God, you crazy!

As a child, the God I worshiped was big, all-powerful, just, all-knowing, and way up in the sky. He was sometimes kind of scary. And while that is for the most part true, there’s so much more to a God worthy of all our praise. As I’ve matured in my faith, God has become my companion, my teacher, my comfort zone, and my best friend. He is involved in every single aspect of my life.

Throughout the course of this trip, the Lord has focused on teaching me the latter: that he is so dang involved. He is so present. He is doing big things right before my eyes. He’s not the “way far away in the sky” God that I used to follow. He’s the “right next to me in everything I do” God, and I love it.

This past month, my team and I have adopted a phrase that we shout every time God does something out of the ordinary; every time that He shows his involvement. It’s become our motto for these four, short weeks. Each time we see Him moving, we yell, “God, you crazy!” I cannot even begin to count how many times “God, you crazy!” has been excitedly shouted all throughout this beautiful country. It’s been a pretty amazing month as far as seeing God move goes.

Well, as the trip comes to a close, I wanted to reflect on some of the “God, you crazy!” moments that we’ve experienced, both big and small. This may be a little different from the rest of the blogs in that it may take up more of a list format, but trust me, it’s worth the read. God sure doesn’t disappoint.

Note: This list is only a short glimpse into how God moved. He did even bigger and crazier things than what is written below, but for the purpose of this blog, the shorter list will have to work. When I get home, please ask me about the rest of the “God, you crazy!” moments because I could go on and on.

1. As this trip drew near, I began praying for the team that I would be spending the next month with.  I’m not going to lie, leaving behind all my people at home that I love so dearly to spend four weeks with total strangers stirred quite a bit of anxiety within me. For all I knew, my team could have been a bunch of crazy girls of whom I had nothing in common with (I mean, I’m a little crazy, but you know what I mean). As I prayed, I asked specifically for a team that could laugh together, in both the good times and the bad. I prayed that the Holy Spirit would give us laughter to get through whatever was thrown at us. Ok. As I write this, it’s our last day in Swaziland, and I can say with all honesty that I’ve never laughed so hard in my life. Even on our worst of nights here, we have laughed hysterically, and I cannot even begin to tell you what a blessing it has been. God, you crazy!
2. Swaziland is currently in the worst drought that it’s had in 100 years. When we arrived here, we were told that it hadn’t rained once in almost 6 months. This has been extremely detrimental to the economy and well-being of the nation. Almost immediately, my team and I began praying daily for rain. We knew it was highly unlikely, but we had confidence. We went from saying “I hope it rains,” to “It will rain.” This past Saturday night, Courtney felt the Lord telling her that we all needed to sleep with our Bibles on our beds. As weird as it sounded at the time, we did it. And guess what? We woke up Sunday morning to rain. It rained on and off for the rest of the day and again Monday and Tuesday. The dry, very cracked dirt is now muddy. The thick layer of dust has been washed away. The rain was a going away present for our team, and we wanted this gift so badly. God, you crazy!
3. My word for this trip was “rest.” This past school year has been pretty stressful and pressure’s-on. Quite honestly, I felt that I couldn’t take on even one more thing. I had become so heavy carrying both my own burdens and the burdens of others. Entering into July, the Lord told me that despite my physical exhaustion, He would give me rest this month. He reminded me that true rest is found only in Him. As the month progressed, I came across countless scriptures concerning rest and was so encouraged by the community and work being done here. I also found a song that was downloaded on my phone called “Cecie’s Lullaby” by Steffany Gretzinger, but the weird part was that I had no recollection of ever downloading it. This song is from the perspective of the Lord, inviting the listener to rest in Him; to abide in Him. This song I had never heard before was exactly what I needed this month. I am so rested and so at peace. God, you crazy!
4. As we prepared for the trip, my team and I were told that we needed to be ready to be uncomfortable for a month. We were told that we would have no running water. That we would be having bucket showers. That we would brush our teeth out of our Nalgenes. We were told that we would be cooking our own meals, and all of us assumed that this would be over an open fire. We were ready to spend four weeks with dirt floors, grass roofs, and holes for toilets. As we pulled up, our van fell silent. We had an actual house, running water and all. There was a kitchen with a small propane stove and a little counter space. We had tile floors. And there was a toilet. While the kitchen is often painfully small, the showers can be freezing cold, and the house has many ants (lants=live ants, dants=dead ants), we were blessed far beyond what we expected. God, you crazy!
5. When serving the Lord on the mission field for a month, spiritual warfare is inevitable. For us, the enemy attacked with nightmares and restless nights. One night, the Lord woke up me and two of my roommates to a loud crash in the other room. Our teammate slept in the other room and had been having bad nightmares that made her thrash throughout the night, so we assumed that was the cause of the crash. We felt the Lord telling us to go into her room and pray over her.  So, despite the fact that we were exhausted and slightly scared, we did. As we were praying by her bunk, we were unsure as to if we should wake her up. We didn’t want her dream to continue, but we also didn’t want to make things worse. One of my roommates prayed the following, “Hey God! Ok, if you want us to wake her up, will you please just make her shoot straight up.” Well, within 2 seconds, our teammate’s legs shot straight up and then she sat up completely. We were all completely speechless at what God had just done for us. God, you crazy!

I am so blown away by how the Lord has shown up this month in all aspects of our trip. Honestly, getting this list down to only five stories was incredibly difficult. In my journal, I have pages and pages of things God has done. It’s crazy.

I’m so grateful for a God that does show up. For a God that cares enough about me to be involved in my insignificant life. For a God that is teaching me more about himself every single day. I’m grateful for a God that was here in Swaziland before I was, a God that met us along the way, and a God that will be here long after we are gone. God, you crazy!

Written by: Caroline