Three days after returning home from Training Camp, I am sitting here with my fingers hovering over the keyboard, desperate to find some way to convey my experiences. I have written and rewritten this blog, trying to perfectly word the beautiful, but insane whirlwind my heart just went through.
I could tell you about the thirty-minute hike with all of our gear, the sleepless night on a school bus, or the endless feedback with the ladies I’ll be traveling the world with, but none of that seems to effectively illustrate what truly happened in me last week. I mean the real stuff… the shattering of my heart and the relentless pursuit of my Lord over me.
Instead, I am going to be far more vulnerable than I want to be and let you in on the prophetic promises God spoke over me through Adventures staff and my teammates.
All week I ached with a longing for deeper intimacy with God. I so badly wanted to feel His love wash over me, leaving no room for questioning. I wanted Him to remove shame and cast out anxieties. I wanted to feel Him with me. I did not realize this then, but now I can look back and see that He was passionately and persistently pursuing my stubborn and fragile heart every step of the way. Every single time I began doubting His love, He sent someone with a message just for me.
The first message came during a worship session. The enemy was busy trying to pour false shame all over me and as I sang out to Jesus, Satan was laying it on thick. Honestly, it was working and I crumbled beneath the weight of it. As I sank to my knees, my squad-mentor put her hand on my shoulder and said that God told her to let me know that there is good in me and He knows that, because He put it there. Without even knowing it, she destroyed one of Satan’s favorite weapons against me. She declared that I am good in His sight.
Shocked, I sat in silence, still trying to process when my squad-leader came to me. She began pouring out truth that she never could have known would impact me so deeply. She told me that shame is not from God and that He wanted me to know that I am His daughter and He loves me. My past does not define me. He takes me as I am and loves me. Again, in amazement and awe, I wept as strongholds were being loosened from around my heart.
Throughout the week, this continued. No less than ten people called out the lie of shame over my life and combated that lie with truth. He consistently sent more and more people to tell me that He is going to delight in healing me, that I will be set free in His timing, that I am worth it, that I am not too much, and that He absolutely adores me.
Then, in a conversation I had with another one of my leaders, she saw a picture from the Lord. She saw me in a dimly lit room with many doors. Through one of the doors extended the big, fatherly hand of God. She told me that God wants me to go with Him into the next room. The next room is scary, because it contains the unknown, but God promises that I won’t have to go alone and that in this room I will experience Him more fully. I can take God’s hand and He will walk with me. The insane part is, without knowing the deepest longing of my heart for intimacy with Him, she sat across from me and promised that God desired it too. She exposed my fears of the unknown and calmed those anxieties with His truth. If I will trust Him enough to take that hand and go through the door, He will be there to saturate me in the love that I thirst for.
(Picture she drew to describe the picture God gave her)
Psalm 42:1-2 says. "As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?" It is so amazing to have a Father who delights in giving us the desires of our hearts and who will go to any length to get us to believe that.
Training Camp might be over, but His words of love for me never end, and in six short weeks, I leave on this adventure and am sure of this: God is alive and He is speaking now more than ever. I am beyond excited to hear what He has to say to me next; hand in hand, just beyond the next door.
