This week during my quiet time I felt God place on my heart to read through Ephesians. My bible has little introductions to each book so I thought I should start there and what I read really has impacted my outlook on our ministry. If you haven’t read through Ephesians, you should. But for the sake of understanding this blog I’ll tell you that the bulk of what it focuses on is that we are the church which also means that we are the body of Christ. To be the church means that “we need to be the church by living as a real community”.
“Living as a real community”; this is something that has become so real in my life in the past two weeks of living the “World Race lifestyle”. We are all about community here. I mean lets be real, we have 20 people living in a small house and we share just about everything. But, the cool part about living in community is that we not only share tangible things like two showers, water bottles, clothes, and so much more, but we also share our personal (emotional, spiritual) things as well. My team has grown so much already in sharing our testimonies with each other, sharing our struggles, sharing our celebrations/happy times, and sharing in laughter and tears. I promise, we are nowhere close to perfect, but we have really started to embrace and grasp what community really means. Now, relating this back to being the church; I want to start by clarifying something that I have really grasped over the last few years and that is, church is not somewhere we go. We as the body of Christ are the church everywhere we go and we are “called to display God’s wisdom as we follow the Spirit to do the work of Christ”. So as we are here in El Salvador and when we go to Malawi and the Philippines in the months to come, we are called to display God’s wisdom, love, mercy, and grace with each other as well as with the people we encounter each day. That is truly being the church.
In reading through Ephesians I have started to break down the word community. Without looking up any definition it stuck out to me that the ending of the word is ‘unity’. Coincidence? I think not. This is just one of the simple ways that God has pointed out to me what the key focus of community really should be. In Ephesians 1:23 Paul writes, “the church is his body; it is made full and complete by Christ” and in Ephesians 2:18 he writes, “Now all of us can come to the Father through the same Holy Spirit because of what Christ has done for us”. From these two verses there are two key points I have; one: with Christ, we (the church) are complete, and two: because Jesus died on the cross for our sins, we are now unified through the Holy Spirit. To be unified is to become a single unit, meaning that we are one with Christ. That is so cool to me that as the church, we are one with the Creator of the universe; we are one with the one who rose from the dead; we are one with the God who performed miracles and healings; we are one with Jesus Christ and the power that He had now lives in us. Just let that sink in for a little bit. WOAH. Community with other believers and with Christ is so important as we walk through our individual journey as well as through our journey as the church.
Now taking a step away from community, I just want to take a second to update you all where I am personally on this adventure. Because our ministry has had a slow start I have really been questioning why I’m here and I have been struggling to find my purpose here in El Salvador. I started to spend a lot of time in prayer to hopefully find answers that would bring me peace about being here and after a few days, that’s just what I got. During one of my times in prayer I felt God saying to me “spiritual growth”. I was a little confused by these words so I continued to pray about them specifically. Within the same day of hearing these words, God gave me clarity about them. Our ministry is very important, don’t get me wrong, but God is using these three months in El Salvador for my personal, spiritual growth. I have no idea what’s in store for these three months but I have a lot more peace about it now. The song “Steady Heart” by Steffany Gretzinger has been on repeat every time I listen to music and the line that says, “I can’t see what’s in front of me, still I will trust You” has been a constant reminder that I have no idea what is in the days to come but I am trusting that God is going to use every moment, good or bad, to perfect His plan for me.
To continue God’s faithfulness I was reading one of my devotions this week and it read, “You are worth it. Your spiritual growth happens in small steps over time. God is patient. Have patience with yourself.” This is something I needed to hear while processing all of this because a lot of times I want to grow spiritually all at one time and at full speed and I forget to allow God to work in His time. And when it doesn’t happen in my time I become discouraged because I feel like I’m failing. So to have this reminder that spiritual growth happens over time and I need to be patient with myself was exactly what I needed. Along with that, I want to share a quick story. The other night our host dad, Alberto, got us all together and shared his testimony and when he was finished him and our host mom, Mariella, washed each of our feet while we spent time in worship. It was a beautiful night of worship and we are so blessed by these loving people that have taken in all 14 of us. When the worship was coming to a close I felt like I really needed to go and read my chapter of Ephesians for the day. It’s not that I didn’t want to, it was more that it was 11:30 and I was tired. But God continued saying “Ephesians, Ephesians, Ephesians”. So, I went and started ready Ephesians chapter 3. I couldn’t help but smile and feel His arms around me when I read verses 14-21 (if you get a chance, go read them!). The caption for these verses read “Paul’s Prayer for Spiritual Growth”. You can just imagine how I felt reading these after God revealed to me that spiritual growth is what He’s going to focus on with me; I really felt his presence and I got pretty pumped for what He has in store for me. God has just continued to confirm what He is teaching me and these verses were a huge encouragement. He never leaves me nor forsakes me; He is a good, good Father for sure.
So whether it’s learning to live in community or learning to really press into what God has for me in times of frustration, I am constantly reminding myself that God has placed me here for this season of my life for a specific reason and He is working out His plan for me through the good times as well as the hard, challenging times.
I always like to leave you guys with a little encouragement so this week I’ll leave you with a challenge to really focus on what living in community looks like in your life. Living in community doesn’t just happen on the World Race, it happens where ever the church is. So I encourage you to apply that to your life where you are now. Okay, maybe leave out the 20 people living in one house and sharing two showers and clothes but you get the point(: Honestly, sometimes it is a lot harder than others but just continue to remind yourself that “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me”. When it’s hard to love someone, God will give you the strength you need to love them just as He loves you. We serve a good, good Father and He has called us as the church to live in community with one another. Will you answer that call?
Thank you for the continued prayer support, I couldn’t do it without you. A specific request would be for patience as we are still trying to get into our routine of ministry and just this new lifestyle in general.
I don’t have pictures to upload in this update but I’ll be uploading an album as soon as I can with all my pictures so far; go check it out to see some ministry we’ve been doing, adventure days we’ve been having, and some of the beautiful country we are calling home!
Blessings,
Julie
:: live in the moment; love life; instinctively trust God ::
