I sit here before a blank page struggling with the difficult task of summing up all I have learned at training camp in just a couple paragraphs. This week has been intense. I am physically and emotionally drained. I am spiritually broken. Broken. I have struggled this week. I have wrestled. I have neared the breaking point. I have seen God work in ways I have only read about in the Bible and it scares me. It scares me to the point of tears. Scares me to the point of wanting to run. But I refuse to run. I am going to claim the fact that my God is a God of power. This is not the safe, familiar God I have grown up with. This is a God who works miracles. This is a God who answers prayers. This is a God who heals the sick and casts out demons and helps us create a community of believers that almost exactly replicates the Acts church. I have struggled a lot this week. A LOT. But in the struggle, I come away with a much more solid faith. God has revealed to me that I simply need to trust Him. Trust Him with my fears, in my relationships, with my future. Trust. He has also shown me how deep His love for me runs.
How can it be that a God of POWER can shower me with such LOVE?
Agape love. I have always struggled with understanding what that means. I have never felt unconditionally loved. I constantly feel inadequate and over the years I have begun to cling to the enemy’s lies that I am not good enough, not pretty enough, not spiritual enough. Satan has stuck the knife of deception straight into my heart and twisted it until my every movement became filled with pain as I slowly became my own worst enemy. God revealed to me this week how much He loves me. How much the creator of this universe loves ME!! How he crowns me with compassion and sings and rejoices over me. One night during worship, I became overwhelmed. I couldn’t sing. All I could do was cry. I sat down and wrote in my prayer journal. I cried out to God telling Him I feel so vulnerable in my desperate desire to feel and experience Him. I questioned why it seemed as though His spirit was falling over everyone in the room except for me. I have cried and wrestled with this question many times this week. After worship that evening, my friend Bec approached me with a letter in her hand. She told me it was a love letter to me from God. This letter is intense and explains in detail how much He loves me and how He believes in me. I will include the letter in the bottom of this blog and will re-read it however many times it may take until I firmly believe the intensity of God’s love for me. And not only for me, for all of us. For you. I cannot wait to go out into the world and proclaim God’s love and favor to the hurting and the lost.
“Do not fear my daughter. I have given you the kingdom. I already knew you could do it — I trust you! You are so amazing! Just be. Just ask. Just rest. As. You. Are. Perfect. Nothing added, nothing taken away. Stop believing satan’s lies, they have been lies from the beginning. Listen to me. I love you. You are capable. You are beautiful and it is your heart I love. Just be, so others can do the same. Don’t you know that my Holy Spirit lives on the inside of you? People love your gentle spirit, it is just like mine. Rest I say. Rest. You are my daughter. Mine! In whom I am well pleased. I know every detail about you. You are valuable, people need you. Please play your role. It is such an amazing story I have written. Love, God”
