I have spent a lot of time praying over this trip. Before I even heard about it, I spent months in prayer asking God to lead me in the right direction in where I would be spending my years after high school. When I was applying for this trip, I prayed that this would be an opportunity for me to understand what it meant to abandon everything for Jesus, my pride, my control, my comfort. And now that I am going to be spending the next nine months across the world I have been praying that this can be all about God, not about the ways I will be serving, not even about the experiences and growth I am going to have but about me abandoning every assumption I have had on God, and my relationship with Him and experiencing Him alone in all His righteousness.
In the past few months since being accepted for this trip I have began to experience this. God has found ways to reveal himself separate from the ways I have known him before, and it has been incredible.
But these past two weeks have been hard.
I have always known Satan as God’s enemy, and the evil one but I honestly can say I didn’t know who he really was. My relationship with God is a relatively recent thing and only this past year have I matured in my faith. Over the past few years as I have grown in my relationship with God I have experienced so much of Gods love I thought that was all there was to this world. There were times when things were great with God and then in my lower points I felt distant from God but nothing more.
Well that has changed, the enemy does exist and he can attack and that’s something I am trying to understand. There have been moments when I have felt so overwhelmed with lies. Feeling worthless, lonely,and a burden to other people when I know these things are not true, and now I am exhausted. I have talked to a few people about some of these things trying to make sense of what I don’t know and I am continually told to pray about it and give it to God. These people are right and that’s great advice, each time I have had to rely on God to defeat the enemy and He has but each time it seemed the protection was only temporary. I am confused about why this happens, I am confused about what I can do to protect myself, I am confused about who Satan is, and I am also confused because each time I can still feel such a peace with God. These moments are draining, but each new day I am still confident with who God is and how much He loves me, but trying to sort through this is exhausting. My understanding is so limited and it is so hard to separate what I know to be true from these feelings.
My world has really been shaken.
All of this is so new, its confusing and overwhelming but I can see where God has His place in it all. I have been praying for months that I can experience God in new ways, and things have definitely been new. Before my walk with God had been almost routine. I would search for Him daily and find ways to center myself around Him but I now feel like I was limited in how far that would go. Recently I have been given a bunch of obstacles to work with and yes they have sucked at times and yes I don’t always know how to move forward but we have a God who is fighting for us. He helps us when things are tough and working through some of these obstacles has allowed me to trust God more and give Him control because I absolutely cannot do it on my own.
I still need to raise $10 000 to be funded on this trip. If you would like to join me in this journey and support me financially you can do that by going to the support me link at the top of this page.
