Hey everyone! God has been really revealing stuff to me the past week and I just wanted to be very vulnerable and share it with y’all. We had two of our squad leaders (Kate and Larissa) staying with our team for about a week and a half and they offered an opportunity to us called Soul Care. All I had ever heard about Soul Care was like marriage counseling between you and God and they listen in while you pray out load and have a convo with him and they facilitate. First, I hate praying out loud, I don’t like the way I sound, I find myself comparing my prayers to others and mine doesn’t sound as good as everyone else, I feel like prayer is very personal and I just really dislike praying out loud. So already Soul Care sounded like something I would hate, in my head I was already thinking ‘hell no’ No, no, no, no and uh no.
Later I had talked to Kate and Larissa about it because they wanted to know what I had heard about Soul Care and wanted to see why I didn’t want to do it. I told them and then they told me what Soul Care really was, I didn’t have to pray out loud, all I had to do was ask God questions out loud and they gave me the questions to ask so all I really had to do was listen to what God said about me to me. That sounded pretty easy and a lot less scary so I agreed to do Soul Care.
The conversation with God was going just as I expected, Until we got to the question “is there anything stopping me from being more near to you?”. My own answer had shocked me, I was stopping myself from getting closer to him. But now I’m wondering “why would I stop myself from getting closer to God?”. God answered again and to hear the answer made me feel so stupid for thinking that way. I keep myself from getting closer because I don’t want to get hurt. The harsh reality of my own heart and thoughts was that God held 90% of my heart and I secretly had kept 10% for myself because I thought that because of constantly being hurt in the past that the only person that I could trust with my heart was myself. This sounded dumb to me saying it out loud because God is the only person in my life who will actually NEVER hurt me.
What do I do now that I know that I am hoarding this piece of my heart to myself? I had to make a decision…Do I keep on holding on to this small piece? Or do I fully surrender and give it to God and see what he does with it and how my life will change once he has my fully heart? The answer sounds pretty simple and easy, but for me it actually was not, I felt very torn. I want to give God my whole heart and continue to let him do amazing things in my life but on the other hand I was scared and didn’t want to trust that everything would be okay. The more I pondered what I wanted to do, my heart was convincing my mind to give it all to God and know that I will be okay.
I sat at prayed and asked the lord to give me a verse that would just help convince me. He revealed Psalm 118 1-9 “Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his love endures forever. Let Israel say: “His love endures forever.” Let the house of Aaron say: “His love endures forever.” Let those who fear the Lord say: “His love endures forever.” In my anguish I cried to the Lord, and he answered by setting me free. The Lord is with me; I will not be afraid. What can man do to me? The Lord is with me; he is my helper. I will look in triumph on my enemies. It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in man, It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in princes.” I read this an knew I had to just do it, I had to just give it up to the Lord.
After I officially gave my heart to the Lord I didn’t feel different like I had thought that I would. Larissa told me “Sometimes the choice comes before the feeling. We don’t always feel safe before we make the choice to face the fear and give up our hearts to him. He honors our proclamations in spite of our fears. If you give up this piece of your heart to him trust and piece will flood you. You’ll be able to stop striving and trust your loved and values by him.” A few days passed and Larissa came up to me during a time of prayer and told me how the Lord wanted me to know that I should get ready, he has big things planned and I just have to wait. I am willing to be patient because God officially has my heart and I am learning to trust him in every area of my life. I can for once say that I am genuinely excited every single day to see what the lord does and I am so excited for every day of my life.
