Since I have been home, I have been reflecting on what the Lord has done this past year. I find that when reflecting back I am better able to see how His hand moved through every moment. Today I would like to share with you a revelation of the Fathers hand moving and planting seeds over the course of 9 months.
On month 3 of the Race, my team and I served for a month with YWAM Guatemala. While we were there, we practiced intentional, spirit led prayer over specific people each week. On our last week with YWAM, they chose to pray over our team. This was the first seed planted from God on a journey that I didn’t even know I was on. I wouldn’t see the connection until I was sitting on my bedroom floor in Sherwood, Arkansas 7 months later.
During the prayer session, one of the YWAM women, Sarah, told me she felt the Lord put Zephania 3:17 on her mind for me. She didn’t know what the verse said but told me to look it up. So later that day, I did just that and while I was reading it, I just couldn’t see the connection to me. It was nice and I was like, “yeah this is a cool verse”, but it didn’t connect. This is what the NIV verse says:
“The Lord your God is with you,
the Mighty Warrior who saves.
He will take great delight in you;
in his love he will no longer rebuke you,
but will rejoice over you with singing.”
Little did I know the Lord was about to begin a journey of finding my identity and believing in who he says in me. This journey was extremely hard and even as I walked through it, I didn’t remember this verse.
Fast forward 8 months. My new team and I were in Heidelburg, South Africa and it was our last week of ministry with the World Race. We were invited to one of the church members houses for a small group and we completed the night with an invitation of prayer. One of the men there asked to pray through the spirit over us and to speak anything the Lord shows him over us. So, we said yes.
While praying over me he had 3 images he saw for me. One of them he shared about how the Father sees me and wanted to seal that image in my heart. This image included me as being graceful and beautiful in my simply existing. Another image he shared was of God in heaven looking through an album of my life. He used words of God celebrating me, being excited by me, proud of me, and joyful over me. He felt that God wanted to tell me that He esteems in me.
Now I was a little skeptical because it scared me. This man who didn’t know me or my journey was speaking into truths the Lord had been speaking into my life for the last 8 months. Oddly enough, that same week, I saw some verses that my college preacher saved on the Bible app. One of which was Zephania 3:17. What’s crazy is for me it affirmed the images this man spoke over me, yet I didn’t remember at all this verse having been spoken over me months earlier. I just knew it really connected with my heart then.
Fastforward to month 9 on my bedroom floor. I was going through all my world race papers and letters, and I came upon the paper from my prayer session in Guatemala. This reminded me of the verse the Sarah spoke over me and noted in my phone. Then it clicked. I searched my phone frantically to confirm my suspicion and bam. There was Zephania 3:17, the verse that made no sense at the beginning of my journey, but that was the ultimate affirmation of the truth I experienced at the end.
I just wanted to share this story because it left me in awe of how God works through the spirit and through his children, but also, because he also has his hand working in your lives. We can’t always see it initially or even through the process, but that doesn’t mean He isn’t working.
His hands are working both in the frontlines and behind the scenes. I hope y’all have a really blessed week and I can’t wait to share a few more posts about life after the race.
Love y’all.
Beautiful Ashton. It reminds me of the story Lori Lee told me about her death experience and how I was so surprised to hear about Jesus holding her by the shoulders, smiling into her and saying “You’re going to love it here!”. The idea that He would be excited to show us and “delight” in us is so foreign to me. Thank you for sharing your heart again this is amazing.
So good Ashton. And so true- “We can’t always see it initially or even through the process, but that doesn’t mean He isn’t working.” even when we can’t see it He’s still working and doing something more than we can even imagine!! Cant wait to read your other posts! And see you soooooon!!