Wow, training camp…where do I even begin? A thousand blog posts and a million words would never encapsulate all that God did-all that I got to see and hear and feel and taste and experience-at training camp perfectly, but I’m going to try my best to hit some of the highlights.
Training camp was draining and exhausting and challenging and uncomfortable and horrible and stretching and growing and eye-opening and incredible and rejuvenating and invigorating and refreshing and silly and fun and joy-bringing and restoring and healing and life-giving all at the same time. Training camp was nothing like what I expected it to be and everything I never even could’ve dreamed it would be; it was nothing that I wanted it to be and everything God knew that I needed it be. Jesus rocked my world in the best way possible.
The first thing God seemed to be telling me over and over again while I was at training camp was that He desires ALL of me-He is a consuming fire, jealous for every single part of me, He’s calling me deeper, He has more in store for me. It is too light a thing that I should be His servant to raise up tribes of Jacob and to bring back the preserved of Israel; He wants to make me as a light for the nations, that His salvation may reach the ends of the earth (Isaiah 49:6). But before He can do that, He has to have all of me. The good parts, the bad parts, the secret parts, the beautiful parts, the still a mess parts, the made numb parts, the try not to think about them parts, the scary parts, the wonderful parts, He doesn’t care, He just wants them all, He wants me to surrender them all to Him.
While at training camp, I realized that I’ve gotten to this place where I’ve grown complacent in my relationship with Him. I realized that there’s parts of me that I’ve been holding back from Him, places that He keeps trying to consume with His fire that I keep extinguishing and trying to keep in the dark, things that are blocking Him from doing what He needs to do. I’ve become happy and okay with where I’m at, but He seems to keep telling me, “but Ashley, I have so much more for you, just trust me.” He wants me to get out of my comfort zone, because that’s where Life happens! I’ve been having fun on the surface, like a dolphin playing on the surface of the water, but He is calling me deeper, deeper into the ocean and into the unknown and most of all, to trust Him so that His will can be done. And just like a dolphin swimming down to the depths of the sea, going deeper will be painful at times-my ears will pop and it’ll look dark and scary and it won’t be what I’m used to-but God promises that He will never let me down, that He will be with me the whole time, every step of the way, giving me exactly what I need, making me more and more like Him, and it will be so worth it when I get to the other side. Sometimes, you’ve gotta get over yourself and be brave and step out of the way so that He can do His thing. So at training camp, I took my first steps of obedience rooted in faith, and I chose to trust Him with all of me, I laid it all right there in my Daddy’s lap and man, did it feel good. Because theres no shame in looking like a fool when I give You what I can’t keep to take a hold of You. Because there’s really nothing like surrender and embracing God-given, blood-bought Freedom, seeing the chains that once held you captive broken and getting to dance on top of them in victory. And you wanna know what made it even better? I got to watch all of my new favorite humans experience the exact same thing and then I got to celebrate and go wild and dance with them because that’s a feeling that you just can’t hold in. And you can use all the descriptions and adjectives that you want, but you just can’t quite put sweet moments like that into words.
The second thing God seemed to be telling me over and over again while I was at training camp, was that my story matters and it’s worth telling and that I am exactly where I’m meant to be. Here’s the facts-I’m just an average little white girl from an average suburb with an average family and a pretty average life. To me, my story is boring, every day, mediocre, mundane, been heard a 100 times, average, nothing special, not even really worth telling and that’s a lie I’ve been telling myself for a very long time. And then when I got to listen to the stories of all the people on my sQuad at training camp-these rockstars who are ON FIRE for Jesus that I get travel the world with for 11 months with incredible stories filled with heartbreaking struggles and crazy big obstacles thrown their way and God’s amazing healing and couldn’t have done it on their own victories and overcoming and transformation-my story just doesn’t even compare. BUT here’s the Truth-my story is just as powerful, just as incredible, just as jaw-dropping as theirs, and you wanna know why? I’ll give you a hint, it has nothing to do with me and everything to do with the author of my story. My story isn’t awesome because I’ve done lots of cool things, it’s awesome because my story is a MIRACLE written with care by the Miracle Maker Himself!! I once was dead and now I’m full of life, I once was a captive held in bondage to decay and now I am free and it’s all because of Him!! And I get to tell people all over the world about that and then I get to tell them that their story doesn’t have to end in death and captivity, that the same Life and Freedom that I have, can be there’s too because freedom and life aren’t personality types, they’re blood types (thanks Christine Caine)!! And that’s pretty freaking awesome if you ask me!!
So I am waiting expectantly for what is to come. I feel more ready than ever for this great, wild, full of Jesus 11 month journey that God has called me to go on, where I will be abandoning my comfortable lifestyle in the US to go serve and love and tell people around the world about Jesus and all that He has done for me and His beautiful, incredible, overwhelming, out of this world love for each and every single one of them! And I am confident that along the way, I will see God do His thing and show up in big ways like only He can and set captives free and bring dead friends back to life and make much of His holy name and let His glory and His goodness shine so so bright that people can’t help but be drawn to it! Let’s do this thing!
