Project is starting to become a lot busier than it has been in the recent weeks. Currently I’ve been following a pattern of sleep- 4 hours, 8 hours, 4 hours, 8 hours… It’s been really draining on me physically and I’m only keeping up because God’s been gracious enough to bless me with strength that is totally not of me.
Yesterday I had to co-lead women’s time with my roommate. I’ve never led a whole bible study/ devotional in my life so I was really unsure of how to do one. I started brainstorming ideas about 2 weeks ago yet nothing really came to my head. Through much prayer and hours of trying to find a topic fit for Monday, nothing came. Monday afternoon rolled around and my roommate and I decided to head over to the prayer room to find some topic. We had about 4 hours and were really depending on the Lord to show us something to share with these women. I had many ideas in my head yet I knew that picking a random topic would be out of my own doing and not led by the Holy Spirit. With women’s time at 7, we started to worry when 5 o clock rolled around. Nothing was coming. We were trying to find a verse but it felt that the Lord was holding back on us.
6 o’clock came. We decided to skip dinner and see if the Lord would show us something in this hour. I had an idea in my head but it was just so random I didn’t think it mattered. I kept seeing Post Its every time I closed my eyes (Post Its on walls in particular). I shared this with my roommate a few times…tho we both didn’t know why. Then at 6, she remembered a post it wall we had. We ran to the Post it wall and started looking through all the verses and encouragement quotes we had on there. 2 Post Its struck her in particular… it was the Romans 1:16 one. Both said the same exact thing in the same Bible translation…plus ironically it was on my virtual post it on my computer.
“I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation…”
We both looked to each other and knew we were going to start on a wild goose chase to find the meaning. Now the next hour went by like a blur to me. It was God’s divine hand over and over again. We would look at books to find verses, topics, anything that we felt the Lord was trying to tell us. We started reading to each other anything that we found remotely related to the Gospel- the one word my roommate felt that the Lord was putting on her heart. She would be reading a verse in one devotional book while I would ironically be reading the same exact verse in another book at the same time. Another time was when I started doubting in all these coincidences just to find ” There is no such thing as coincidences when you have God controlling everything” on the page that I was reading. I can’t even remember all of the things that happened…I just knew there were over 10 or so times that pieces seemed to fit together to form the devotional we were preparing.
Yet none of those pieces fit together. We had so much to work with but no direction to go. We looked at the clock at 6:55 and knew that we would have to be totally spirit led. *sigh*…That really tested my faith. I went back to my room and just fell on my knees. I prayed so earnestly to God to not make me say anything that was of me for I knew that I could easily make something up- but where would the faith be in that?
I dont think I’ve ever been that unprepared in my life. Being the typical straight-A student in high school, preparation was something I never went without. Walking into the room, my roommate and I knew that we had to be real with the girls. We opened up in prayer and just shared our hearts to them. I really wanted them to see a community and a safe place for them to open up and be vulnerable- my roommate agreed as well. Then we just started sharing. Both of us didn’t know what we were doing, but we knew that God knew and that He would guide our mouths to proclaim what He wanted to say. Throughout the whole time I was talking, I felt that I wasn’t really in control of my thoughts. Ideas just seemed to flow even though I had no idea what to say after each sentence…yet they just kept coming.
At the end, I’m not really sure what I said that night. I didn’t even know if my ideas connected or if they were scattered. I just knew that I was willing to be used by the Holy Spirit and relied on Him to say what needed to be said that night.
