During my time in our week-long prayer burn, I was asked by our squad mentor if I’d be willing to give one of the teachings that we had every night at the burn. I said that I would do it. But before I get into that I’m going to rewind to my time back in Ukraine. Every Saturday night they had a youth group that met at the church. During the month that we were there, they wanted my team and the other team that was partnering with the church to do the lessons. They only wanted them to be about 15-20 minutes long. I didn’t want to do it and between our two teams, there were enough people that it wasn’t necessary for me to have to do it. But for the very last lesson, before we left Ukraine, the Holy Spirit convicted me to be the one to give the lesson. So I went to my teammate who was scheduled to do it and they let me do it instead. 

I don’t remember what it had to be on exactly but it was wherever they left last in the Bible. So I think I was supposed to do it on Matthew 3 or something, but I don’t remember. What I do remember is that I read that section of the Word over and over and over again. I was praying for God to give me some sort of guidance on how to teach on this for 15 minutes. I read through multiple commentaries on my phone. The day of I still wasn’t ready and I was having about 2 straight hours of a panic attack about giving this short little lesson. About three hours before I was supposed to start speaking my team leader, John, came into the kitchen and said he thinks my prayers were answered because the youth group that night was canceled. I felt so relieved and thanked God because I only had enough material to talk for about 6 minutes, I wasn’t sure that what I had even made sense, and I was afraid to speak.

Public speaking in and of itself doesn’t scare me, what scares me is not being prepared for public speaking. If I know exactly what I’m going to say and I’m confident in it then I’m unphased about it.

Now back to the burn when my squad leader asked me to do a teaching. I had two days to prepare for what I was going to say. I asked God what He wanted me to do my teaching on and He said hearing God’s voice. I thought that was strange since I was just giving this talk to my squadmates who I’ve been with for the last 8 months. I know that all of them have heard from God before. But it’s what God said to do my teaching on so I did. It didn’t take me long to prepare because hearing God’s voice is something I’m very passionate about and the Holy Spirit was guiding me through it the whole time.

When it came time to speak the only real thing that I was anxious about was misusing scripture. The Bible heavily warns against it and I don’t want to lead anyone down the wrong path. Before I spoke, we did some worship and during that three separate people, some who knew I was giving the talk that night and some who didn’t prayed over me for peace and confidence. When I started speaking I had total peace about it. God was with me in this the whole time. When I finished, I got to pray over some of the squad to be able to hear the voice of God better. Multiple people afterward told me how great that was and that I did well. It wasn’t me at all, it was all the Holy Spirit. I’m just glad I could be an empty vessel for Him to use.