Speaking

We were putting our packs in the vans, ten minutes from departing campus for the airport to begin the first leg of our three-flight journey to Nepal. All that was left was to put university tags on our luggage, and pray with those that had come to see the ten of us off.

My friend Eddy was driving us to the airport, excited to send us all off to a country he had spent the summer in two years prior.

As I was changing from sneakers into rainbows outside of the Office of World Missions, he walked up to me and said, "Margaret, there is something I absolutely have to tell you."

I looked up, confused, and told him I was listening.

He continued by telling me that in praying for our team in the days prior, the Lord had given him words from Scripture to lay on me.

Me, specifically.

Like, I know God speaks directly into our lives through others, but I had never been in a situation where God had told someone that I needed to hear something.

"Be still and know that He is God, Margaret, just like it says in Psalm 46. I have no idea what that means to you, but I trust that God knows what He is doing by telling me you need to know that."

I had been freaking out that day. Never had I felt so nervous to travel so far, but never had I felt so lead by the Lord.

You see, there were pieces of my life that I knew I had to leave in California. Struggles that absolutely could not follow me into the mission field.

I had just received word that I may have a small tumor at the base of my brain. I had just found out that I inherited the cholesterol levels of my father, who had a heart attack and triple bypass at 47. I had just finished hand-writing a letter to someone I love, but that I knew I could not be constantly thinking about when trying to show people Jesus.

Not only did I pull from Eddy's words, God's words, that day. I pulled from them constantly throughout that next six weeks, singing them to myself as I walked the streets. I pulled from them as I studied the biology of cancer for class, trying not to imagine what was potentially growing in my brain. I pulled from them as I had blood drawn, tested, and got more opinions from more physicians.

I was reminded of them as I found out that there was no tumor. I was reminded of them as I realized the fact that my cholesterol levels do not determine my fate, but Jesus does.

What truths of Scripture can we be speaking into the lives of our friends and family? Can we pray for opportunities to wash both believers and non-believers in the words of our Father?

I want to. Sometimes it's hard to feel like I have it together at all, let alone feel like I can speak into the lives of those around me.

But Jesus uses the weak and the broken.

"But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, 'Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.'" 
1st Corinthians 1:27-31