When God wants you to know something he has no problem beating it into your heart and your head until you listen. 

The past weeks of training camp and post training camp have been utter proof of God's vigilance to win the battle of my identity and, revealing just how much I have been fighting Him. But I learned to surrender, and in the vulnerability of Training Camp, I finally let God win. 
 

I am an achiever. I commit myself to excellence, pushing myself to do "great things" with great effort and a whole hearted, deeply invested work ethic. I am driven by the need to perform, and perform well. My life has become a stage and I am standing in the spotlight as everyone watches and waits for the climax of my song, and I need to deliver. Deliver an emotionally impacting, unforgettably perfect and flawless presentation. I used to think this was the world's expectation; that this criteria for perfection was the standard for success. To a certain degree it is, but what I have been slowly realizing is that I am the one putting myself in the spotlight, demanding a level of performance and setting expectations so great they are impossible to achieve. How stressful is that? How much of a burden is that, to constantly expect perfection and success from yourself. While doing your best and striving to achieve your goals is far from reproach, there is also a level of grace that I have not been extending to myself. And it is this grace, that I have so cleverly been avoiding and making excuses for not needing, that hit me like a ton of bricks. 

I listened to the devil. I heard Satan speak to me, and let a voice that sounded a lot like my own convince me that I could never be good enough. Everything I had ever done had amounted to nothing. Every good thing I would ever do in the future would be pointless. I had reached no one, had truly influenced no hearts  for the better, made no lasting impact despite my efforts. Everything I had ever been proud of turned to ash and blew away in the wind. I no longer had tools for success and had no way of improving my circumstances. I would be stuck in a rut of failure, and even worse, of insignificance. 

These were the lies I believed. These were the Enemy's whisperings that turned into footholds of control that launched me into depression. I opened those footholds. My need, no my obsession, with constantly being the best, at my best, and achieving greatness because of  my own work became unhealthy. As a sinful imperfect person, perfection was something I craved so much that I had to do everything possible, out of my own strength to get there. But in this extreme self-reliance I could only let myself down. I could only fail. And Satan had no problem making this very clear to me. 

I believed him. 

For a while that wrecked my life, and I gave up, devoting my life to sobbing on the floor, too defeated to even move. I walked about life in a daze, removed and uninvested. But then God began to breathe life and truth back into me, and he wrecked me in a completely different way. 

Eventually my depression ceased, but God's loving voice did not.

The Devil is clever because he technically speaks in truth. He knows the Bible, he knows God's heart and he knows ours. He knows every legalistic working. So he tells us those facts that he knows, but presents them in ways that are so out of context- missing the rest of the truth that makes it so wonderful and redeeming, and turns them into ugly lies.

Satan was right that through relying on my own strength and efforts for success I could not succeed. But God filled me with with the promise and greater truth that He would give me the tools and strength to do greater things for His Kingdom than I could ever plan. He confirmed that through his guidance and support I would have success. Probably not in the ways I envision it, but in ways so valuable and unmeasurable that worldly success would look pitiful compared to how I could help bring Heaven on earth. 

The most impactful truth Satan attacked me with, is that there is nothing I have done or could or do to be worthy. And he is right. But the part of the truth he so purposefully omitted was that it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter because of grace. It doesn't matter because while there is nothing I can do to earn God's love or my place in Heaven, God's grace means that through faith I can and will achieve it. I am promised it. It doesn't matter that I am flawed because God gave His Son to die for my imperfections. My failures in my past, present, and future do not matter because through the grace of God I am given a new beginning every moment of every day to devote my heart to righteousness in His better path.

In training camp the truth of such grace liberated me. As I knelt on the ground, face to the floor sobbing in worship, fluids draining from my eyes, nose, and mouth, I was the most glorious mess of awe. I was completely overwhelmed as I heard God's strong voice tell me 

HE LOVES ME
and that I AM ENOUGH.
 

