Chasing God.

Have you ever thought you were chasing God, but once you get close, you realize it was actually Him doing the chasing? 

That is really the only way to explain how I came to be sitting in the stairwell of a hostel in Barcelona at 3am while a pastor from Brazil explained what it was like to be filled with the Holy Spirit. 

I grew up attending church, but never really remember hearing much about the Holy Spirit.  I’m sure He was there, the pastors probably even talked about Him.  But, it wasn’t until college that I would learn enough to want to learn more. 

When my college pastor preached about the Holy Spirit, I felt as though I was waking up from a deep sleep.  My faith felt more alive, more real than before and I wanted to understand and experience the gifts of the Spirit.  My friend Jessie and I asked question after question of our pastor over Chick -Fil – A sandwiches and fries.  I was most intrigued by speaking in tongues, probably because it seemed the weirdest, least in my own control, and outside of anything I had ever experienced.  

The summer of our junior year of college, Jessie accepted an internship in Bordeaux, France and we found ourselves scheming to travel. First to Barcelona and then make our way to Bordeaux as she started her summer internship.  We stayed in a hostel in Barcelona and several days into our trip we met two different travelers – Fabio and Leandro.  Fabio was from Brazil and Leandro from Venezuela and we spent a couple of days exploring Barcelona with our new friends. While walking and talking our way over the city, we learned Fabio was a pastor and Leandro was an atheist. One afternoon we sat in a park sharing our stories of faith and God and His love with Leaandro. I wonder if he ever thinks of that day and if it made an impact on his view of God.

Later that evening, after discovering that Fabio was a pastor, we brought him the same questions that swirled in our minds about the Holy Spirit and particularly about the gift of tongues.  The three of us sat huddled in the stairwell of the hostel leaning in as Fabio said in as many ways as he could, “the words are in your heart and in your mouth.  Just open your mouth and speak”.  With heads and hearts still spinning from trying to understand and dissect the gifts of the Spirit, Jessie and I fell into our bunk beds at about 3am. We missed our alarm the next morning and literally ran out the door with our suitcases for our train to Bordeaux.  We made it (barely!) and spent the train ride comparing notes, reading the Bible, searching for clues, and marveling that we had unexpectedly met someone like Fabio.

Did we ever speak in tongues or not? That’s not really the point of this story.  The point is that I thought I was chasing God.  I thought I was closing in on Him, learning more, growing closer.  And then, in His kindness and His goodness and His sovereignty, Jessie and I booked two twin beds in the same room at the same hostel that a charismatic pastor from Brazil would be staying.  And in that moment, in the stairwell, I realized that it was God who had been chasing me this entire time.  Only God could orchestrate something so perfectly – that he could use someone from another country to meet us on holiday to share something more of God’s heart with us.  

If I ever feel discouraged, or as though God is far off, I remember the way that He met the two of us through a series of extraordinary circumstances.  And remember, as Paul tells us in Ephesians 3, that God can do anything you know.  Far more than we can hope or imagine or request or dream in our wildest dreams.