alright everyone, you’re gonna wanna sit back and relax because this sucker is gonna be a long one. Feel free to duck out now, I won’t be offended.
if you continued reading: thank you, I love you. This blog is just going to be some things that God showed me and some realizations I had over those ten days at training camp for the World Race.
there is only one thing that comes to mind when I try to summarize the entire experience: GROWTH. Exponential growth. Not only did I learn more about who God is, but I learned so much about who I am, and who He says I am. Training camp challenged me and stretched me. I was uncomfortable, confused, scared, yet completely at peace at the same time. Needless to say, training camp was just a rollercoaster of emotions for me.
We will just start from the very beginning. The first night of training camp was a big one for me (so big that I bawled in front of my teammates whom I had literally JUST MET. lol good times). The topic of the evening: The Cost of Discipleship. Now, I like to think of myself as a very rational person. I am not particularly impulsive; I am organized and level-headed. But when it came to the World Race, I had really not thought my plans all the way through. I had not imagined what it would look like to leave my family, my friends, my home, and my comfort for nine months. I had not thought of how difficult it would be to actually BE a disciple of Christ. When I began to add all the costs up, I could not believe that I had not thought of these prior to TRAINING CAMP. I beat myself up about it. I wondered if the World Race was actually meant for me. I could not believe that I had made such a big decision, without looking ahead, planning it all out, weighing all of my options. And as the week continued, I realized why I had neglected to make my pro-con list and further research other possibilities: because I knew deep down in my soul, that God had been calling me to do this. He opened doors, placed people in my life, made the path He wanted me to take abundantly clear. I didn’t make plans, because it isn’t up to me, these aren’t MY plans, they’re His. I didn’t research much, because I already knew that He had all the answers. I still have absolutely no idea what I am doing or how I am going to do it, but that’s okay because I don’t really need to. My life is not my own. I am merely trying to be obedient. A vessel for the Holy Spirit. He will do all the work, I’m just along for the ride. Even though it is extremely nerve-racking not knowing what the future holds, how stinking cool is it that He allows me to be a part of this amazing thing called the gospel? That the Holy Spirit is within me working THROUGH me. We get to be used by the creator of the entire universe!!! I know you’ve probably heard that before, but have you ever wondered why??? because at training camp, I did. Why why why would the most powerful being that will ever exist even bother with me? He is MORE than capable of doing this all on His own, He really does not need me for anything. He doesn’t force me, but He ALLOWS me. It’s completely crazy.
But here is the REALLY crazy part….
He doesn’t just “bother” with me, He LOVES me. And not that worldly kind of love either. He loves us with a love that we literally cannot even understand. He doesn’t just love me, He is OBSESSED with me. He genuinely cares about my every thought, my every feeling. He wants to know the deepest parts of who I am, He WANTS to spend time with me. He doesn’t just call me special, He calls me worthy, He calls me wanted, HE CALLS ME HIS DAUGHTER.
And I don’t know if it’s just me, but somehow I keep forgetting that I am not just “one of the many” to Him. He is my Father. This thing we’ve got goin on is PERSONAL, it is His and it is mine, it is just ours.
Which leads me to the next BIG thing that the Lord really convicted me of at training camp: COMPARISON.
Now I used to struggle with comparison SO MUCH. It was unhealthy and it caused me a great amount of pain, so after much time and growth (thank you Jesus), I make it a point in my life to avoid comparison at all costs. But what I did not realize is that throughout my entire life, I have been comparing my faith, my relationship with Christ, to that of other peoples. I have always been trying to “get to where ___ is with God” and I saw it as a realistic “goal” to achieve; I did not realize that it was an incredibly dangerous thing that would limit how deep of a relationship I could have with my Heavenly Father. No two people are the same, God created us that way, so why do I think that my relationship with God would look the same as anyone else’s?? The relationship that I have with God is deep and exceedingly personal, so if it looks like everyone else’s I AM DOING IT WRONG.
Personal story because I just love being vulnerable through a computer:
At times, I have been skeptical of God and who He says He is. Don’t get me wrong, I know that God is the all-powerful creator of the universe. I know that He loves me radically and that He knows me. I have always struggled with understanding how God interacts with me personally. You have probably heard people say, or you’ve said yourself, “the Lord showed me…” or “the Lord told me…”. Well whenever I heard those things, I began to doubt the legitimacy of my own relationship with God, because I have never heard the audible voice of God. So when I heard people say that, I would get really insecure in my faith. I would think that I wasn’t “as good of a Christian” as that person, or that God didn’t love me as much as He loved THAT person, because He was talking to them and not me. All throughout training camp, we would have sessions in which we were told to “ask God __” and then at the end of a certain amount of time, everyone would reveal what God said to them. Well each time I prayed “God speak to me”, and each time I got NOTHING. So every time we would do these sessions I would get SO discouraged listening to other people say what the Lord revealed to them. And do you know why? Because COMPARISON y’all. I let Satan get into my mind and twist my thoughts and make me doubt my own faith. And IMMEDIATELY after a session in which I yet again did not hear the audible voice of God (and cried again), one of the team leaders gave SUCH an encouraging message about how God may not always speak to you, and when He does, it might not be in the form of “His voice”. It could be through the words of another believer, or through the scripture, or through songs of worship. He can speak to us in literally ANY way He wants. He knows how to speak to you because He knows you. And when He does want to speak to you, there is literally nothing you can do to stop it, YOU ARE NOT THAT POWERFUL. Now this was OH SO INSPIRING to me, so for the next couple of days, I was searching for the voice of God in EVERYTHING. In fact, I was searching SO HARD that I began to take EVERYTHING that was said to me as a direct quote from the Lord himself. I believe that God has a sense of humor, and I also believe that He was CACKLING along with us when I told my squad-mate (and long term bff) Jaynna that four people had said “hey” to me in the past 40 seconds, so that MUST mean that the Lord was calling me to grow and sell hay after the World Race.
Long story short: God knows how to speak to each of us in the most effective and personal way, so don’t stress when you don’t hear from Him or when your faith doesn’t look like everyone else’s. It’s a process and I most definitely have a LONG way to go, but that is honestly the most BEAUTIFUL thing. We have the opportunity to grow closer to the Father every single day, but we will never be close ENOUGH to Him. He is just THAT good.
