Journey With
Jesus
By Rachel Whipple, Missionary, One Mission Society
continually opens doors for me to learn more about who
He He
is and what’s on his heart.
As I’ve journeyed with Jesus, he has taken me to people and places to teach me about himself. He continually opens doors for me to learn more about who he is and what’s on his heart. He’s allowed me to have sweet conversations with my brothers and sisters in an amputee camp in Sierra Leone who had to flee their homes in the midst of civil war. They lifted up words of thanks for living another day in spite of all their troubles. While in Ghana, he allowed me to dance freely and sing praises to him with precious orphans. He invited me to claim deliverance for a demon-possessed boy in bondage because his grandmother served as a fetish priest. He took me to Benin to learn how to break the chains of Satan in the birthplace of Voodoo, and he invited me to pray for healing over sick and dying newborn babies. He opened doors of communication with Muslims on a train in North Africa. He taught me how to stand in the gap for my neighbors in Spain who did not know the intimate love of our Father. He gave me the opportunity to stand on a mountainside in the Dominican Republic to dig trenches to provide irrigation for villagers’ crops to grow. In Colombia, he gave me the strength to carry a drunken mother, lying in the middle of the street, back to her home one more time. He extended my arms to embrace a woman on the street who had just been raped in her own home. He provided the resources to allow street kids to fill their stomachs with rotisserie
chicken instead of scraps out of the trash. He gave me the opportunity to hang out, worship, pray, play sports, share testimony, and study the Word with men and women in prison. He has taken me into areas where satanic worship reigns, and he has given me a mouth to proclaim the Gospel in villages that have never heard the name of Jesus. He’s given me an invitation to change the diapers of teenagers who have major physical and mental disabilities. He has enabled me to cradle and carry victims of polio. He has provided a vehicle to give a homeless person a ride on a cold night. And I have experienced his arms wrapped around me as I wept from the core of my being when my father died. My lips have been hushed when the presence of the Holy Spirit has visited me. I have been able to raise my voice to celebrate with the angels as people have accepted Jesus as their Savior. I have rejoiced with families who are experiencing the beauty of baptism. He has overwhelmed me with his love through the gift of my incredible husband and the miraculous lives of our children. The Father is in the process of teaching me what it is like to have his heart, his eyes, his mind, his hands, and his feet. It is through the places he has taken me and the people he has placed in my life that he has shown me what it means to praise his name unashamedly. My life is forever changed by this continual intimate adventure of life with my heavenly Father.
photo page 22: Rachel, with Colombian children
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