At the end of November 2013 I had planned with the Lord a trip across America to find the heart of the American Christian. After two months of planning my dreams crashed as Satan came to do what he does best, steal, kill and destroy. I was told by my parents that I needed to come home, get a job, support myself, and pay back the $7000 debt I had occurred from my "little" legal incident back in 2010 (click here to read about it). I was devastated.
I remember how it felt to have everything that I had planned all of a sudden fall to the ground and shatter (or at least it seemed that way). Even then I understood where my parents were coming from and never did blame them for asking me to come home and pay them back. After all it is biblical to honor your parents and pay back your debts! So that was my excuse for not following what the Lord had told me to do. I chose honoring my parents and paying back my debt a greater cause then serving the Almighty God of the Universe.
So I did what most people do when their yanked from a world full of God's loving life into a world that says money is everything and the American Dream is the only way to live life...I got depressed. The entire month of December felt like life had lost all meaning. I had no community, no real desire to dig into the Word or commune with Holy Spirit. I was dead.
Looking back on the past 2 weeks it is no surprise to me that God decided to "come in like a wrecking ball" and destroy all of the plans I had come up with this month. I had it made up in my mind that I was going to work a 9 to 5 job and it 6 to 8 months pay my parents back and then see what God wanted me to do. As I attended Project Searchlight with Adventures in Missions (a week long seminar for World Race Missionaries who have just come off of an 11 month trek around the world) I felt as though God was about to do something awesome in me.
During one of our breakout sessions I decided to check out Jonathan Little's Mission in Guatemala. I had met Jonathan a few times before and knew someone who was working with him and his wife down in Guatemala, but other than that had no basis of a relationship with him. As I entered into the room that they were going to speak in I found that only one other girl and myself had decided to come talk to them. Right after sitting down in front of Jonathan I could sense that he had something he was going to tell me that was from the Lord.
"So what has the Lord told you to do now that the race is over?" Jonathan asked me. I explained that I was going back up to Asheville, NC to get a full time job and pay back the $7000 I owed my parents. "Well that's nice, but is that what the Lord told you to do?" Jonathan asked again. I could tell that he was already reading through my mail. "Well, no. The Lord actually told me to do an ATL (Ask The Lord)." I told him and then continued on to give him a brief story about why I wasn't doing the ATL. Then Jonathan told me, "I'm not trying to get you to go against your parents wishes or anything, but I think you should do what the Lord told you to do. Take a few days and pray about it."
From that moment on I knew that I was suppose to do this ATL. I took about 5 days extra and stayed in Gainesville, GA to be around community, get spoken into, and most importantly ask God exactly what it was He wanted me to do. So, now I'm off! Jacksonville, FL is the first destination that God has told me to go. I'm currently looking for connections with Church's that are doing radical things in America for the Kingdom of Heaven.
Stay tuned for another blog that will have my mission statement and vision for this ATL along with other tid bits of information!
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