Montana testimony

Well, this past week in Montana ended up not being at ALL what I expected it to be. I was planning on learning some new things, being a bit spiritually refreshed, and getting to know my fellow DTS staff a little bit more...lets just say God majorly exceeded my expectations. He blew them out of the water, far above and beyond what I ever could have imagined. For those of you who have known me forever....this week was more significant in my life then “LIFE ’07” in Florida. God has done a mighty working in my heart and my mind and I’m so excited to be able to testify to His glorious faithfulness.

This week started off...well....kinda crappy.
Our drive to Montana ended up being longer than it was supposed to be because our leader Amos’ car broke down and after we picked him and his family up, we ended up driving an hour in the wrong direction. That day, and the first day of the conference(Monday) 3 of us, including myself, felt totally sick to our stomachs. On top of that I was still recovering from my wisdom teeth because I had a dry socket..which made the trip even more miserable. At the end of the first day I was alone in my room just feeling drained and sick..physically, mentally, and spiritually. At our team meeting that day as a team we all told each other where we felt like God wanted to work on us this week. I knew very strongly that God wanted to help me in the area of communication. I have struggled a lot this past year with wanting to speak things out, especially words from God in public settings, and also in processing things with groups, but I just feel so often that I can’t. After that I went to my room and all in all I didn’t feel like being there, I had felt “out of it” the whole day, and I just wanted to go home. Determined to get my heart in the right place, I felt God prompting me to get on my knees and ask Him to help. so I did. Telling Him I couldn’t do it on my own, I committed the rest of the week to Him, asked Him for more of Himself, and put it all in His more than capable hands.

The next day, Tuesday, was the day God changed my life.
After starting of the day with a beautifully refreshing time of corporate worship, we started our first day of classes. For the week there were various classes to choose from, and we were all supposed to pick 2 to attend. Each class being 8 hours of lecture a piece. My first class that started that day was titled “Discipling the Sexually Broken” by Pat Caven. After I process through it, I’m sure I will probably post a blog about this class, it was absolutely incredible. But during that class time God starting bringing up some things in my heart I needed to forgive people for. There was one specific issue He brought up where I held some bitterness in my heart towards someone, and that afternoon I was able to talk it out with my leaders, deal with it, and receive healing.
But during that class God also started to bring up memories from another time in my past, and started to bring up the issue of my stutter.

Okay, so for those of you reading this who haven’t known me for that long, you might be really surprised to hear that I have had a stutter. But I have, my entire life. Ever sense I was a kid I have had a terrible stutter around people I’m close to. No...not strangers. Not in front of crowds (I actually love public speaking and do really well with it). Only in front of people I have known for an extended amount of time, or am really close too. And it’s never been constant. I can go months with out stuttering once, and it will just come out of the blue one day and stick around for awhile, coming and going at random. When I used to see speech therapists as a kid they used to tell me they had never heard of such a case before. That it wasn’t normal....that my stutter just isn’t how stutters work. So over the years I have really wrestled with insecurity, bitterness, self-hate, and anger because of my stutter. And I have never really dealt with it with God before. So, for some reason He chose this day...at this conference to deal with this life long stronghold.

So Tuesday night we had a corporate time of worship where God started to dig deep and move in everyones hearts. I sat in the back of the room, on the wall, bawling my eyes out for the first hour. God was doing a deep working in my spirit. It literally felt like He had a hand shovel, and was just digging to the roots of everything. The main focus was my stutter. Something I had just learned that day in my “Discipling the Sexually Broken” class, was praying God into your past. The basics of the teaching was that we, as humans are limited to living in the present. We no longer physically live in the past, and the future has not happened yet. But God, the maker of time, is above time. He is outside of it. He holds time in His hands. So we as humans, cannot literally go back into the past and heal ourselves from past hurts. But God can, if we invite Him into those moments. If you ask God to go into a moment of pain from your past, He can heal your heart form the pain of that moment, He can help your heart forgive because the past isn’t the past to God. So thats what God lead me to do during that worship time. As I sat back there, he healed every wound from my past. I wrestled with Him about my stutter and why he made me the way He made me. I forgave people who’ve hurt me. In those moments, I was set free from SO much. I saw it like a tree. My stutter was at the top, the trunk was me, and the roots were: hurts, insecurity, self-hate, bitterness, anger, rejection. Those roots kept the stutter rooted, and made it all into a stronghold rather than a struggle. God dug to the roots that night so this tree can one day be toppled.

