Brazil – Stepping Out Of The Boat

The eleven of us Westbounders arrived in São Paulo, Brazil, with all our bags adding up to a little over 220kg, containing unwrapped snacks from the Johannesburg airport, and full of expectations that we knew what we were doing. Now, as our time here comes to an end, we’ve stripped our luggage to the bare essentials, eaten all those items from home, and realised that when God calls us out of the boat, all expectations of walking on water must be abandoned if we are to do the impossible with him. This was our awakening.

Much like the city of Brazil, we were bustling with life but still living on some old foundations that have been steadily wearing thin and needing someone skilled to repair the structure. The Bible is filled with stories of Jesus changing lives. He turns fishermen into fishers of men. He heals the woman no one else would even look in the eye. He clothes murderers in new identities as sons. And he does this all through inviting them into a new relationship where trust is a foundation that enables all these people to say “Yes,” to him. And we are no different.

Soon after arriving at the church we’d be staying at for the next month, our team jumped into ministry, street evangelism, preaching and worshipping. Through all this, we quickly realised that the biggest jump of all, however, would be the one we’d take with Jesus into the waves of his spirit.

When Jesus calls us out of the boat, we have two choices: cling to the railing of safety or abandon rationality in a step of faith. Pursuing the unknown becomes easier when you know the One calling you into it. Here in Brazil, we learnt to know and trust the clarity of Jesus’ voice, and through it, we learnt to better obey his call. Looking back, I see that that the first time He invited us into these new waters as a team was on the second day of arrival. From then on, everything began to change.

It happened on Friday, the 22nd of March. Two of our team members were sitting in the upstairs prayer room, looking out the window over the dense city. Individually, God shifted their gaze to a tree on the other end of the valley, a tree with bright pink leaves. Separately, he then told them that we needed to go there. An hour later during our team time, James voiced this feeling and Jana turned in surprise and said, “I felt the exact same thing!” That’s all we had: A pink tree in the distance, a prompting to go, and faith. But that’s all we needed.

We walked in the rain for about twenty minutes to get to the tree. Soon into the journey we started praying for the community and we quickly realised that Jesus had us on a prayer-walk. His plans, we saw, were unfolding right before our eyes and we were mere witnesses and vessels in it. Excitement was stirring, expectations were rising, and soon, with quiet footsteps and whispering prayers, we reached the tree.

Nothing happened there. There was no one waiting. No event unfolding. We lingered around it for while. Praying. Worshipping. Wondering. Then we decided to move on. Unanimously, we felt that this was simply a landmark Jesus used to get on us the move. There was still more to come. So back into the rain we walked along the streets. About ten minutes later, we found an open Catholic Church. Intrigued and at ease with the spirit, we decided to go in. What unfolded was powerful, beautiful and entirely orchestrated by God.

Our team sat in the pews and began to sing praises. Not one person decided to do it, it just happened. Songs filled the space and we began to pray for God’s presence to fill the church. Catholicism, as we’ve seen here, is often a tightly wound belt of religion that leaves little space for the spirit, and it soon felt like we were interceding for something much bigger than ourselves. We were contending for the community, the church goers, and the unbelievers. At one stage, some of our team members began feeling nauseous and sensed a demonic spirit in the church, trying to intimidate us. We prayed and worshipped in unity and in boldness. Because darkness cannot be in the same room as light, it eventually fled, and we declared more of God’s praises.

Then we felt another prompt from the spirit. We felt to pray for one of our team members, Kaitlyn, to receive her gift of tongues. We knew she’d been trusting God for them for a while. So we laid hands on her and a minute later, she was speaking, being baptised in the Holy Spirit! That day we saw how God’s spirit can move anywhere – in a prayer room, amongst alleyways, on rainy streets, and in a Catholic Church. What a joy it was to witness such a movement that was birthed from abandoning expectations, choosing to have faith, and stepping out into unknown waters.

The weeks that followed were filled with many similar events. We continued to walk the streets in prayer, do door-to-door ministry, serve at churches, and in it all, we watched as the spirit led us to where He wanted to move. There, we saw the healing of people with Dengue Fever, leg infections, back pains, and headaches. We saw an overwhelming amount of inner healing take place as people wept their griefs and shames away. We shared Jesus in the streets, on stages, in Jujitsu classes, Uber rides, and even on live TV! We danced, we worshipped, we cried. Our spirits awoke to a life lived in the calling of walking on water with the One who made it. And we stepped out and found a new, bold life waiting for us in the spaces unknown.

Our last week arrived far too quickly. It felt like we had just settled into our new roles, gifts, and callings, and we’d just gotten the hang of Portuguese and the customs of Brazil. In this last week, we experienced a true outpouring of the spirit in deeper ways as we continued to submit our lives and expectations to Christ. On one particular Saturday, just 22 days after the pink tree event that started us off, we began another prayer/evangelism walk in an upmarket neighbourhood, accompanied by some people we’d met at the local church we were ministering at.

Now walking in the bright, sunny streets, we decided to settle under the cool shade of some park trees and worship for a while. Prayer erupted and soon, we were feeling that familiar tingling of expectancy for the spirit to break out.

It began with one of our team members telling us that she sensed angels walking with us and that there was a special anointing on the group for the morning. Another member said he felt like God wanted to stir our faith and that we should raise our expectations to see miracles and a bolder movement of the spirit. One more member then felt that we should pray for the local people who were evangelising with us to receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit and the gift of tongues. Looking back, it’s funny how we thought we’d spend that afternoon evangelising to others, but the Lord had other plans. He wanted to awaken something within.

The next hour was filled with prayer, worship, tears, tongues, and an outpour of the spirit. There is something so deeply intimate and moving when praying for someone to receive the spirit in its fullness and witnessing their heart radically change through it. As we prayed for the locals, prophecies were released, hearts were healed, and much joy filled the space. But there was more. While most of us were praying for the group at the park, some other team members felt a prompting to still walk the streets. The spirit wasn’t limited to only us, it was on the move.

One team member, Georgia, felt to go walk with one of the local church girls on a nearby street. There, they felt prompted to speak to a vendor. Georgia’s friend, a local, spoke in Portuguese to the vendor and shared a prophetic word. Georgia, not knowing what was shared, also felt to give a word and used google translate to do it. The vendor stood there shocked. It was the exact same word as what the Portuguese girl shared.  “We were both trusting to hear God’s voice,” Georgia later remarked, “and He confirmed what each of us said through the other. It was incredible how we felt so unified in the spirit.” What a beautiful way for God to train us in the art of walking by spirit and not by flesh! What a powerful way for us to end our time in Brazil and then a few days later, move on to Paraguay.

When God calls us out of the boat, he is inviting us into a deeper relationship. We must trust that he will not let us fall and we must trust that his ways are better than our own. Brazil felt like a step out the boat. It’s easy to tell someone, “I’ll pray for you,” but it requires more courage and faith to say, “do you have back pain? Let’s pray right now for healing.”

“Do you trust me?” is something Jesus asks us all. “Do you trust me to take you further? To walk with you in the unknown? To lead you into deep waters?”

As Jesus led our team further, we discovered a deeper joy in saying, “Yes!”

My prayer is that we will all answer the call with the same response, and through it, find that stepping out of the boat is actually stepping into a much greater love.