On July 4th the adventure began.
I met my squad in Atlanta for launch -aka a few days of sessions preparing us for what we are going to encounter throughout the year. By the third day of launch I was feeling overwhelmed and honestly a bit frightened. There were many sessions about what to do in case of some pretty scary worst case scenarios and we had this very intelligent, undercover agent man teaching us intense, but awesome, get away and defense tactics. Once reality sunk in and I realized that he was not able to come with us and protect us throughout the year I started getting nervous. These sessions were very helpful and necessary, but I forgot that the type of scary scenarios that we were learning how to handle are the outliers and fear began to overtake my joy and push away any sort of excitement.
July 7, 2013
So here I am at launch and I'm honestly not very excited right now. I feel like my faith is lacking. I am turning to Jesus to be my strength, but constantly feel tired, anxious, have bubbles in my stomach and tired again. My mind feels heavy and burdened and I am too tired tired to think about why. Thoughts are going through my mind that I won't be able to handle it – that I won't like it – that my faith is not strong enough for God to do good work in me and through me.
ALL LIES.
I need to have a serious attitude adjustment in order to allow the Holy Spirit to shine through me, like I want it too.
2 Corinthians 3:17-18
Now the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. We all, with unveiled faces are reflecting the glory of the Lord and are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory; this is from the Lord who is the Spirit.
2 Corinthians 4:3
But if in face our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing.
How will the people we minister to see the face of Christ if I am smothering the light He has given me. It is our job as Christians to unveil the gospel and be a light for everyone to see. It should be apparent, obvious, and others shouldn't have to work hard to uncover the reason behind our actions.
Maybe 10 minutes after I wrote this in my journal we had our last session of launch and it was everything I needed to hear. A lesson on thankfulness. It spoke directly to how I was feeling and taught me how to overcome thoughts of helplessness, fear, and it healed my tired spirit. We proclaimed everything we were thankful for and allowed these gifts to overpower any sort of darkness in order to allow the gospel to shine through us.
I am thankful that the Lord has opened my heart to realize that I do not want to go out to the nations without the light of the Lord – and I don't want to build up my kingdom, I want to build up God's kingdom.
I am thankful to have a God who listens and responds.
I am thankful to have a God who can take me from apathy to joy.
I am thankful that He loves revealing His joy through me.
I am thankful that he has that power and that if I dig deep enough I will be able to find it always.
Thank you Lord for caring.
Thank you Lord for everything you have enabled us to do through your spirit.
Thank you Lord for making your heart accessible to us at all times.
For giving us the spirit of Jesus – freedom– joy – gentleness – patience – boldness –
and allowing us to have it in full capacity.
A simple realization of everything I am thankful for healed my spirit and prepared my heart in more ways than I could've expected and I left for Thailand feeling very well and excited 🙂
