I want to let you know what God has done for me lately. For starters, I am now fully funded! Thank you all so much for your prayers and financial contributions. They mean more to me than you may ever know. I pray for you and your families constantly, and look forward to seeing you all again.
God has absolutely used this experience to open my eyes, and change my life. I have been given opportunities to serve Him in ways that I have never had. I’m learning how to truly trust in Him. Without your financial support, this year would not have happened for me. So thank you all again.
If you’ve read my blogs “Questions” and “Mercy,” then you know that I’ve wrestled with God quite a bit. A few weeks ago, an area of my life was wrecked. God asked me to give Him something from my past that I found nearly impossible to give Him. I’ve longed for God to take this away for years. I noticed He wouldn’t just take it. He asked for me to give it to Him. The longer I held on to it, the harder it was for me to let it go. I became frustrated beyond belief. I didn’t feel like my prayers were heard, nor did I feel like reading the Word was peaceful. I was struggling. Struggling with being obedient to God.
Now what He asked me to give Him was pretty simple. Paranoid thoughts that I wasn’t “good enough” for Him or His work. He asked for the OCD tendencies that my thoughts led me to do. You know, the rituals that we Christians try to keep in order to “earn” God’s love. When I say OCD I don’t mean touching something numerous times, or washing my hands constantly, I mean I became obsessed with “How would God want this done?” I, not God, would put this huge amount of pressure on myself to be perfect, or “holy because He is Holy.”
The things that became somewhat like OCD for me were little things like when I would read the Bible, I may later in the day feel like I didn’t read it “good enough.” I would feel the need to go back and read it again. Then again. And again. Or when I prayed for someone, and my heart wasn’t “fully pure,” I had to ask for forgiveness for sins that I hadn’t even committed. I thought that “God wouldn’t listen to me if my last action was a sin.” And I actually heard that from a Christian, a Bible study in fact.
For a long time our Father has been telling me to “Go forward. Forget what’s behind you.” It began with a line from the Object of my fraternity, “Progress shall mark our every step,” and there are many scriptures to back that up, here are a few:
Isaiah 43:18-“Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past.”
Luke 9:62-“Jesus replied, ‘No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the service in the Kingdom of God.”
Luke 13:33-“In any case, I must keep going today and tomorrow and the next day.”
Philippians 3:13-“…But one thing I do: forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead.
The past week was a dark week for me spiritually. I felt somewhat abandoned. I knew God was carrying me. I knew He hadn’t left. I also knew He was at work in me. My prayer became “God grant me the strength to be obedient.” I have found that it requires strength to be obedient at times. I now feel more freedom than I have ever felt. This verse from Lamentations 2:19 stuck with me, “Pour out your heart like water in the presence of the Lord.” I tell Him everything. I keep nothing from Him. My possessions are His. My time is His. My opportunities are His. And I am His. I’m learning that my trust in God can be seen by how much I give to Him. If we trust Him with everything, then we should give it to Him.
