I go to a prayer group once a month here at St. Raphael’s called Nueve Alianza. It used to be a Spanish prayer group that went bilingual last year. They don’t advertise but the room never ceases to be full and a lot of times overflowing. Their purpose is healing. I started going because I was invited but I brought my mother who is in her third round of cancer.
Over time the healing that took place was amazing and hard to put into words. Part of the evening ritual is people get up and give testimonies and share something of their faith that would inspire others to have hope.
I began to feel God’s tapping on my shoulder to share my testimony. And it frightened me. I resisted, I prayed about it, but the tugging at my heart continued. So I thought maybe if I wrote it in the blog first, the anxiety of getting up in front of people would go away. I trust God…but I don’t always trust myself. So here goes…
Sharing a testimony has three little rules: concise, to the point and centered in Christ. Those are hard rules for me once I start babbling. So Holy Spirit be with me.
I don’t really have a testimony that involves suffering or long waiting in faith where a prayer is answered and everyone calls it a miracle. Maybe that’s why I have hesitated in sharing it…it’s not dramatic enough.
But I could sum it up in one small sentence:
His call, my yes.
God whispers every day in my life what He has written in my heart so that I will receive His call and respond in faith. However – I didn’t always hear Him.
I have learned through some recent experiences that there really is only one call that matters in life …and that’s God’s call. His call is written in our hearts and it’s up to us to hear Him.
His call is unique to each person. And I have realized that He is so patient in his waiting for us to respond.
Sometimes a call can begin by Him asking something from us: to let go of something, or forgive someone, to trust Him in a certain circumstance in our lives.
When He began the call in me He used circumstances in my life to get my attention and peel back the first layer – a layer I had created of self sufficiency.
He began with me – by taking something away.
What He gave to me and my family was a gift…but it took me awhile to recognize it as a gift and it took awhile to know how He wanted me to respond.
(if only he had left a note or card…Ha ha )
It was an opportunity to learn to trust.
He took away financial stability.
When we first moved back from Florida, my husband had a substantial sell out from his previous employment. It was what he was going to use to start up with a new company that had no salary to start. Not too long after we were moved in and settled he found out that the previous employer went bankrupt and his old partner took off with what was rightfully ours.
My husband was devasted and stressed beyond any kind of stress he had ever felt. Surviving in Montgomery county with out money was no easy task. But we took it day by day. A lot of his time he wanted to devote to his new company and partner was taken up in legal pursuits. Money and time seemed to be in short supply.
It has been six and half years since this took place and two children later and several more financial set backs – my husband’s spirit has been on a roller coaster. The details of our lives are not that important it’s really what God has done with us through out it all that amazes me.
I was always aware that it was an opportunity to grow and learn to trust, but that didn’t mean it was easy. I know that God didn’t take that comfortable and secure life style we had dreamed of, to make us miserable or test us to see if we would sink or swim.
Or just to see us but heads and get nowhere.
But rather He took something away because He had something way greater to give back. When one is filled with self suffiency – there leaves not much room for God in your life. How easily I filled it with so many distractions and just plain old stuff – projects that didn’t go anywhere.
He allowed it to happen for another reason too – and that was to increase my capacity to better be able to hear His call. What began to take place was a journey of Him calling me to do His will. – to call others to Christ. In order to get this done He had to do some work on my heart and sharpen my antennas.
His first call was disguised as pressure. I felt my husband’s stress so I began to take on free lance work to bring extra cash in. I had a friend who had a husband who was a cop and she told me she would get up at 4 in the morning before her kids woke and work. I can do that! So I asked her to give me a wake up call and those early mornings began. She gave me two rules, (1) don’t try this without praying first and(2) give yourself at least a month getting used to the schedule before you take on too much work.
The very first morning I will never forget reading these words.…”do not be afraid, I will give you everything you need.” And immediately I felt His peace. I didn’t realize how frightened I was. I kept those words close to my heart throughout the entire summer.
I had some big jobs that summer…but I mostly was getting up early to pray. And that’s where God began to work on my heart.
Things began to change in my marriage as well. We began to enjoy the simple pleasures of life, less going out and running around. We said no to more things – because we couldn’t afford babysitters or dinners out. Before we were always looking to improve our house – now we just enjoy it more. Staying home wasn’t so bad and we weren’t spread thin like we used to be. (Our social calendar had gotten a little too busy.) Our conversations were more reflective and asking questions about God than what are we doing? We became more available to care for his mother and we seemed to fight less. This “no money and becoming cheap” wasn’t so bad.
And then God began to take me further…and he gave me the next step. I thought He was asking me to help my husband pay bills…but instead He was just using that pressure I felt to help my husband in order to help me develop a more devoted prayer life. I soon gave up the freelance work and trust became part of our everyday. But the early morning prayer time remained.
I always say that God knows just how to get me to hear him. He speaks to me the most through humor – because I love to laugh and visuals. Not visuals in the sense of visions – but rather in word pictures that speak His message in the form of an analogy.
He knows that as an artist I understand better with imagaery.
The word picture or visual that comes to mind in all of this is a stepping stone pathway through a garden.
With each call – He was creating a pathway for me to His greater call. Each flagstone was the task or job at hand and laced between each task was the call to pray. It was as if He was saying “DO THIS…STOP…NOW PRAY, NOW PRAY, NOW PRAY, NOW PRAY”…..then a new call would come and it would begin again…”DO THIS….NOW PRAY, NOW PRAY.” Etc..
It was hard at first for that ‘Martha’s Spirit’ in me to understand at first…but with more prayer – understanding came.
With each month that I have been coming, I realize that I had heart changes.
What Nueve Alianza has given me as I came month after month
was clarity and purity of heart.
I now know:
1. What He’s calling me to do…and that is to call other to Christ through the things I am involved in.
2. I know I can’t do it with out His grace
3. Nor without prayer…every step of the way there needs to be prayer
4. I know how important it is to wait on Him…the waiting is the most important part, because it is in the waitng that he forms us. It is part of the process.
5. I know how to listen to Him better which I hope will help
when the time comes to receive His next call.
What I have learned by coming to pray with Nueve Alianza is how to sit and be still and to receive. Life is filled with things that aren’t easy – frustrations and discouragement can easily seep in and prevent us from that receiving what He wants to give us..
It is in everyday life that He is the most present and I am the most unaware – because of busy-ness. In coming to pray with other people I have seen and felt that God is there every step of the way. He is ALWAYS there. Even when we can’t feel Him.
It is in the little things that I become overwhelmed. The big things excite me…and yet it is through the little things that He has taught me the most.
And His lessons of humility and love are the greatest when I surrender to those little things
Conclusion:
I’m not sure if I made any sense, but maybe with my story I hope that someone can find comfort if they’ve had something taken away.
To know that there’s always HOPE.
We just have to say Yes and cooperate with Him.
It’s OK to question Him- because you will get answers.
And eventually your question will become: Lord, how can I serve You in this? Or how do you want me to walk through this Lord?
That’s the question I didn’t know how to ask in the very beginning.
God Bless you and thank you for reading this.
Thanks Ginger. Thank you.
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