I recently got back from a leadership retreat.
We traveled three hours to Lake Atitlan.
This is by far the most beautiful place I think I have ever been.
The weekend was filled with leadership training, quality time with other leaders, and free time to relax and enjoy ourselves a little. Being crazy world racers, we decided we should wake up at 3:30 am and go hike up “The Indian’s nose”.
(the indians nose)
This is one of the mountains around the lake that we were told you could veiw the most beautiful sunrise. So after a long day of travel and training, we woke up at 3:30 and headed out.
It was about an hour bus ride then an hour hike.
We began to hike up the mountain with the only light beaming from our headlamps (yes, I wear a headlamp on a regular basis see days…and have no idea why I had never discovered them before).
About halfway up, I began to really struggle. This hike was not as easy as I was expecting. I had been really sick the day before and breathing was getting to be really difficult. It was muddy and slippery and felt like I had been on the stair stepper for 30 minutes haha.
We continued to climb, encouraging each other and not leaving anyone behind (even a fellow leader who is still in a boot due to a broken foot).
I heard God speaking to me,
"Climbing the mounting gets tough.
You slip, you fall, struggling in the darkness, but I'm still here."
We kept going, one step at a time, until we reached the top! I was overwhelmed with such a sense of accomplishment. The view was breath taking.
Was this real life?!
We all spread out.
Another leader, Brant, began to play worship songs on the guitar.
We sat and marveled at His creation praising Him for everything. I don't know if I've ever been so moved, so overwhelmed, with gratitude for my life and where God had brought ME from. I never expected to ever experience something like this.
I heard him say, "Beloved, you think this is beautiful? You should see the way I look at you. The light you see rising over the mountains is the light I have placed within you, to shine for everyone around you to see. Never doubt what I have given you. I have called you for a specific purpose to be revealed at the perfect time."
The sun began to rise.
All I could do was praise our mighty God for this moment, for my life, and sharing that moment with 11 other people truly after God's heart. I asked the Lord what he wanted to show me through this experience? He said, "to show you how to really live life tome fullest and to see beauty for what it really is." I felt Him telling me to turn to Ephesians 2 to read:
It wasn’t so long ago that you were mired in that old stagnant life of sin. You let the world, which doesn’t know the first thing about living, tell you how to live. You filled your lungs with polluted unbelief, and then exhaled disobedience. We all did it, all of us doing what we felt like doing, when we felt like doing it, all of us in the same boat. It’s a wonder God didn’t lose his temper and do away with the whole lot of us. Instead, immense in mercy and with an incredible love, he embraced us. He took our sin-dead lives and made us alive in Christ. He did all this on his own, with no help from us! Then he picked us up and set us down in highest heaven in company with Jesus, our Messiah. Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus. Saving is all his idea, and all his work. All we do is trust him enough to let him do it. It’s God’s gift from start to finish!
Ephesians 2:1-12
I just kept hearing Him tell me "you are worth it. This is the life I have for you."
I am currently in this process of letting Him transform my mind. I have to daily die to Him and give up my selfish desires and fight the old habits and comfortable way of dealing with things. I have found that this isn't easy, and coming on the world race doesn't jut automatically fix my problems.
(we even got to see a volcano smoke in the distance 🙂
God is in a crazy pursuit after my heart.
I am striving to see myself as He sees me and
let Him love on me for the first time…well…probably ever.
It's taken me years to truly see that all we have to do to start believing the truths God says about us…is to start living like it.
So today, I have a few declarations to make…
I am a daughter of the King and He calls me Beloved.
I am loved.
I am beautiful. A beauty not defined by my weight, hair color, or what people think about me.
I am redeemed.
I am free from my past.
I am strong.
I am worthy.
I am gentle and kind.
I am confident.
I am complete, whole and pure.
I am a new creation. The old has gone, the new has come.
I may not deserve any of this.
But that is the beauty of our ALL MIGHTY GOD. He can take someone like me….a helpless, lost, confused and searching girl who just a few years ago looked her own earthly father in his eyes and said, "…even God can't help me now…I'm too far gone".
Little did I know the battle going on over my soul, little did I know the plans he had for me all along. He revealed that to me on the top of the Indian nose mountain, and I don't think I will ever forget the beauty and serenity of that moment.
