It’s about TIME I told y’all the whole story.
I love the metaphor of jumping into the deep sea.
OCEAN DEPTHS. My heart. Here we go!!!
I knew about God all my life.
I just didn’t KNOW him. Like… personally.
I saw him through my older brother. I saw the joy of his baptism, so I got baptized when I was eleven. It was utterly disappointing. I thought I would feel so CLOSE to God like my brother had. I didn’t.
It actually caused a catalyst of questions about faith and Christianity as I began middle school. Was the Bible reliable? How could I know God was real? How could I give my WHOLE LIFE to him? How could I trust him?
In the questions, his answer humbled me. He told me—Alyssa, you don’t have to have all the answers. You’ll actually never be satisfied going down that route. I want you to know, though, that you can just step out to me, and I’ll be right here, ready to catch you. Just step, I’m here. I’ll give you the faith. Just be with me.
I said yes.
Middle school, high school, college, and post college (continuing into present day) have been a wiiiiild journey of discovering and rediscovering the one true, faithful lover of my soul. My life has been UPENDED time after time through moves and mission trips.
Through continual familial unemployment, tragedy, and deaths.
Through an inner city internship during the rise of the social justice movement.
Through studying human trafficking in Thailand during COVID-19.
Through processing deep, crippling childhood wounds and trauma in Christian counseling.
Through participating in a post-graduation Christian fellowship program centered around discipleship, hearing the voice of God, and inner healing.
You know what is absolutely unbelievable?
My whole life has been this big question of how I can TRUST God. And somehow, in all the heartache, anxiety, fears, paralysis, skepticism, and doubt—he has been wooing me to himself. What!!!!!?
YES. In the past twelve months, I have been absolutely UNDONE by his goodness and love for me. He has been calling me, calling me, calling me out of darkness, hiding, distrust, lies, shame—all of it. And, he’s shown himself to be the God of my healing, restoration, deliverance, and liberation.
It’s a really, really long story (and I’m writing a book on all of it). The summary is, I now see that Jesus is the only way to know Beloved God, the Father.
This is the WAY: When I give everything to him, sell it all—I will find the pearl of great price. So. I am giving my life away. Giving up all my old baggage, HALLELUJAH. Dying to that old life. It’s buried in the ground. COME ON, SOMEBODY!
February 19, 2023. I got rebaptised. It was actually entirely the best day of my whole life. It was spontaneous and mostly unplanned. But then again, it was right on time.
I chose to get baptized because I realized it was necessary for my personal healing. It was the necessary act of surrender to walk in freedom and deliverance for my WHOLE being—heart, mind, body, soul.
Just like the decision to relent from all the questions and doubts when I was eleven and just take a step of faith—this was dying to self once more. Leaving behind all my old doubts, fears, insecurities, past, history… everything. All my old garbage, all the old bondages and names that were holding me down.
My baptism was the choice to put all of myself out there for Jesus. Conforming to the truth that is mine because of his love: This is my BELOVED DAUGHTER, in whom I am well pleased. Ahhh!!!
That night, at Kingdom Life, that old church building where I’d received prayer for internal healing (through many tears) Sunday after Sunday my senior year of college, something new happened when I came up out of the water.
And the Holy Spirit filled me in a way I’d never felt before—I was flooded with contagious laughter.
He filled the entire room. All my friends were laughing and dancing in worship with me for hours after the service should have ended.
I am saying YES to Jesus’ reality rather than my own, and God is truly healing my entire life. I am finding the more I give of myself to him, the more I find him. The more I find his love, healing, truth, peace, joy, and freedom.
All praise to the Most Beautiful Unseen One, I’ve experienced physical, emotional, spiritual, relational, and mental healing. Images, words, visions, dreams, prophecy, interpretation, healing.
He’s pouring out SO MANY GIFTS, I am in awe.
I’m walking in a new reality in Jesus—it’s a reality of GOODNESS and true, painfully true LOVE. He is my SAVIOR, right here, right now. This is my journey of how I’m coming to know Jesus, more and more over the years. I’m finding in the knowing… that he is unbelievably good.
Where does that leave me now?
LET ME TELL YOU.
I moved to Colorado Springs on one of those faith whims. So difficult. Yet so needed. And so wonderful. Here’s what happened.
God called me to move to Colorado Springs. And I said, sure. And then it was like ripping up all those old wounds behind moving, and new community, and not being sure how all my needs would be provided for. And he came through, he came through, he came through.
Oh my God, you came through.
And so in the ripping, he’s revealing. Revealing himself as Deeper Heart Surgeon. Next stop?
Missions, outreach, cross-cultural ministry, traveling abroad, fundraising. It all is riddled wide with wounds. It’s time to uproot and get to work, God is prompting.
I’m begging for healing here. He’s saying he’s ready and willing.
And the doors are wide open!
Starting January 4, 2024, I am going to do a Discipleship Training School (DTS) with Youth With a Mission (YWAM) in Denver!!! I feel unexpected peace and excitement that came literally OUT OF NOWHERE (BUT JESUS). So spontaneous and wild. But also, once again… right on time, right? ;)
It will be three months of training in Colorado. Learning a missional lifestyle. Then, two months of outreach abroad. My friend Janae who is on staff with YWAM Denver is co-leading the trip.
My motivation for applying? Janae Powell, lol. Just kidding… partly.
No but more seriously, after a very broken semester abroad in Thailand spring of 2021 (not in missions but studying human trafficking and orphaned children and vulnerable populations), I got burned out on cross-cultural trips and missions.
It’s been my hope that God would redeem the inner heart that I have for multicultural ministry.
And, while it’s a years-long journey, God is gradually restoring my desire. I actually had a dream about doing a DTS with YWAM three months ago, right after moving to Colorado Springs. I have held it loosely. But in the past month, my desire has rapidly, and RADICALLY, intensified.
Here’s my heart!!! I want to learn what healthy, supportive, communal, Jesus-focused, Holy Spirit-empowered missions and ministry looks like.
That’s where my expectations lie. I want to be trained in this kind of ministry. I want to be equipped, mentored, shepherded, and discipled by people who are walking in truth, peace, hope, love, and deliverance of Jesus Christ.
I’ve been drawn to the missional lifestyle of Jesus and his disciples for a while, wondering how to make this my lifestyle.
And I long to learn to become this kind of discipler myself.
I hope to discover God’s path for my lifestyle of ministry and what that specifically entails.
I hope God will heal and redeem past baggage and hurt of missions and cross-cultural trips.
I hope he will ignite me with a new and renewed passion for his pursuing and shepherding heart.
I know my life has been UTTERLY RIPPED UP, FLIPPED UPSIDE DOWN changed by the love of Jesus and his gospel of repentance. I want to learn how to live a life that naturally integrates
Evangelism.
Ministering.
Praying.
Boldness.
Worship.
Shepherding.
Breaking out of darkness and lies into light and truth.
JOIN ME, FRIEND?
Come, walk with me in the tension of
where wild, terrifyingly beautiful dreams
meet the murk and rubble
of today and tomorrow and yesterday.
It’s a journey where realities play.
Heart, mind, body.
It’s a real, unfiltered, raw, unharnessed path.
It’s a little in the clouds and a lot in the sand and dirt.
My life, your life, our world together.
Stories, dreams, visions.
History, scars, generations.
One thing you should know.
It’s through darkness, death, chaos, suffering.
But into light, life, order, and peace.
For, where else would we go?
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