But after I prayed this out with God, someone in the crowd felt led to lead us all in a victory scream. In all honesty....when this happens during worship times (typically happens once or twice in DTS’) it really annoys me and I usually don’t do it because I never feel sincere about it. But in that moment...God had just me free from a 20 year struggle. So I screamed loud and proud. haha. Right after that, a girl named Arlie came up to me. She said that she felt led to pray for me and that the Lord gave her a word that He wants to release my voice. Shaking my head in awe I told her that was spot on and I would love prayer. She also told me that God wants to release her voice. And that when the scream happened...she tried to scream but nothing came out. She has struggled with shyness her whole life and so she has struggled with speaking things out.
Also, both of us are called to be a “voice for the voiceless” so it was pretty obvious that God wanted to release both of our voices.

After talking for a minute, Arlie felt God wanted us to go outside, roll down this hill, run across this field to a creek and scream. And after that pray for each other. I told her I could scream but I couldn’t roll down the hill because I was still recovering from my wisdom teeth surgery. But she insisted that God wanted me to take a risk and to just trust Him. I felt God prompting me to...so we did it! After our scream we prayed over each other and I felt the Holy Spirit come upon me so powerfully I started shaking. We went back to the worship time to share what had happened. I was really hesitant, but I knew God wanted us to share. So we did, and afterwards Arlie felt that we were supposed to pray for anybody dealing with fear who wanted to be released. So girls from various YWAM locations all over started to come up to the front and Arlie and I started praying for them. What happened next was very exciting for me. As I was praying over a girl from LA named Rachel, I started to speak in tongues. Now hold on. I know what some of you may be thinking. But allow me to explain myself. For the past few months I have been learning a lot about my specific spiritual gifts. But as I have never prayed in tongues, I have wanted to. But it has never happened. I don’t believe I have to do it. But I just wanted to experience the Holy Spirit in a way I never have. It is a spiritual gift I have always had a lot of questions about, so there has been a desire in me to just experience it, especially sense I am an intercessor, and praying in the Spirit is a gift, why wouldn’t I want to pray in the Spirit? So anyways, God knew this was a desire in my heart and He just released it, then and there. How fitting sense this was the night He chose the release my voice, huh? God is so funny sometimes=]

So after that I went to journal about all of this and GUESS WHAT?!?!
For those of you who don’t know I had my 2 lower, impacted wisdom teeth removed over a week ago before this conference and I had a nerve injury during my surgery, so half of my lower lip and chin have been totally numb. The doctor said it could be permanent. But if it starts to tingle, that is a sign that it will eventually heal itself. Well guess what....as I journaled....my lip and chin started to tingle and I regained some of the feeling back in my lip!!! Go God!
As if that isn’t enough...after journaling I went back to my room and I brushed my teeth.
Another complication had happened a few days before the conference. I got dry socket (the blood clot dislodged) on my right wound. So the dentist had packed it with medicated gauze before I left for Montana and told I might me able to take it out Wednesday and it would be better. But all day Tuesday I had been in pain so I figured it probably wasn’t gonna be healed by Wednesday.
SO..I was brushing my teeth and I realized I hadn’t been in pain in my dry socket the whole night sense worship time....so I looked in my mouth at the dry socket and the medicated gauze.... was GONE. Theres no way it just slipped out without me noticing. It was this BIG glob of gauze the dentist had tucked away securely in my swollen tissue. Plus it was so medicated with this nasty taste that I would taste it all day everyday. But somehow...it was totally gone. ALSO.....the dry socket was completely healed.TOTALLY.
All I can say is “Go God”. His faithfulness, love, and mercy has no bounds!!!!!

There are so many more tales that happened the remaining days of that conference. Please realize all of this testimony happened in one night. God did so much in my heart the Wednesday through Friday as well, but for now, I am just giving testimony to this part. I also learned a ton through the lectures I went to and had the blessing and privilege of making many new friendships and connections with people from other bases. All in all this has been one of the most significant weeks of my life. God saw me. He heard my heart cry and He answered me. Just like He always does. Because my God is the same through the ages and His love never changes. There may be pain in the night, but joy comes in the morning. And when the oceans rage, I don’t have to be afraid, because I know that He loves me. His love never fails.