Spiritual Foundation

I am blessed to be surrounded by people of faith. All of the close adults in my life have been strong believers and people who put faith to action. When I was eight years old my family became full time missionaries to the island of Hispaniola, and I was always surrounded by those passionate about Christ.

However, I had always heard stories of other missionary children or pastor's children who either went wayward or found their own path. Many children in similar situations as I, seemed to go astray. So, over the years, I would consider why this happened. What was the greatest difference between those who chose to stay with God and those who did not?

My mother always prayed the Lord's armor upon my brothers and I; shielding us from spiritual harm. These facts were never lost on me. But as I grew older, I began to question.

"How long can I stand upon my parent's faith? When should I and how should I go about making my faith my own?"

Eventually, I understood that it was the issue of foundation. Regardless of the other factors that lead to walking away from God, the core of it all was where we stood on the matter. 

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Let us use the concept of leaving the nest. 

We spend many years within the protection and care of our family. While in the nest, we are sheltered from the storms, we are provided for, we are blinded from the wider world bellow. Our nest is up high and is safe and is close to the heavens. 

But the time comes to leave the nest and when we do, we are leaving many of these spiritual protections behind. If we took it for granted, we will have not observed what held our nest together and how it was intricately woven and positioned. We will go off and wander or even if we do know to build our own nest, we will have no framework and will ultimately fail to build one as stable as the one we were raised in.

But if we did observe, then we would know the best season to leave, we would know where to fly off to and we would know what materials to look for. As we took this journey, we would also know that we are still welcomed into the nest we grew from.

So when the time of maturity comes, do we fly and live purely by instinct, or do we fly by wisdom. Do we build our nest because instinct says we must and should or do we do so with the understanding of why and where and with what.

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But ultimately, we are human and do not live in nests. Well, I hope not... Spiritually however we can choose where we stand; solid rock or sinking sand. I have come to believe though, that those who go wayward, have not done so necessarily because they chose to but because they instead failed to choose not to. If we do not choose to build a relationship with God, we simply will not have one.

This revelation led me to much prayer. I wanted a personal relationship with God. One that went deeper than Bible reading and church. I prayed for movement of my spirit. To be removed from reliance on my parent's faith, and instead grounded in a place where I could grow freely with him.

So this post is of my personal testimony of building up my spiritual foundations with God.

Dragonfly in Berlin

In the years I prayed about going to Germany, God revealed many things to me. But mostly He helped me understand what I really wanted for my life. When the doors opened to finally go, I spent much time talking to God about what my personal expectations for the season would be. One of the more prominent ones was that I wanted to build a personal faith with him. 

The first thing I did when in Germany was participate in a Discipleship Training School. Its Goal is to help you know God then go and make God known. Every week was dedicated to a different aspect of God. 

In the week of the Holy Spirit, I lost my connection with God. 

Of the Trinity, I have always been closest to the Holy Spirit. The sudden loss of connection hurt me. I could feel no emotions and I felt empty. It was as though I was standing in a room split in two. The side I was on held nothingness, and the other side held everything. The wall separating us was like a film. I could touch it and push it inwards. I could see and sense what was on the other side, but I had zero access.

I would say it was like despair, I could do nothing. I could express the pain put I could not feel it. 

But there was hope for me. During the Holy Spirit week, we spent a day practicing prophecy, a gift of the Spirit. On this day a friend prayed for me and had a vision. She saw two large hands gently carrying a large tree. The tree was flush with leaves and had firm healthy roots, but it was removed from all soil.

She spoke to me about how I was the tree. I was healthy. I was good. I was strong. But the time had come for me to be removed from the soil I had grown in. God was in the process of transplanting me. He had prepared a new place for me, it was a place with ample room to grow to my full potential, a place with specially prepared soil, a place where I could reach the sun, unsheltered by leaves above me.

It was a beautiful vision and though I could not feel my emotions for it directly, the eyes are the window to the soul; I cried! I was told the next week would be when the process comes to an end.

The following week we had gone to Berlin (the capital) for a city-wide prayer walk, and a conference with the organization we were part of; YWAM. While I enjoyed much of this week, it was a challenge for me. It was hard to pray for an entire city when you cannot even pray for yourself. I also fell very sick with cold towards the end of this week.

One of these days, in the middle of the week, I was seated in a large park. My group was taking a respite from walking. While seated, a dragonfly came to perch on my shoulder. 

This has significant meaning for me because for my family, dragonflies represent the presence of the Holy Spirit and Gods faithfulness and provision. This for me was a sign of God's presence. Despite my inability to understand what was happening around me, God was still responding to my efforts. 

