There are some areas in your life that you can easily be real with, and other areas where you think you’re real but in reality you just keep putting on a mask in that area.
As you know I have been in Georgia with Adventures in Missions since the beginning of the year. I have been interning with the Center for Global Action and have had some great experiences with what it has to offer. I was part of the worship track that was a new experiment for the semester I was in.
In March, for those who were apart of the worship track, had the chance to go on a 4-day retreat into the wilderness to hear from God and see what He says, for each other but mainly ourselves.
It was the first day of being on the trail and our guide Miles has us limit our conversation with each other and for us to kind of listen to see what God is saying in the moment. We start hiking and 2 hours later get to a makeshift campsite that we made in the moment.
We get a bonfire started and Miles asks us what we heard God say during our walk. I go first because I heard it clearly. It was to Surrender! The Lord was asking me to surrender. But what?!
I have no clue.
Luckily we have an 8+ mile hike the next day, mind you, that we found out the morning of the beginning of our hike.
I was asked to lead the pack on this trail that I’ve never been on. I guess it’s the logistic mindset in me.
Off we go! I am in the front leading the group through the Georgia Mountains. It was great leading because I got to enjoy the beauty of God’s creation, and not look at the back of someone.
As we are hiking, the Lord is speaking to me and thoughts are running through my mind, but I can’t fully pinpoint what God is specifically asking me to surrender. We are about less than halfway through the hike and we take a break. As we’re sitting there eating our beloved lunch…trail-mix, Miles comes up to me and pulls me aside. We get to talking and he asks me if I heard anything else that God was saying.
I share with him that I’ve been hearing something, but can’t quite pinpoint what is being said.
Miles says the one word that I didn’t want to face.
Then the point of confusion suddenly becomes clarity.
The word I knew God was telling me to put on hold for a moment.
Marriage!
Gaaah! Then it all starts flooding in. This is the one thing the Lord want’s me to surrender. One of the things that is definitely a desire of my heart.
So I took it, and accepted the challenge.
A few weeks later, it finally settled in and it hit me like a ton of bricks.
I didn’t know how tough it would be.
This longing in my heart that is deeper than my full knowledge of it.
This whole time, I struggled with it on and off, never fully understanding why.
That was the question I never asked.
I never asked God, why?
I just took it and ran with it.
A month ago, I took it to God and asked Him…
Why?
I didn’t get an answer right away.
I waited some more, still never got an answer.
I just pushed it off, not really being pestering about it.
Then it happened…In Ireland. While reading a book that was given to me by an Irish author. In the middle of his book he talks about a time in his life while growing up. While I was reading it, it was as if though he was reading a portion of my life. It was the exact same thing.
This is what Scott Evans writes in his book Closer Still.
In which I can closely associate with.
“ I found my worth in girls. I watched romantic comedies and listened to what girls said they wanted in a boyfriend and went under a radical personality transformation, changing everything that was unacceptable, learning the right words, the right actions and the right emotions to manipulate a girl into falling for me, living off her affection and attention until I got bored and unsatisfied and moved on to the next conquest.I went from girl to girl, relationship to relationship, never truly with the other person because no matter how intense my feelings, at the deepest levels of my heart, women were objects to me, syringes of worth to satisfy my hunger and meet my needs. Every time I entered a relationship I would end up hurting the person that I was with, never truly intimate, never truly giving of myself but instead using her up. I gained a reputation as a heartbreaker, as one who couldn’t be trusted, who could never make it work, who would always hurt.”
There was a time in my life that this is who I was, but,
It’s Not Who I Am.
It was never ok for me to entangle myself in the vulnerability of a woman, if my intentions weren’t that of Christ.
I have been set free of the lies of the enemy and of the past. They do not define me.
I know who I am in the eyes of my Heavenly Father. I am a man of honor and one who knows how to treat a woman rightly in the eyes of God.
There is this intimacy that I have encountered with Christ that brought an alignment of my heart with His. That brought an understanding of the fullness of who He is, as a Father and as a lover.
I have learned in these moments, that the grace of God brings you into a move of discovery of who you really are and your placement in His family.
Jeff Goins says it perfectly “Maybe, God is less concerned with exactly what you’re doing and more concerned with who you’re becoming.”
