I no longer have to fear the world or try to live up to the expectations of the world. I live to serve God. I am who He created me to be. I might not be perfect, but God loves me for who I am. And it’s taken me accepting who I am to accept the love God has for me.
God doesn’t want me to strive, He wants me to be. He will change me, I just have to allow Him to. Growth is more about surrender than striving. And it’s taken me until now to finally realize that.
Most of my life I’ve been striving. Striving for approval of the world in the form of grades, accomplishments, roles, positions, building my resume in order to become something. To become someone loved, self-sufficient, and important.
When I started truly following Christ a little less than 3 years ago, I learned about grace, which means that we will never be worthy of Jesus’ sacrifice for us on the cross, but salvation is a gift He freely gives to us. But without realizing it, I was still striving, just in a new way now.
I was striving to earn God’s favor. I wanted Him to love me, but I never felt good enough. I would repent of past sins multiple times when He has already forgiven me. I would constantly seek to improve myself, when He already accepted me for who I am and just wanted to meet me where I was at.
I tried to strive after perfection to seek the approval of my Heavenly Father, and when that failed, I just tried to follow by the Christian rules as best as I could and set even stricter guidelines for myself.
But God never asked this of me.
He never asked me to make myself perfect so He would love me more. In fact, God would repeatedly tell in that still small voice in my head while I was praying that I was His beloved daughter whom He loved so much. He told me He was proud of me. He told me, “Well done, my good and faithful servant,” when I was obedient to Him.
God never asked me to strive after perfection for Him. That was something I put on myself and I beat myself up about when I fell short…because I always fell short.
All God ever asked of me was to allow Him to meet me where I was, to listen to Him when He asked me to do something or give something up, to trust Him that He loves me and has good intentions for me, that He would never leave me or forsake me, and to surrender my struggles to Him because He knows how to fix them better than I can. Today I learned that God loves me the way I am and it’s okay for me to be content where I’m at.
I will not fix all of my problems at once, and that’s okay. Whenever I feel like I’m striving for perfection on my own, I simply have to stop and give it up to God. Because He knows how to handle what I’m going through better than I can. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Have you been striving after something in your life? If you feel led to, surrender this striving to the Lord and simply chose to follow Him. He is made perfect in our weaknesses and He loves YOU the way you are.
Updates: Yesterday we made it to Nepal safely for the start of month 3 of the World Race!! However, we haven’t had Wifi for the past few weeks in Ghana, so I still have several blogs to post from Ghana, as well as some video updates from Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana. I am still working on the videos because they take Wifi to edit, but hopefully I will have more updates coming soon!
The media detox is officially over, so I may be posting a little more frequently now! This will depend on the availability of Wifi at our new ministry site though.
Currently we are staying in a hotel in Nepal for debrief (5 days of training with our leaders from the field and the U.S. as well as some rest and exploring Nepal) and ministry will start for us on Oct. 10th! We are about 9 hours and 45 mins. ahead of Eastern Standard Time, so it’s already Oct. 6th here.
Praises:
~Thank you, thank you, thank you!! The goal I posted for raising $14,000 by Sept. 30th has been met and surpassed thanks to your prayers and generosity! Thank you so much for helping me reach this goal, it means so much to me!
~We made it safely to Asia and will be serving together as a whole squad in ministry this month!
~By the way, I’m on the worship team on our squad called Neon Sign, pointing others to Jesus for His glory and it’s a lot of fun!
Prayer Requests:
~For our squad to feel refreshed, poured into, and unified during our time at together at debrief.
~For me to reach my next financial goal of $15,500 by Oct. 30th.
~For new supporters to donate either one-time or monthly. (If you feel led to give, you can click the “donate!” button above to make a tax-deductible donation online either anonymously or by name.)
~For me to reach my financial goal of being fully funded by Nov. 30th.
~For people to feel led to give towards my personal monthly goal of $200 for the month of October (please click the “contact me” button, Facebook message, or email me for more info.) to help support me towards loans while I’m away and expenses while on the field like shampoo, baby wipes, meals out with my team, medical expenses that may arise, and fun days out.
~For the next ministry we will be serving in, that we can partner alongside them well.
~For our squad’s time in Asia that we can make an impact in people’s lives by showing God’s love well!
Thank you, as always, for everyone who has made the World Race possible for me! You are not only touching my life, but the lives of everyone I encounter on the mission field to know the love of Christ. I hope to share more stories about the people we encounter and the adventures we have following Jesus in faith.
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