Worship Soundtracks from RMIRiverSong on Vimeo.

How has my life changed in the past few weeks since coming to RBI, in 300 words? When I first heard the assignment I figured it would be easy. That turned out to be wrong. The problem with the question is that as I reflected on the past three weeks I didn’t feel anything extraordinary had taken place. Actually, after being here for the last three weeks I began to doubt whether or not I was right for RBI. I sat in the church watching people fall under the power of the Holy Ghost, yet I felt nothing. Despite prayer and hands from the Pastor, I lacked the “fire” that so many others seemed to automatically have.

My journey to RBI started on a hospital bed after a half month battle with a dangerous infection. I was awaken from a medicated sleep to find my TV on channel 2. Two things were unusual about my awakening. One, it was 1:30 A.M. when my monitor’s alarm woke me. However, there was no reason for my monitor to go off. Second and more importantly, I fell asleep praying, asking God to lead me to a place where I could grow.

Without going into my complete testimony, my whole journey to this point has been amazing but the past few weeks have been challenging. It hasn’t been very long but I feel like I’ve lost something again and when I see everyone at RBI so anointed I began to wonder if I had sinned and lost my way. It wasn’t till tonight that I remembered that faith is a beautiful thing. The hardest thing about faith is that when we want the answers the quickest it seems to be the time that God is expecting us to press in and believe.

I realized that in the last few weeks that I have gone under construction. Sometimes when you’re building the foundation you don’t know how awesome the structure is going to look when it’s done; only that it’s going to be awesome. If I had to summarize what I’ve experienced in the last few weeks then it would be, that during construction sometimes a moment of pause helps you realize that God is working all of the time….

Worship Soundtracks from RMIRiverSong on Vimeo.

When we were asked to write about what God has been doing in us since we got here for school, I have to say I was a bit at a loss. Not because God hasn’t been doing things in me, they just haven’t become concrete yet. I know for sure that this season is a season of demarcation in my life. From when God first called me out of California and the apathetic, backslidden life I had allowed myself to degenerate into, to this day, I can, in fact, see the fruit of this decision. Tonight Pastor Eric was giving an alter call and a sentence he spoke summed up my life in California exactly.

Drinking, smoking pot, living in sensuality, and yet yearning constantly for God to change me. I knew all of those things were empty and futile, but I felt alone, had no community, no body of believers or even friends to spur me on to what was right. At every turn people were encouraging me down that road of self fulfillment, of instant gratification. Thanks be to God that He spoke clearly enough for me to hear Him in the state I was in to FLEE California. There were many acts of supernatural provision made by Him just to get me here. I had no idea, at all, what was in store for me. I had never even heard of Pastor Rodney Howard Brown or any of this ministry before my mom started watching in the early spring.

I saw the transformation in her life, and she planted the seed in my head to come here. From the first service I have heard confirmed words that He spoke to me, while I was yet a far off, words like that by the end of summer I won’t recognize myself, and that all of these trials are just preparation for some future circumstance when I’ll need to look back and see the wondrous things He has done and gotten me through, and that I need to start asking for the big things of God and not begging for survival from the Creator of the universe.

The all-consuming fire of the Holy Spirit is burning away the fear and trepidation I have about speaking in front of people, about being seen by people, about being myself. As for my life-long battle with lack, He told me last Thursday that lack is no more in my life! I believe Him not only for my needs for right now, but for His big, big plans for me! In each case where my flesh rises up and I continue in obedience in spite of it, like my first time soul winning or working on the phones, He blesses me abundantly right after in my spirit. There are layers and layers of freedom being unwrapped as I continue to cry out to Him.

Even in the pain of crucifying my flesh daily there is new oil, new wine, new joy of the Lord to sustain me! I have no where to run away to. There is nothing else. I told Him the first week of revival that if He didn’t give me boldness, if He didn’t BURN inside of me, then I might as well die. It sounds dramatic, but I don’t want anything else, and if I don’t really get this right now, I’m finished. I’m so marked by this school, even just so far as this is the beginning, that I will never be able to settle for mediocre or complacent again, in Jesus name…..