If you have read my blogs up to
this point, you know they are about the ministry I have been doing and how it
has been affecting me. However, I haven’t mentioned where I was before the race
and where I am now. Sure I have the “about me” section on my blog, but that
doesn’t tell you who I am now and what God is doing in me. He is teaching me
how to love as Christ loved, is showing me how to search for his voice and
direction in my life, and is allowing me to be his vessel sharing his word; his
story with his kingdom. Since I have not written one in a while, I want this
blog to show all of you; my family, my friends, and my supporters, the new and
ever-improving Jake Hilderbrand.
First thing I must do is give glory
to God because He has consistently put people in my path, and has given me the
words to speak. He has guided my path from day one to now, so any
accomplishment I have achieved, any love gained or friendship made, has been
because He has led me. Friendships like
the ones I now have with Henry and Jovanny are pure examples of this. I don’t
think you could meet two boys more different, yet both driven with their own
views and emotions. However, God has put them in my life as friends I will never
forget. Time to be honest; I’m spoiled. I have so much, not only back home, but
here on the race. All the things I brought with me are not even a portion of
what I have back home, yet I still have more than the two boys I now love, and
they still freely gave everything to me. They gave me their love and their
trust, all so that when I left I can could them brothers. That is what they are
to me. Not just faces and names, because they showed me how Jesus loved when He
walked the earth and how Jesus gave to all those who asked. How humbling it has
been to go in with so much on my back but to leave with so much more in my
heart because they gave it all away. They both showed me Christ when I came to
do that for them. They changed how I want to interact with others. I used to
think how I might gain from these friendships I have; however, they showed me
Christ’s love not wanting anything in return but a friendship to last the ages.
Listening to the Lord is something
I have always tried doing. It’s something as Christians we all try to do. We
all want to follow the Lord and listen to what it is He has in store for our
lives. Since being here on this trip, I feel like I have failed at this my
entire life and have gone about it the wrong way. I always wanted to know what
God had in store for me so I could prepare myself on how to alter things if
they went wrong, or to be ready to gain praise for listening to him. When I
asked God to show me his way I still tried to make it mine when I heard it. God
has given me a slap across the face, and I’m so thankful. As I was reading the
book “Red Letters”, written by Tom Davis, I was shown something by the stories
in the pages. Hearing God’s voice means that when you hear it, if God has shown
you something for someone or for a group, don’t tell anyone except for those
God wanted you to speak over. Don’t try to gain glory from the Lord’s work. The
best way to explain it are words from Jesus himself, “Give to Cesar what is
Cesar’s and give God what is Gods.” How many verses in the Bible say, “To him
be the glory forever and ever amen”? God will speak to us, but are we truly
ready to listen and willing to follow what he says? Can we not take any credit
from it? That’s what God has shown me. This is what you have to be able and
willing to do when trying to hear his voice.
Being a vessel of the Lord; what an
honor and gift from God. To be someone who was chosen to go out and bring the
kingdom of God of to earth. At training camp I asked the Holy Spirit to come
into me and fill every void, crack and crevice inside of me. I truly wanted it
and honestly wanted to be a vessel of God. Never truly feeling it at training
camp in Atlanta, I wondered why and what I did wrong. Shortly after training
camp I understood why I didn’t receive what I was asking for. When I got back
home I hopped back into my life. Sure I felt changed at training camp, but because
I didn’t want my friends or other people at home to think I was weird or
different, I just went back to acting as I did before I left. I figured, “Well,
when I leave I’ll use the change that God did in me”. But it wasn’t true
change; it was my flesh wanting one thing around one group and one around the
other. About a week or so ago, at my squad debrief in Granada, Nicaragua, God
just cracked me upside the head. I still wanted to be a vessel of His design
and kept asking for it the first two months of my race, but never really felt it
there either. So in Granada, after I felt
smacked down, I asked God what I was doing wrong and why I hadn’t felt like a
true vessel of his. Like the graceful
God he is, he spoke to me and told me what I had done. How I had wanted one
thing, but then didn’t want it because I didn’t want to be the outcast. So He
asked me if I was willing to be an outcast, to be chased out of cities, to have
my friends say Jake what is wrong with you or who are you? I thought long and
hard about it, and realized that’s what I have to do. To be a vessel I have to
say what God says, and go where he goes regardless of what others may think. I’m
honored and privileged to willingly and freely say I Jake Hilderbrand am a
vessel of the one true and all powerful King of Kings.
This blog has been long and hard to
write, and again I hear the enemy as I did when I came home from training camp
saying, “What if they think you’re weird, are they still going to want to be
associated with you?” The Lord has taught me that if following his will and
listening to his voice when he speaks to me means you no longer want my
friendship, then I’m at peace. For I hope this blog will encourage all of you
as you have encouraged me and that it hits you as hard as it did me, so God can
speak in your lives. I love all of you, but more importantly God does and He will never abandon you.
