“Do you trust me?”That is the question God has asked me over and over throughout my journey to Thailand.
One of the speakers talked about surrender yesterday. She told us that surrendering with the Lord is not about Him taking something from us, but it’s about Him asking us to give up something in order for Him to give us something so much more! Even before I got to training camp, I knew that there were things God wanted me to let go of in order for Him to work through me this summer. Again, I could hear Him asking me, “Do you trust me?”
One word that keeps coming up in training camp is FREEDOM. I knew that God desired freedom in my life, but in order for me to truly have that freedom I needed to surrender. As we prayed last night, one of the girls on my team told me that she felt as though God had plans for me, but there was an anchor holding me down. As I learned to let that anchor go over the past few days, I have been able to feel a freedom that God has intended for me all along.
For months, God’s promise to me in this trip has come straight out of Isaiah 61:
“The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn, and provide for those who grieve in Zion—to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of his splendor.”
-Isaiah 61:1-3
There is such a beautiful picture of sweet freedom in that passage. These women we are about to minister to have been broken in ways that are hard to imagine. But God desires freedom for them. They have experienced things that some of us can’t even picture, but in that God promises to take that brokenness and turn into something beautiful. If we’re willing to just surrender.
I believe that God has freedom in store for the women on Bangla Road. I believe that He has joy for their pain, and beauty for their ashes and I DO trust Him to do that. As my team gets ready to be the light in the darkness this summer, I just ask that you pray for God’s love to pour out on Bangla, for chains to be broken, and for FREEDOM TO REIGN.
