Istanbul

My team and location have since changed since my last update. I’m now in Turkey with Skylar: running buddy and partner in coffee, Ceciley: expert hair braider and sharer in revelations, Maddy: Jesus loving California girl, Lexi: bearer of squad mascot – Alb (stuffed sloth), Johnathan: personal security guard and humble servant, Nick: highly energetic older brother, and Joel: our teacher of all things Islam. That concludes a brief introduction to my team.

We started our Turkey quest by flying into the great city is Istanbul. A land of luxury and Turkish delight.  Oh and loads of cats. Our hotel was just a walk away from the Mediterranean Sea coastline and a very inclined walk to the Grand Bizzare. Thinking this was just a 2 day visit before going to the opposite side of the country, now turned into a week visit inspired by Joshua 6. In order to devote the city to the Lord, we decided to pray through the 6 beliefs of Islam each day and on the 7th day to circle the mosque seven times in prayer.

This being the first time entering to a country without any prior connection, having to navigate the culture and language by ourselves, didn’t leave a whole lot of opportunity to have conversation. Mostly because I felt it to be highly ineffective as a woman in Istanbul to strike up any discussion on the streets. We know prayer to be the most powerful thing, but when you face a situation that you feel completely useless, that truth sinks deep. I’ve come to a point where conversation with Muslims took me deeper in the belief that God is the one that gives them a heart to know. There aren’t enough words to make people believe the truth. God has to be the one to show them. This commences a deep journey of prayer.

Ramadan is a month long fast in Islamic cultures. Muslims will fast from sunrise to sundown believing this is the time where their prayers are most effective. They continue to pray 5 times a day as the call to prayer goes off periodically. In admiration of their devotion and to become a more effective minister of the gospel, I decided to do the same. Of course, praying to the one true living God and the God who hears.   

The God who hears.

If you had the God of the universe, the one who bled and died in order to unite all people back to himself standing before you, giving you His full attention and knowing every intention of your heart, how would you speak with Him?

Muslims bow down and repeat the same words over and over to an idol and devote their lives to vanity in hopes that a false god will show them mercy. They strive to make themselves clean and good, but nothing is ever enough to please Allah. Imagine serving a god impossible to please? Maybe you do. Maybe you see God as someone who is contempt towards you and the gospel as a pity party. I just want to tell you that when you receive the God who saves into your heart, you are HIS and He is yours. He desires you! Not what you can do or bring to Him, simply yourself is pleasurable to Him. It’s not a casual love it’s a love that is strong as death, with jealousy as fierce as the grave. It took Him to the grave just to have you. So imagine how He feels to see you loving anyone or anything more. It grieves Him greatly. There is grace to turn back. Come back to the Father and Lover of your soul and watch His love embrace your wayward heart.

I didn’t mean to go off on whole tangent about His jealous love, but I guess He wants you to know. Back to our regularly scheduled program… fasting. The Lord also led me to do a talking fast, which I had never done before. He has been taking me on a long journey of surrendering my voice, and continues to take me deeper. During this fast, it made me realize I am quick to state my case and seek control in the direction of the conversation. I desire to be understood and involved. But in those moments, God stood by me as my defender, advocate and my sovereign king. I can rest. There is a time to remain silent and persist in prayer. I saw as the world around me changed, not because of my words, but because as I prayed atmospheres started to shift. The word became my sword and intercession became my plea.

Each day we would wake up at 6 to meet with the Lord. Then come together as a group at 9 to check in and spend time in worship and prayer. Then Joel would do a teaching on the belief of Islam that we were praying against for that day. We would go out in pairs to different mosques in the area and cover it in prayer. But we spent nearly the whole day in this seating area for people to smoke on the top floor of our hotel overlooking the city and sea. The receptionist now has hours of footage of us all sitting and talking in this room every day. Not typical “tourist” behavior. Our days were the same, but as for prayer, each day looked entirely different from the one another. Some days I felt I was running completely empty and at times hopeless by the strongholds of Islam. Other days I was full of fire, running full force into the battlefield with faith in our victory with Christ. No matter where I was at, God remained the same and showed himself faithful. I found myself singing songs of praise and my faith began to rise. Other times, I would pray through scripture and watch it come to life. Although, there was one day that was particularly special to me. Ceciley and I decided to take an hour to circle the mosque. For context, the mosque is big but definitely doesn’t take long to walk around so this requires an extremely slow pace. In that, I started to notice little details and people that opened up new doorways of prayer. Another day we shared in an Iftar meal in the mosque and were able to plant seeds from within the walls. Others of us pressed on to see the walls crumble from the outside.

But one 7th day we all came together and circled the Hagia Sofia seven times as an act of faith. In the Bible they carried the ark of the covenant to have the presence of the Lord with them, but we now carry His presence with us wherever! It’s hard to articulate exactly what happened within the realm of prayer admist different forms of prayer, because prayer gives you eyes to see what is unseen. This is just an invitation to let the Lord open the eyes of your heart to what He’s doing around you by making space for prayer in your own life.

But we press on striving side by side for the sake of the gospel. For my team, this meant to continue to cover different cities in prayer. Starting with Pergamum (modern day Bergama) to pray for the church that John wrote to in Revelation. But that’s all we knew. We didn’t know where we were staying or for how long. We had some hiccups along the way that meant us staying in Ayvalik for a day which is a whole other thing. But that’s beside the point. After arriving in Bergama, we got dropped off the bus with all our stuff and prayed for direction. I went to talk to these two young girls in the park and got to share my testimony. Meanwhile the rest of my team talked to this man that told us we can sleep in a garden. After 2 nights there, we found that there were some of us feeling led to stay and others wanting to continue on to visit the other 6 churches. This led to our team temporarily separating into two groups. So as of now, I am with Ceciley, Skylar and Nick. We started by visiting a church and hoped that God would show us where to stay next. We met a girl who translated for us and I mentioned we don’t have a place to stay and she responded with “mi casa es su casa”. Next thing I know, I’m in a random families car with all our bags and a little girl asleep in my arms driving to Izmir. We’ve spent the last few nights in their home and there are many stories to share about that later. But now we are moving on to who knows where and doing who knows what, believing and trusting in God.

Praise God!