Lessons of the month so far:
Your life is your ministry In lieu of having a definite schedule, I have learned to live out my faith incarnationally. We haven’t had the fall back of saying, “we work at such and such ministry between these hours every week,” and leaving our ministry at that. In all honestly, it has been a little difficult at times to not see the tangible results of what we’ve been doing. But while talking to my friend Lauren, she pointed out the fact that we are doing something big, we are planting seeds so that teams can help more ministries in the future. It has challenged my team and I to BE Jesus to people- to talk to people in our hostels, pray for a man with a bad back at the bus stop, go out on prayer walks, and love and serve each pastor/missionary/ contact that we come in contact with. Our faith shouldn’t be compartmentalized and you don’t need to have a ministry to show people Jesus.
I am not a slave to my emotions. I have spent the last few weeks feeling spiritually distant from God, doubting the power of prayer, and overall, feeling kind of apathetic. But the cool thing about Jesus being the truth is that truth is true regardless of how I feel or think. Jesus died for my sins, made me new, and gave me victory. Therefore, I can declare that truth and praise God for who He is even when I’m frustrated and don’t feel him and don’t really want to. God remains faithful even when I am faithless. I decided to start praying and thanking God, which ended up bringing me to a point of breakthrough where I saw that these things ARE really true, and my emotions followed.
There’s joy in Jesus. As I was at this point of breakthrough, I came to realize that I had become kind of rigid in my walk with God. In a lot of ways, I had lost sight of the reason why I chose to follow Jesus in the first place. I started to think back on the moment that I know that I know that I met God and encountered His love. That moment when I was sitting in my car, listening to Jack Johnson, bawling my eyes out and feeling something I had never felt before, nor had I ever expected. I felt awakened, joyful, liberated, and loved. I think it can become somewhat of a cliche in Christian circles to say that it’s all about a relationship and not a religion.. but it’s honestly true! You don’t have to be listening to Christian music, or using Christian slang, or arguing about doctrine to have a relationship with God. Even though my theology wasnt 100% correct at the time I encountered God, I felt so alive and free. God is so much bigger than the silly little churchy boxes we put him in, and people need to see the resurrected Christ in us as individuals. God did not create us to be cookie cuter molds of each other, rather, being in relationship with Jesus has only made me feel like I’ve become more of my true self. He desires to meet you where you’re at, and he wants you to walk in joy and wonder.
The last thing I’ve learned in this month is that God makes the connections, not us. We have had more “coincidences” than I can count. We have heard about the same ministry from three different, unrelated people. We accidentally stumbled upon a church we wanted to get in contact with when we went out praying for people around the town. We have been provided for through food and lodging in numerous ways. Even when it’s hard to see what He’s doing, God is constantly leading and encouraging us!
