Its only been three days since I arrived in Atlanta and already my world has been rocked. You see, I'm not exactly "new" to the ideas of living in community or missions or AIM, and yet, I have SO much more to learn.

      I've always thought of myself as averagely useful. I don't mind hard work and I genuinely like to make people happy through acts of service. That's always been the way I show the love of Christ, the way I could comfortably minister to those around me.

       This week, that all changed.

      With the soft morning rays spilling in through the windows,  all 80+ of us were gathered together in worship. We were singing my favorite song (Break Every Chain by Will Reagan and United Pursuit; check it ooouuutt!!!!) and I was perfectly content to simply sway slowly in time with the music.

And then I felt it. The Nudge.

"Go to her, go talk to her. Go pray over her, go tell her how much I love her. Tell her she is not, and never will be, invisible to me." Oh no. Anything but that. "I'm not comfortable with that, Lord, " I thought. "I don't know her. She's probably doing just fine. She doesn't need anything." 

     But it persisted. "Go. Go right now." A heaviness settled on my chest and my heart beat furiously with fear. I took a single step forward. "Go. I will not give you peace until you go. She's needs to hear Me. Will you stand in my way?" That was enough motivation for me! I pushed through the crowd to her side and wrapped my arms around her.  I said whatever came to mind and prayed that something would touch her. And wouldn't you know it, before too long, tears were streaming down both of our cheeks. 

    The moral of this story is: if you step out of your comfort zone to follow Christ, God will show up in some way or another. Even if that girl hadn't received anything I said, my heart would have grown simply by responding to the inspiration of The Spirit. Good still would have come from it... God's cool like that.

    Since that moment, God has reaffirmed again and again that I AM capable of hearing from Him and all I need is the courage to speak it out. All I need is to surrender  to Him. The crazy thing is, the more I put aside MY desires and the more I put aside what I'm comfortable with, the more FREEDOM I receive. True freedom doesn't come from doing whatever I want, true freedom comes doing whatever God wants. 

    I am never more free than when I'm tied to Christ.