Only 3 weeks left in the USA, summer is winding down, and camp has just finished. These past 3 months have been an emotional rollercoaster. So what wisdom have I gained, and how can I be praising God? Here’s just few I would like to share:
1. Be uncomfortable with the comfortable.
One of my friends told me this phrase this summer and I love it! God doesn’t call us to live a comfortable life. If anyone tells you differently then they’re lying; don’t listen to them. Actually, run away from them before they tell you more lies. Because we should be uncomfortable with the comfortable!
Giving our life to Christ doesn’t mean that we get to live a comfortable life like the rest of the world. When we give our life fully to Christ we’re actually agreeing to not live like the rest of the world anymore. We will have different challenges to face than the rest of the world; our values should not be the same like the world’s. We will be rejected and hated by the world; the more we identify with Christ, the more the world will hate us. Jesus explains that we can be in the world but not of it – “…the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world” (Jn 17.14).
A week ago my pastor had a sermon about the cost of following Jesus. He gave 3 warnings to following Christ, and one of them was about being rejected by the world. If we give our life to Christ but fight to live a comfortable life then we are not fully living for Him. This summer I chose to try to love on every child that came into my life, but if I had just stopped there I would have been living a comfortable life. Instead, I, along with my fellow counselors, chose to bring Jesus into every situation. When we do this – decide to go past only loving on people – rejection will come. When we bring Jesus into every situation rejection will come. We were rejected inside and outside of camp, and we will be rejected this next year because of what God has done in our lives this summer.
Life will be uncomfortable, scary, and dangerous, but it’s a life we need to be striving for. When we strive for this life then we know we are in the presence of God which there is no better place to be!!
“The danger of our lives increases in proportion to the depth of our relationship with Christ.” – David Platt
2. Saying “I love you” is a necessity.
Yes, those 3 words are used too often, but is that necessarily a bad thing? Those 3 words may be overused, but they can also change people by the amount of times they are used. I saw the over-usage of these 3 words work miracles this summer. One was with a young girl at high school girls camp.
This girl was listening to no one all week and we thought nothing was getting through to her, until one day she woke up a completely different person. She now smiled, laughed, and talked to other people. This was more than her just getting over her shyness. You want to know why? Because God was working through love. Every night her counselors would say to each girl “I love you”. This was their first summer on staff and had never met any of these girls, but they knew these girls needed to fall asleep to those words. The counselors didn’t know the impact of those three words until the end of the week when another counselor shared a story about that changed girl. The young girl was wondering why her counselors would love her even when they didn’t know her. She was told her counselors love her because God first loved us, even before we were born. She saw and experienced God’s love through her counselors that week because they decided to say 3 words society believes are overused.
3. Live in the mess.
My life is a mess. Go figure! Not sure if I’ve met anyone who has an unmessy life. If someone does, please don’t share 🙂
I like control. When I see a mess I start getting stressed and want to go in and make everything organized and under controlled – just ask my counselor friends 🙂 Of course, whenever a mess comes into my life I ask God to clean it and make it organized and under control again. Before, I believed I was giving my control to God, but I’m not fooling myself anymore. What I’m really doing is telling God to make my life the way I like so I can still have control. I’m putting a stop to this! Just recently my life has been in a huge mess. My old self would ask God to organize it so I would know what to do, but not this time. God meets us in the middle of our messes, and there are times our mess is where we need to be. So no more praying for control; instead, I will be praying for peace and guidance in and through my messes.
4. Be a river dweller.
Collective Outpour (the band at TC) had written a song about God’s love. It goes like this:
“Take me out to the middle of the river. I want to drown in the good old river of Your love. I want to be in the river. I want to be in the river of Your love.”
Keep repeating the last 2 sentences, but each time switch out ‘be’ with words like: drown, have been changed, have been healed, have been baptized, and want to pull people.
Think of a river. Actually, more like a raging river. The edge of this river is safe; there’s not much danger or pull from the water. But as you go farther and farther out there is more danger and force. That’s where we need to be; we need to be in the middle of this dangerous, forceful river of God’s love. Standing on the sides will do nothing for us and the people around us. It’s in the middle of the river, the deepest part, where we will the most change will happen. That’s also where we need to be pulling people into – the deepest and most effective place of God’s love is in the middle of it.
How do we become “river dwellers”? By always being grateful and never being satisfied in our relationship with God. Pursue God more and more. Seek after His presence; don’t ignore the Holy Spirit! Don’t only seek Him for things to happen (seeking His hands and feet), but seek God so you can know Him (seeking His face).
Drown in the river of God’s love. Be changed by His love. Be healed… and pull people in the river.
Grace and Peace,
Hannah