So, the time came for the conference; it was the last two days of our time in berlin. To me it was wonderful. I had grown up in YWAM but it had been years since I had gone to one its conferences. This one was also special. It was to celebrate having been in Germany for 50 years. 

I always find that God is amazing. He ties these seemingly unconnected things together. He creates tapestries of interweaving paths and significant moments to form a scene that weaves time and people together. I have no way of knowing how many lives were impacted on those days. But they were impacted because of the actions of others 50 years prior, and we too will go on to impact others from that experience. 

"The presence of God echoes throughout time, it is only a matter of having the ears to hear and the eyes to see."

On the last day of the conference, we were ending with a very strong worship session. I remember the room was filled with people crying and kneeling, and bowing, and dancing, and hugging and laughing, and singing of praise. I too was on the floor worshiping and crying. I could feel my soul desperately crying out to God. But like I said before, I was plagued with a very bad cold.

I had to leave the room almost every five minutes to blow my nose and grab more tissue. I was quite the extreme annoyance. But despite this, I have always felt that it was not the enemy trying to hinder me. It was more like the physical manifestation of how God was spiritually cleaning me of impurities and contaminants before placing me in the ground.

It was nearly midnight by the time we left the conference, and my team of almost 30 people were waiting at the bus station so we could be taken to the train, so we could go back to the church we were sleeping in. We all stood around and were talking about our experiences and generally just enjoying the last hour before bed. But it was here that the final process began for me. God was finally placing me down in the soil.

It was honestly quite the dramatic visual. The Spirit and my emotions came upon me very suddenly. I remember that I could feel it like the cracking of a dam, all I had time for was to reach out towards my school leader. As soon as our hands touched, I collapsed onto the ground and began sobbing. I couldn't catch my breath and my face was covered in snot, and all around me was a bunch of panicking people.

I would call this the first wave. This would continue the next four hours or so. After much struggle, I managed to communicate what was going on to my leaders and felt sooo much relief to feel again.

By the time we managed to reach the church we were staying in, I was almost delirious. My leaders set me down in a chair to go through the process while everybody else went to bed. 

While in that chair, I went through many waves and prayed in tongues. Eventually, I was there alone in the dark and felt God ask me to take my socks off. I managed to get one sock of when I felt like I fell to the floor again and could not even lift my hand. I prayed and prayed and prayed for a very long time but all I could think about wile my body did its own thing was how much I needed to blow my nose and wanted to go to the bathroom.

So this strong wave ended and I struggled to get up. I was becoming very weak but stumbled to the restroom. I was not going to take off the next sock until I had done what needed to be done. But instead, I encountered another interesting experience; I am not too shy to share. 

As soon as I sat upon the toilet another wave hit me. I was slammed onto the door of the toilet and prayed very loudly in tongues. In between the praying and gasping all I could do was laugh. Not only did I not yet get the opportunity to blow my nose, but I must have been there a while because the motion sensing light soon went off.

It was such a struggle! But it was so fun. After an unknown amount of time, I was able to leave the restroom and return to my designated chair. This time, I set myself comfortably on the floor, I blew my nose as well as I could and only then, did I take my other sock off.

The night was quite long and towards the end of the waves, I found I could not even speak in English anymore. Every time I tried to speak aloud, only tongues came from my mouth. Until finally, I felt it come to an end. I snuck off, back to my sleeping bag and fell asleep easily.

When I awoke, my cold was pretty much gone, and I could speak English with no issue. I was once again able to hear Gods voice and communicate with the Holy Spirit. 

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God had done what I had requested and what He had promised to do. I won't pretend it all makes sense; the spiritual world is not an easy thing to understand and is very abstract. All I can say is what I experienced firsthand as the truth.

I can say with full confidence that my personal faith and walk from that moment on became solely reliant on Jesus and my relationship with Him. My faith is not dependent on my parent's faith, it is not dependent on my grandparent's faith, or my brothers, or my friends. 

My walk is my own.

I pray for those raised in similar environments as me. I pray that they are given the wisdom to understand that they need to go to God and build a PERSONAL relationship with him. That they have just enough faith to take the steps forwards on the right path. That they Have just enough faith to begin the process of building it up into a fortress. That anybody and everybody who is reliant on the faith of others, will make the choice to build up their own faith and foundation.

If anybody came to mind while you were reading this post, please, do not ignore that still small voice. Share it with them and let God move. I write these so my personal experiences and walk can encourage others, and so God can use my life beyond where I can see. 

God bless you all and may you all find prosperity in your lives.

This has been Lillyana Walking with God