Training camp was an emotional, spiritual and physical roller-coaster. It made me question myself, my God and my reasoning to what I was doing with a bunch of random people in the middle of nowhere cold, hot, hungry and sore. It also provided a few answers like who am I right at this moment? Who does the person I want to be look like? And a very rather important question; Does God really exist?
The answer is Yes in case you are wondering.
You may also be wondering just how I could have been wondering that myself, especially right before I set off on a spiritual years journey costing me 24 grand to sleep in a tent and give up my large sized meals and king sized bed. But I did, and every so often in rare moments I still ask myself: how can I find God when I can’t even find my own keys in the morning?
I think the Bible says something like this…
11 For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. 12 Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. 13 You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.’ Jeremiah 29:11-13
I think the trick behind this passage is in understanding that there’s no trick. God just wants our hearts, and in order to know His heart, we must seek Him with all of ours.
Below are a few more things I learned while at camp.
1. Better late than never.
Have you ever been so late for something that you think it might be better not to show up at all than to show up that late? What I’ve learned is that in God’s eyes that is never true. Whether or not we get ourselves there one minute before church service ends, years after we’ve decided to give our life to Him, or whether it takes us a life time. He wants us to show up. And not just to church, to life with Him.
2. It’s okay to question.
I just couldn’t process it all, I felt all I had were negative feelings about that week. It shocked me, it scared me. It scared me because I started to question if I would really enjoy this next year at all. I was uncomfortable and I had no words for my thoughts, I just seemed like an accumulation of unexpressed emotion. I felt like I kept looking around and everyone else seemed like they felt at home. The whole week before I left home from camp, I didn’t feel like myself, like all the ugly stuff in my personality was shining through the surface. I wasn’t even excited.
After camp, I didn’t really feel like praying because I knew I would get big doses of that this next year. Yeah I just said that. And that’s ALL training camp really was. But it’s always supposed to be about God. I feel my flesh is rebelling, the Devil is talking, the Devil is screaming. I’m afraid, and ashamed I might not love Him enough to get through this.
I see now that during that week prior and the week at camp, the Devil was trying to amplify everything that is ugly in me to try and separate me from God. God was allowing this so I could see the areas I need to work on, so that other people could see the areas I need to work on.
Pretty much a random lady I had never seen before at camp came up to me during a worship service and said ‘God told me to tell you to be bold, confident and unafraid.’ I burst into tears and immediately felt His love.
3.Several times it is going to come down to Me, God, my dreams and my pain. I’m going to be the one who has to decide whether I’m going to go through, or if I’m going to give up.
Hadn’t I been waiting for this moment to come for over a year now? It’s all I have ever thought about, talked about, dreamt about. I knew God was calling me on this journey for healing. I somehow lead myself to believe that this trip would be an instant fix, that I would be free of bitterness, unforgiveness, hurt, pain from my past by the time I finished the race. I forgot about everything in the middle, the journey that brings me from the beginning to the end. I felt that the Glamour of adventure was stripped away the week I went to training camp, and the reality set in that this is truly going to be a challenge. It felt like the first time I found out a relationship isn’t just about romance, it’s about commitment, its hard work. It’s showing up and pushing in long after the fuzzy feelings from those promises you made wear down and wear away.
I need to go into every day with a firm understanding that today will make me stronger or weaker.
4. God might ask me to keep working when all I want to do is rest.
The other week after a long and tedious ‘world race’ day, I decided to take a nap. Except every two minutes I had to pick up my phone to write something down until I finally just got up. All my thoughts and feeling about training camp started pouring out into words. I also learned in this moment that sometimes when we feel like we need rest, to just check out for a while, God will call us to keep working.It seems like a simple notion, but it brought me to weep. Sometimes we feel like we have waited forever on the Lord that when He lets you hear His intimate voice, and tells you exactly what you need to hear, you begin to weep with relief.
God was telling me in that moment that…
I’ve had moment of struggle these past two years, moments, weeks, months, but this next year the Lord says is a time of first-sacrifice, then blessing. One of the guest speakers we had the privilege of learning from says that God puts us through and allows us to go through 6 stages when He desires to use us. The first one is Abandonment. That word’s meaning has been so heavy on my heart. I am leaving behind my family, my friends, my comforts in food, sleeping arrangements, good hospitals and free health care, spending money, possessions and so much more. But more importantly I am leaving behind a part of me that has existed. Throughout this journey I will strive to shed my ambitions of the flesh. I will have to abandon my ego, my pride, my sense of entitlement, and all my expectations.
I will need to work hard to let others in, to help me, to heal me. Someone once said something like “when you put your ego in a battle, you have already lost.” God wants me to help elevate my work load by asking for help, by sharing it with others who will help me carry it. I have always thought I could get through problems alone, the truth is I can’t. Now God will help me fix the wounds that have not healed and clean them out.
Through pain comes progress, through progress comes fulfillment and through fulfillment comes peace. The place of abandonment is surely not easy, it is hard when God strips away layers of the flesh, leaving behind the ugly and old and revealing a new creation.
“Arise, shine for your light has come and the glory of the Lord rises upon you.” Isiah 60:1
