For all of those people following this journey that I am on via my blog that thought I had fallen off the face of the earth due to a lack of updates, I have good news…..I didn’t! I am alive and well and currently writing to you from Chincha, Peru. We are well into our third month of ministry, and due to a bunch of changes with our ministry contacts in Bolivia we are one of three teams that, instead of moving on for the month of March, are spending our second straight month of ministry in Peru. Last month was difficult, living in the desert and being stuck on a compound for the majority of the time, long hot days of ministry, and most evenings full of squad teaching sessions followed up by our daily team feedback sessions. It didn’t really leave much time for blogging or really even processing what has been going on in my heart and what God has been teaching me. While He has been showing me a lot about who I am and my identity in Christ I have also been going through a season where I have not really wanted to process my thoughts or open myself up to what He is doing in me.
Here is an excerpt from my journal that expresses how I have been feeling…
ESCAPE ARTIST
You’re really good at running away from your crap instead of dealing with it, always have been. Why not instead of running and hiding you actually deal with it. Instead of making excuses and licking your wounds you actually stand up and fight against that old self that is still struggling to get back to the surface, fight for what the Lord is teaching you, fight for relationship, fight for community, fight for your brothers and sisters! Be the example, be the woman that God created you to be, show humility, show grace, show strength, SHOW THE LOVE OF CHRIST.
Christ is calling me to rise up and climb out of the mire that I have been sitting in for way to long, to slough off all of the old and stagnant things that used to define me and move forward in my identity in Him, to speak up and speak out, and to walk in confidence. I didn’t come on this race just to travel to 11 different countries, I came on this race to grow in the Lord, to change and stretch and grow, to learn to live and love in community, to change the world! And although I have been doing this I don’t want to get to month 11 and look back only to say “I could have done so much more, I could have given my 110% instead of just my 80%” I want to take every single opportunity that is provided me to allow Christ to shape me and mould me.
Romans 6:1-14
What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? 2 Certainly not! How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it? 3 Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? 4 Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.
5 For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection, 6 knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin. 7 For he who has died has been freed from sin. 8 Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, 9 knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more. Death no longer has dominion over Him. 10 For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God. 11 Likewise you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
12 Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts. 13 And do not present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but present yourselves to God as being alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. 14 For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law but under grace.
