call me Israel

let’s just start this off with vulnerability. going into Guatemala debrief I was literally in the depth of a pit. so much so that I had a prescheduled meeting with my mentor and coaches to walk through healing and deliverance before the debrief week even started.

on debrief night one, no more than 4 hours in, I was eating the worlds best brownie gifted to us by mom, sitting there ready to listen to the word, but still pretty mad at the Lord just to set the stage. right before she started to speak I heard the Lord give me Revelation 12. 

this was extra special because honestly, I haven’t heard the Lord talk to me in weeks and I was really starting to get frustrated. 

so I go get my Bible to look it up. it reads:

“Then I witnessed in heaven an event of great significance. I saw a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon beneath her feet, and a crown of twelve stars on her head. She was pregnant, and she cried out because of her labor pains and the agony of giving birth. Then I witnessed in heaven another significant event. I saw a large red dragon with seven heads and ten horns, with seven crowns on his heads. His tail swept away one-third of the stars in the sky, and he threw them to the earth. He stood in front of the woman as she was about to give birth, ready to devour her baby as soon as it was born. She gave birth to a son who was to rule all nations with an iron rod. And her child was snatched away from the dragon and was caught up to God and to his throne. And the woman fled into the wilderness, where God had prepared a place to care for her for 1,260 days.” Revelation? ?12:1-6? ?NLT??

…have you ever read that before???

a woman giving birth. a dragon. WHAT. 

my immediate thoughts were as follows… I’m not pregnant, and all I can picture after reading this is the Shrek movie dragon in front of a woman giving birth, why in the world would the Lord give me that passage???

out of all of it I will say that the 1,260 days caught my attention & I even wrote it on my hand at one point in the few days I was trying to decipher this verse, but I still didn’t understand why. 

I asked my squad leader and we went to her study Bible to try & figure it out, but didn’t find too much. she explained to me that it is foreshadowing or representation of Israel & being in the wilderness. 

okay, okay, but like. what’s that got to do with me?? 

well, that next night mom told us that we were praying for abundant miracle healing, and then that next day we were doing baptisms in the hostel hot tub. which then all of a sudden I got sick to my stomach and my heart dropped. I knew I was supposed to go & get prayed for & then baptized, but I was legit more than terrified. 

I spent the night crying alligator tears and blowing my nose way to many times feeling nothing but defeat, even after fierce prayers & good conversations with leaders. 

but then the next day came, and it. was. hard. let me tell ya. I layed in bed for 4 hours that day. I also fasted after a prompting from the Lord and I was starving. I also refused to do an activity with the squad, and I just was done, and embarrassed. 

until I was challenged and called out. 

during worship I did some math. I was hesitant of this baptism in many ways but one being the fact that my baptism in 2017 just meant so much to me & changed my whole life. so that night during worship I was curious to see just how long it had been since I was baptized, so I did some math. 

turns out it was exactly 1,266 days from my 2017 baptism to my 2021 baptism. 

6 days off… just a coincidence, right? 

so I quite literally crawled over to my leader, everyone stared at me, and I told her the new realization. to which she replied that it wasn’t a coincidence at all, despite my questioning of myself.  

& then my sweet squad mate Janice, with an incredible gift of knowledge, knew there was someone else who needed to share that night. to which I proceeded to get stared at for 1-2 minutes, I was called out & felt the need to share with the class. 

so that night I surrendered my life, worries, anxiety, and healing to the Lord and professed for baptism. I declared redemption & accepted the Holy Spirit. 

so call me israel, I’m a new creation.