As most or all of you know, I just got back from training camp for my trip and all I can say is “wow”. I have never been more enthralled by a group of people so eager to worship our Father as these men and women of God. It is absolutely indescribable. The heart that each and every squad member of mine has for the Lord is beautiful, the hunger they have, the genuine hearts, I can’t explain how honored I am to have such an amazing group of people to bring glory to His kingdom with!
These past 10 days were the hardest 10 days I have ever experienced, for so many reasons. From having cow heart put in front of me to eat, to different sleeping scenarios that may happen, all the way to realizing hard things with the Lord that I had been pushing down, it was flat out challenging. So today I’m going to lay out all my feelings and emotions and face a fear of letting everyone know my “secrets” with Jesus and how this experience changed that.
The first couple days of training camp, I was highly reconsidering, I realized I was going to be taking bucket showers, eating food I did not like and living out of two bags. Oh! And that me and all my belongings where going to get filthy (which was very hard for me because I like everything clean and neat). Also, going places with the Lord that I have been absolutely terrified to go. So extremely out of my comfort zone, I pushed through and realized that I had to go to these places of hurt so that I could grow in Christ. But I still had a guard up.
For so many years I have viewed the Lord as unreliable, I have been so scared to give him my whole heart because I felt like he was going to let me down. I have felt very unseen by the Lord, like he doesn’t hear me, or forgot about me. Lastly, I didn’t feel good enough for him to love me. Until this week, I had never come face to face with that. It was almost like an immediate wall I would put up and refuse to let myself go any deeper than right below surface area. Oh boy did those walls come crashing down.
I remember a few days ago, walking into session (church) at camp and watching everyone worship with their whole heart, I looked at them in awe and wished I could remember what is what like to feel that, I longed to feel that again so much that I could feel it inside of me bursting to come out. In every session after that, the same thing would happen. The fourth day, one of my squad leaders walked straight up to me and asked me “why are you afraid of what the Lord is going to do for you here?”, that night I had a squad mate say “the Lord wants me to tell you he misses you” about ten minutes after a that, another squad leader tells me “the Lord says he has given you joy that is bursting to come out, to trust him with your heart” at his point I am in complete tears, I could feel the surrender coming, but I wasn’t scared this time, I wanted to know what it felt like to not hold anything back from the Lord. I started praying during worship and it was like a never ending prayer coming from my mouth, it felt so good. It was amazing and so humbling to watch my squad mates immediately come over to me, lay hands on me and cover me in prayer.
After that night, it was a process of starting to believe that I am a child of God “Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God” (John 1:12). It was letting myself start the process of being transformed by the Lord. I had to accept that I am good enough for the Lord, that though I have sinned against him that his grace never runs out and he does not shame us, instead he says in Romans 8:31-39 that we are free from any condemnation brought against us and nothing can separate us from his love! How amazing is that? That He never stops loving us or wanting to have a relationship with us, that His arms are wide open when we fall! Pretty breathtaking, if you ask me. This week I learned that, I am worthy of His love, I am accepted the way I am, I am chosen to bear His fruit, His grace is never ending, and that I am a temple of the most High God. Wednesday, the 10th I walked into training camp not knowing my identity in Christ, not knowing how loved I am by our Lord, today, as I write this, I have a sound mind in knowing that my chains are broken in Jesus name and I am set free from any condemnation that comes my way!
