These include being released from my teacher aide commitment at Mapaville School for the Severely Disabled, having the funds (due to school salary payments I continued to receive over the summer) to pay off my remaining debt, and the support is coming in for airfare, my primary expense in this next adventure.
One AMAZING way God has blessed me in this past week is by providing me with a new guitar!!!! I'm so blown away. He led me to give my previous guitar away in Mozambique last summer, and I was so blessed and happy to be able to supply an amazing Mozambican servant of God with his own guitar. He worked with the school doing language training, translating, and he works with the worship team, the daily children's ministry for the village lunch feeding program as well as Sunday mornings with the children's ministry.
So when God made it clear in the last week of the school, He was calling me back for the fall, I knew I would be working with the worship ministry. I would need a guitar! While I was praying during a few days of retreat in South Africa before I returned to the US, I felt like the Holy Spirit told me to go home and pick out a guitar, exactly what I needed and wanted, and He would provide.
The body of Christ is so awesome! God led an experienced music minister to help me pick out a guitar, and when he asked my budget, I just told him, honestly, God said to just pick one out. Then he told me that he felt like God wanted his ministry to buy me a guitar!!!! We went the next day to the music store, and I came home with a Taylor 210e Dreadnought Acoustic-Electric Guitar. It has rich tones, is much smoother to play and easily 5 times better guitar than the one I gave away! I told the guy at the store on the way out, "If God tells you to give something away, don't hesitate, just do it!"
Our Father is sooooo good to us! Did He have to give me such a nice guitar? Unquestionably, I could've made it by which a much lower quality guitar. But He loves to give us good things! He just doesn't want us to let THINGS derail our abiding in Him, our relationship with Him. John 15:7 says, "If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you."
It reminds me of the Bryan and Jenn Johnson song:
Where You go I go, what You say I say
And what You pray I pray
Thank You, Lord! He keeps impressing upon me the importance of entering His rest. If I rest and abide in Him, He'll tell me what to do next, and even what to pray for! Then I know it is in His will and it's just a matter of making every effort to stay in His rest and obey His word until I see the word manifested. (See Hebrews 4).
When I make the effort to put prayer first, I touch on this place in the Kingdom of God where everything seems so easy! I definitely feel like a baby at this, baby-stepping my way into learning how to abide and obey, how to hear and discern the specific guidance of the Holy Spirit, to be thankful when I feel like I'm only hearing a little, because a thankful heart prepares the way to hear more. But it has been so fun over the past few months because I know my Father is so patient with me, and He enjoys me in the journey. Amen!
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