31 Days of Revival {Day 1}

I sit, exhausted on the top bunk, in the barracks of Guatemala. It had been a long day carrying crates filled with puppets and white piping, which we took from location to location, snapping together to make a makeshift theater.

We had wanted to share Jesus.  And these children so far away from comfortable, man made generated Christianity, were absolutely hungry. 

A nineteen-year-old sat on a top bunk also, across from me.  I watched her frantically writing down her testimony. Preparing for the day afterward.

I began to write, but the blank paper stare at me, tantalizingly, almost mockingly…as if to say, “What has God done for you?”  “How has God changed you?” “What is your testimony?”

It was then, I began questioning why I even needed God? After all, what had He done for me?  It was this proverbial slap from a nineteen-year-old who I thought had a perfect life, that mirrored the dirt of my own sinful nature. I needed to find the truth about Christianity.

Many that next day gave their testimony. I had none.  What I didn’t know was that my eyes had been blinded, the veil was yet to be torn in my own soul.  I had to see for myself why I even needed a Savior.

When I got home from Guatemala, a fire seemed to burn.  I started asking myself serious, deep, soul searching questions like…

• What was I believing?  Why?
• What did I have besides “good works” to show that I had really been saved?
• Where was the light that shined on the darkest of my days? And why did I not see it? Why could I not give my testimony?

Did I think I was perfect?  The fear still gripped me late at night where no one could see it.  No…I was far from perfect.

Did I think I could work my way back into God’s graces….somehow covering over my mistakes with “trying” to be perfect?  Maybe.

And as the emptiness kept on eating at me…and there was an echoing cavern that seemed to stretch out farther than the grand canyon inside me….

I knew needed something more than “religion”, walled up buildings, protecting me from the world I had come from.  I needed to see why He even saved me.  What God would even want me?  Where was my testimony?

I dug into the Word. For hours.  Day after day.  Frantically.  Acts seems to lure me, like bate calling salmon to climb the river to spawn it’s offspring.  I was hungry.  Thirsty.  Desperate to know who I was in light of what God creating me.

Then, the Lord led me somewhere so unsuspecting.  I stepped for the first time into that church where all of me seemed to melt in front me.  Tears began to fall.  What was it? Why was I even here? Why had I devouring scripture and why did the book of Acts bring me to tears instead of strengthening me?

Little did I know, those first steps were God’s arms reaching, my heart humbling seeking Him as I tasted my own self deprivation for the very first time ever in my existence.  

Little did I know, I was smack dab, in the middle of a revival.

Thanks for joining me as I share with you my journey through, “31 Days to Real Faith and Revival”.  This is the first day of a 31 day series going on for the month of October.

Since this real life, pride shattering encounter with the living God is the theme we are centered around this month.  Let’s first define revival.

Yep, that was me before I searched scripture, “oblivious”.  God had done incredible things in me, but I was completely clueless as to what they were.  I couldn’t see them…all I could see was myself and how I had been the Savior.

In fact, I literally told that nineteen-year-old…“I am a ‘good’ person.  I don’t think I have a testimony”.  Nothing could have been further from the truth.

But I am learning….If your saved, if God has rescued you from living apart from Him, guess what?  You have a testimony.

It’s incredible to look back and see how the enemy was blinding me to what God had done for me.  Little did I know, even more, how I was clueless to what God was about to do in my life….

Please join me tomorrow as I share more of my journey on day 2 of, “31 Days to Real Faith and Revival”.