Last Friday night I was able to experience, for the first time in 11 nights, the incomparable comfort of sleeping in my own bed. I had just spent the last couple of weeks in Gainesville, Georgia for World Race training camp. I was with approximately 300 young adults from ages 18-20 who are also set to leave in seven weeks. I got to meet my incredible squad, I slept in a (very sweaty) tent almost every night, ate foods based on the cuisine in other parts of the world, and dug deeper into the word and the character of God than I ever have before.
In this blog I was not going to try and cover an overview of the details of camp (I linked some of my squadmates’ blogs at the bottom if you wanna know more about the specifics or takeaways from camp), but instead I wanted to talk my about my personal experience at camp. Going into camp I really was unsure about what to expect. Naturally, I was worried about the physical challenges of camp like sleeping in tents or eating weird foods, but I was also worried about how camp might challenge me spiritually. Leading up to camp, I had developed a lot of complacency in my faith. I saw other people who had faith strong like a raging river while mine had mellowed out into stagnant waters.
I grew up in a faith-based home, but I was not always strong in my faith. Specifically, there was a period in my life, 6th grade – 8th grade, when my self-confidence cracked and I hated God and I hated myself. I had to deal with that self-loathing everyday. The enemy whispered lies to me like I am good for nothing or I make everything worse or everyone in my life would be better off without me. Lies like these would play on repeat inside my head all day all the time. But God was not going to let me live like that forever. In my freshman year of high school I went on a church retreat with my youth group. That retreat was when I first remember EXPERIENCING God’s all-consuming love for me. Of course I had always been told about how much God loved me. It was one of those things that where I thought I knew about something, but I had never actually experienced it for myself.
In my four years of high school my faith stayed fairly solid with the help of a couple mission trips, but I knew the World Race was going to be a whole different animal. Based off the events of training camp I would say that I was right about that. So much of training camp was new experiences for me, and the ironic thing is that I would have said that I had known about a lot of these things even though I had never experienced them before. I had heard about prophecy in the bible, but I had never seen the holy spirit speaking to someone through another person that was unaware of the significance behind what they were saying. I had heard about spiritual warfare, but I had never experienced a group of people pray with such authority when commanding the enemy to leave. I had felt the presence of the Holy Spirit come over me, but I had never experienced the Holy Spirit quite as powerfully as did during some of the worship sets.
The pinnacle of these experiences was during one of those nightly worship sets when my team leader, Caleb, came over to talk to me. He told me about a vision that he had of me in a field all alone when suddenly Jesus appeared next to me and said, “I have been here all along.” That may not seem all that significant, but just a couple minutes earlier my mind had wandered to the mental struggles I dealt with before high school and how there were still current problems as a result of those times. Those thoughts made me ask God directly, “Where were you during all this?” It was just a couple minutes later when Caleb told me about that vision he had of me. Incredible timing huh? Then Caleb prayed over me and it was during this prayer that I had an epiphany. I realized that throughout all of high school I had never actually moved on from those issues, but instead I had just ignored them once I stopped suffering from them. I know now that even though I have not struggled with those problems for a long time, I had never forgiven myself for them either. Which means they still had power over me. Realizing that God was there in the struggles made me aware that I do not have to hide them anymore, but instead I should glorify God for it is by His strength that I have been saved.
2 Corinthians:9-10 But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
The experiences I had at camp make me infinitely more excited for the nine months to come. Training camp taught me that God blesses us with experiences that bolster our faith. It is hard to stay strong in faith when you have nothing to hold that faith up. But God lets us see and meet with the Holy Spirit, in trials and in victories, so that we can hold on to Him in moments when we have doubts or insecurities.
So go. Experience God. It doesn’t have to be on a huge mission trip, He will meet you anywhere if you make the effort to seek Him out.
Here’s some of my squad’s blogs:
My team member Jordan wrote a great blog about the everyday schedule of camp: https://jordankouri.theworldrace.org/index.asp?filename=a-day-in-the-life-at-training-camp
Another one of my squadmates Mary Grace wrote about the overall takeaways from camp here: https://marygracecurran.theworldrace.org/index.asp?filename=walking-in-freedom-42-things-i-learned-at-training-camp
Those blogs will cover some more specifics of camp that I didn’t cover, but you should actually check out EVERYONE on my squads’ blogs because they are all GREAT: https://www.worldrace.org/?tab=participants&group=18G0904
