I was so excited to come to Project Searchlight for one reason to see my amazing M-squad! I love them so much! So glad I came to see them and all to hangout, dance, and just to have corporate worship again!
Our squad at final debrief put on a skit called “Where will M-squad be in 11 years?” The skit had lines with all 50 of us and some were crazy! When they said my lines 3 lines they used were all involving ShakenBlake’s Podcast. One of my ways of spending time with God is listening to Podcasts. I have over 400 podcasts on my I-Pad. Now when I heard this skit I thought the ShakenBlake Podcast thing was kinda silly because I thought they would say Blake is going to be a Pastor in some SE Asia country. I didn’t give Podcasting a ton of thought when I got home from the race.
Right before New Year’s I was sitting at Starbucks and having quiet time with God and the word Podcast came up and I said to God really? Why me? Then I went down to Project Searchlight and God kept on bringing up Podcast in my head. He gave me a vision on the Sunday Morning when we were at the AIM office about Podcast. I am saying to God this is crazy! You know who you’re dealing with here it’s Blake enough technical knowledge to be dangerous but that’s all.
I brought up this Podcast vision in my coaching session with our leader and the 5 others in the group. All of the people thought this idea was great and the leader gave me names of people at AIM to talk to about the podcast vision. I was excited!! So I did talk to couple of people at the marketing department they were excited and all for this idea. Then God opened up the door for me to talk to the director of Marketing on the spot. The talk went good but then the dreaded place was brought up to me known as “CGA” this is AIM’s Center for Global Action. To be honest I was like no they want me to go to this place for more schooling! Ugh!! No Lord!!
On the last day of Project Searchlight I had to come early and I was with Kara and we went to have breakfast before session. We were talking about plans after searchlight and all then the talk gets to an honest, open, and real point with me. I said to her something along the lines of, “I love AIM but why does AIM use CGA as a prescription to everything lately.” Kara said, “Blake that’s pride.” I wasn’t happy for a few seconds because she was right. She told me how she struggles with pride also and then the possible benefits if I came down to AIM and be in the CGA program. She also said to me instead of being focused on one thing be open to anything God wants you to do for Him. The talk ended by her saying Blake I know you can do this and pray about CGA.
During the last worship session I spent some quiet time alone in the balcony of the church. God was telling me I need to have my hands wide open to His plans instead of having a one-plan mind. We had open-mic time near the end of the session and God spoke through me during this time in front of 200 people. I apologized to my squad for sounding overconfident at times. I told them I needed prayer for my future plans and they all came over and prayed for me. I felt so loved by my squad for embracing me for where I was at so yeah thanks Project Searchlight for messing me up in a good way.
John 3:30 NIV says, “He must increase, but I must decrease.”
When pride is in our lives we have a closed fist pointing up at God. We are saying to the Lord my plan is better than you plans.
We need to have our hands open to what the Lord wants us to do because He is the one who gave us life. This symbolizes full surrender to the Lord.
I will write a couple more blogs on here but I have a new blog site called Blake being Blake! I already have one blog up but not many people have read it because it’s new and I launched this on New Year’s Eve! Blake being Blake will be my blog site! Thanks for your support!! Here’s the new blog site link for you!
http://blakebeingblake.weebly.com/