I embraced that God was, has been, and is handing me His grace, trying to free me of the standards I had chained myself to, all I have to do is constantly reach out and accept it. I wept unashamedly as I admitted that I didn't have to work to deserve God, and didn't have to impress Him or anyone else. (Clearly I wasn't worried about impressing anyone in the moment since I didn't even bother wiping the snot that was flowing from my face.) But with the tears I also shed a huge burden- an expectation for myself that I could never meet.

But it wasn't enough for me to hear it just once. God repeated it loud and clear, and once again he truth of grace liberated me. As I looked into the eyes of my prayer partner, heart open and ready to receive, I was crushed with the truth God spoke through her. She told me that my Father wanted me to know that I am beautiful, not just on the outside, but on the inside. That God wanted me to know that He is so  PROUD of all that I would do for him as a daughter, but that even more than that, he was so PROUD OF WHO I AM. RIGHT NOW. THIS VERY MOMENT. 

And I crumbled to the grace that I was a success in His sight. 

Through his unconditional love the fact that I am enough just as I am causes me to be a success in Him. I realized that He is proud of me, not because of my success, but because I am HIS SUCCESS. And that is the greatest success of all. One that can only be achieved through grace and mercy and the transformation of redemption in Christ. 

Then  again, for the third time at Training Camp God hammered his message home. When we entered into prophetic prayer I was given two words that astounded me. Candid and Camera. My partner was doubtful and uneasy, but little did she know how much those words meant to me. 

It was God's way of again saying that I am enough, that I have nothing to prove. Too often I try to pose, to present the best version of myself, smiling and glowing to create the perfect picture of who I am. 

 

But the most beautiful way of capturing someone is in a candid state of vulnerability, alive without pretense or facade. It was just another way for God to say I didn't have to act or make myself out to more than I am, because I am enough. Because in Christ I am beautiful and something to be proud of just the way I am.

It is easy to doubt, to say that I heard all these things because I wanted to, and created it for myself in the intensity and emotionally wrought environment of Training Camp. But God made sure I didn't think this was a mistake. Yesterday, after returning from camp, I was finally able to meet with my Pastor for the first time since being accepted on The World Race. We talked for almost two hours in a manner that seemed like almost two minutes. And at the end of it he told me he had a gift for me. A gift that he had been given as a young man about to embark on his own missionary service abroad. I didn't want the gift. I felt unworthy and guilty for taking something he had received as a gesture of love from someone else. But I knew I needed to succumb to the idea that love needs to be shared, and sometimes the greatest way to love someone is to receive it. So I waited anxiously as my pastor sat down to scribble something on a card. And this is what I received. 

 God does not call you to be successful, only faithful. 

I cried. In the scrawl of my pastors handwriting I saw the liberating truth and confirmation of everything God had been so graciously screaming at me. The fourth time was the charm? And the first, second, and third. ( I have a feeling that this is not anywhere near the last time God will have to remind me.) So now the question is not how and what can I achieve, but rather how do I have faith and act on it? While I no longer carry the burden of success, I must now focus on the call to walk faithfully with my God. I know that my involvement with The World Race is a journey of faith. I know that there will be trials and tribulations that will come, and I will have moments of doubt when I am discouraged. But I will have to hold on to the consolation that  success is not the goal. So when I am preaching my heart out to people that literally do not understand and it seems as though no one is responding, I need to stop measuring my "success" and be content in the fact that I faithfully did God's work and He will use it in His own way for His ultimate glory. When I "fail" to bring someone out of prostitution, sin, unbelief, etc. I will have to rest in the fact that I have been faithful and God will do the rest. ( Maybe I just had to be the first step and they need to hear it over and over and over again too! ) 

In success there is disappointment through failure, but what you and I need to remember is that there is no failure if we are TRULY FAITHFUL.  God will be so utterly grateful for our obedience to Him that He will use the circumstances and "results" no matter what they are,  to His glory. This frees us from the burden of having to perform and achieve. This allows us to have grace with ourselves because God first has grace with us. And if we still have the need for a reward, we can now search and rest faithfully in the best reward and the ultimate success: presence in the Holy Spirit now and with God and His Son in the Heavenly Kingdom to come.