By Brittany
City Hill Trip Participant
Yesterday we went to an Evangelical Rwandan church service. The day before I had felt drained and wanted nothing more than to be all by myself. As an introvert, it’s hard to be around people 24/7. It was hard to motivate myself to get up in the morning. As the worship team started to play, all my stresses started to fade away. Their freedom in the way they worshiped was so encouraging. At home there are times during worship that I so badly want to jump around, shout, and dance; but don’t because I’m too vain. Something I feel a lot of people back home struggle with. This service was different. Everyone was jumping, and making joyful noises to the Lord! It reminded me how much I love it. What a beautiful way to worship. I keep praying that God will give me freedom when I return to worship God completely free of vanity.
The preacher gave a sermon on the importance of the inner man, and how unimportant the outer man is. Something that would obviously hit home with all Rwandans that were involved with the genocide, little did I know it would be so powerful for me. Humans can persecute your outer man with everything they have, but you decide what happens to the inner man. Only God gives life to the inner man, and NO ONE can take that life away. The fact that this message was being delivered to a people group that has suffered so much in this earthly realm challenged me. If God asked this nation to die to their outer self in such an extreme way, I shouldn’t complain about dying to my outer self in the simple day to day things.
The sermon inspired me not only in life but it helped me with a song I’ve been working on for a long time. A lot of you have probably heard me play it before. The song is about persecution, and God’s heart towards His children who have been through devastating trials. It’s a touchy subject because I feel like, “Who am I to speak to these people who have been through so much?” The sermon basically fed me the rest of the words, and I can’t wait to play everyone the finished product!
2 Corinthians 4:18
“So we don’t look at the troubles we can see now; rather, we fix our gaze on things that cannot be seen. For the things we see now will soon be gone, but the things we cannot see will last forever.”