden together, she made all six of us cards with her own flower photography on them.

The beautifully meek volunteer Phil, who works with the mentally ill, gave us little notes that said how God sees us. I was so humbled and blessed by his small act motivated by a big heart. He said my head wants to say another thing but this is the truth!

 

River House – Tongues and Intercession for the Nations…

The prayer and church services at our host’s church moved us.

It all started with a revival group meeting about praying in the Spirit or in tongues.

Another wonderful volunteer from the food pantry named Cat had me pray for Delores to receive tongues out loud, since she was hungry for it. Cat said it would help with intercession, and that she received tongues by not leaving her closet until God gave it to her.

Annie had said at the beginning of WRA that she wished we all had the gift of tongues. And while I shared my testimony with the team, not only did I feel so loved and known by them (like an answer to prayer), but also we talked a lot about this gift.

 

Well let’s just say Annie’s wish came true in Idaho. One received the gift in a closet, and two at a church service. Realllyyy exciting

 

Further, we did an activity at the revival group where we received a number to pray for; each number was matched with a name. The woman who got my number/name, was highlighted to me during worship, and part of her encouragement for me was that “I WILL cross that finish line” and that God smiles so big looking at me, seeing each step I take.

Coming into WRA, I had this continuous doubt that somehow I would fall away, just see this blog.
And God was like that night, no, I am the Alpha and Omega, I see your beginning and end, and guess what you WILL run this race of faith with me and finish…because Jesus is the finisher of your faith and the Father so proud of you.

I needed that.

And at a WRA worship night, feeling some apprehension, I took small steps of prayer and faith following Lo’s reminder – the Holy Spirit qualifies you, period.

During worship at the revival group, I also imagined a cartoon lion that transformed into a real majestic 3D lion…

Jesus you aren’t just some beautiful fantasy. You are real and huge and breathing and breathtaking and dangerously sweet

 

The first church service at River House was led by a guest couple, and I have never seen the supernatural touch Earth more.

I’m telling you people falling to the ground, people being healed, people being called to indigenous populations, etc. It may sound crazy to you; it was crazy to me in Malaysia when I first experienced it (just read takeaway 2 of this blog).

 

I have this pattern of being a skeptic of charismatic things until I experience it myself.

Like in Acts 2, the movement of the Spirit can seem like people are drunk.

But experiencing it yourself, is supernatural love and Heaven on Earth. The worries of this life fall away, and you taste and see that Jesus is Bigger.

I walked away from that night high on God. A local woman said she had chased highs her whole life, even in drugs, and had never experienced a high like she had that night.

 

In processing the supernatural of that night, I made a video on my Sabbath:

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I wrote during Worship:

I’d rather be in this room in Idaho right now than I would be across the world. I’m glad that the Race ended abroad that I could be here.

 

The coolest part was Candace had spoken intercession for the nations over me that morning at the other church. And then, that night at River House, Kenz had our team go up for prayer. The wife of the guest speaker “imparted” (haha still processing what that means) intercession for the nations over me.

In that moment, one of my teammates said she had a revelation of God’s beauty that made her sob. And one felt her arm be moved, as she was “imparted” the gift of healing.

 

In continuing to process that night, I thought back on the humility, kindness, and authenticity of the guest couple.

I also thought of the verse about God being a God of peace and order, not confusion.

Lauren had sent to the team that morning 1 Cor 12-14. In my pride, I thought I’ve already read it, don’t need to again. 

But of course, I figure out it is where the verse about God’s order is. I saw that prophecy is a pathway of encouragement and for the secrets of people’s hearts to be laid bare. Through seeing that, scripture says they will FALL DOWN and believe.

 

Even so, Paul also says that spiritual gifts are temporary and some day we will experience God face to face. He says that gifts are worthless without love.

There’s so much in the Bible and to the Christian walk, what matters is having a relationship with Jesus in your heart, and Him meeting you there.

 

Our last prayer room service was all Peace.

They song our team’s favorite “Rest On Us” and talked about living water.

I feel this weight on my stomach when the Holy Spirit rests on me sometimes. It made sense that night why Candace had seen the living water ocean in my belly, haha so cool. 

And at the last church service, they sung “Heart of Worship” which was my theme song, bringing me back to a simple heart posture in Indiana.

 

River House Global in India

Raquel invited Jey and Delores to our prayer meeting for a nonprofit that helps people in India. Jey accepted Christ at 5 in India and quickly became an evangelist.

The Lord called her main ministry to be an intercessor/prayer warrior. Kind, kind Jey makes me feel honored to be a Jesus follower and intercessor.

She told us it matters what you’re doing; even if you don’t see the fruit, don’t give up.

Made sense to us; after minutes of meeting her she wrote down our names so she could be praying for us.  

Her grandfather generations back was a witch doctor, but his wife was killed during a cobra ritual. And he decided he was done with his god. Then a college aged missionary led him to Christ which led to Jey‘s faith and Jey’s kids, two of which are pastors.

 

It was awesome praying for India with a River House staff woman named Ali, soooo full of God. She has worked with sex trafficked in Thailand in the past, but now is a part of this ministry changing lives holistically in the exact area in India where Jey happens to be from.

Ali spoke over us: Thank you for this season of identity. I see a calendar of divine appointments every week, and encounters, I see a calendar of divine appointments in December January February, they don’t have to worry, you are opening doors

 

And with that, God’s goodness just won’t stop. I’ve been fearful that I have no idea what’s next come Thanksgiving, but God’s like I’ve got you. Don’t worry!

Just seek Him, let Him in, He has redemption and good plans for you too. Not without trouble, but with fullness of life in Him.

 

Other ministry, and moments

We worked with Expansion international, a holistic and sustainable program that helps Kenyans get through high school and also runs medical missions. Danika, Jace’s sister, works for them and became our friend too. We helped flip a house; the rent and proceeds all going back to help people in Kenya.  

 We did a gardening project for a women’s homeless ministry in Boise. 

 And happened to meet a world race alumni just walking by. 

We had lunch and were blessed by a connection Raquel’s grandfather had from Venezuela. Two unbelievable testimonies leaving all their nets, for one millions of dollars, for one a comfortable life, to follow Jesus even if it meant becoming homeless or forsaking security. The first time they came together they led like 20 people to Christ. The one from Venezuela feeds many children in Venezuela now that he left all and moved to do ministry in Idaho. 

It’s the unlikely, the greatest sinners to us (even if they were born into dark situations like one of these men) that often hold so much power in the Kingdom. Pray for them and their church!

The warmth of your sunbelt steaming to the horizon

Our hosts’ blessed us with so much fun as well…

A group of college students hung with us and sparked my passion for the fire of college aged and younger people. We worshiped by the campfire with artistic glory coming from beautiful children of God.

I’ll call you where I’ll call you. You’ll go where you’ll go. But I AM WITH YOU ALWAYS,  and that’s really all that matters. And I love what you love daughter, and I have loved those sweet memories you loved all your life, don’t doubt it. Just feed my sheep

The lightning and shadows climbing at sunset, and again worshipping under the galaxies by the warmth of the coals

And through the Cross, the beautifully terrible wounds of Jesus Christ, you have direct access to all of this, the lavishing of His love, if we’d only pray in our hearts with a mustard seed of faith and devotion.

 

P.S. I am an aunt now!! I got to meet him when we were camping in Wyoming, months earlier than I would have if I was international still. 

Elliott Luma Mitchek rested in my arms, I prayed into his eyes and felt his delicate spirit. Elliott was my Sabbath, fresh from the Father’s intent and design of the mother’s womb. Bless them, keep them