The ten days I spent in Gainesville, Georgia at World Race Training Camp were filled with a whirlwind of emotions and experiences. Along the way, I got to meet 25 of the Godliest people I’ve ever met (excluding our AMAZING leadership), share our life stories as a squad, and come together as the Church to dig deeper into the calling that God has placed on each of our lives. However, it was literally the hardest thing I’ve ever experienced mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.
Now physically, it included 10 days of camping under the scorching Georgia sun, completing a 2.2-mile fitness hike with all our hiking gear, taking freezing cold bucket showers, using port-a-potties, and eating community-style (sometimes with only our fingers as utensils). It was all definitely new to me but it paled in comparison to the changes God made in my heart.
The true focus of our preparation for living missionally wasn’t on the external training, but on our internal training: fixing our attention and affection on Jesus Christ.
And to be completely honest, I’ve been procrastinating writing this blog because it requires vulnerability and transparency… and I think one thing we can all agree on is that both of those things are difficult but nonetheless necessary.
So, here’s some of the things the Holy Spirit taught me (more like convicted me of) at camp:
1. Fear is not from God.
The first three days of training camp I honestly don’t think I went more than an hour or so without bursting into tears. I was struggling with doubt and I had NEVER in my life felt such a crippling, paralyzing fear. My mind wandered to the future, specifically to Launch, to leaving my family, boyfriend, friends, and basically all comforts of living in America. I know the enemy wanted nothing more than for me to accept defeat and a need to cling to those things…but my Spirit within refused. We sang “Let my heart want for nothing but You, just You. The riches of this world could never satisfy, for me, only Jesus.” I have never felt my Spirit and flesh warring against each other so strongly; however, my soul was crying out for Jesus. In those moments, I was clinging to Jesus and His promises that He would never leave me, that He has redeemed me, and that He works all things for good. Honestly, my fear was a selfish fear because I was so scared of what God was taking from me that I couldn’t see all that He so graciously and patiently has in store for me. I needed a reminder (which came from Polly in perfect timing) that God cared about my fears and didn’t want me to disregard them but to acknowledge them by ultimately laying them at His feet. You see, our coach Karen encouraged me to just take it one moment, then one hour, then one day at a time because tomorrow is out of my control. It’s a choice to hold tight to God and His Truth in the face of even your greatest fear. So, I decided that no matter what happens in the future, I will choose to be a steward of the Gospel with whatever time God gives me on this side of eternity even when doubts and fears assail because my Father’s perfect love casts out every fear.
2 Timothy 1:7 “For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.”
Matthew 6:33-34 “But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things shall be added to you. Therefore, do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.”
1 John 4:18 “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love.”
2. I want the things of earth to grow strangely dim.
We sang “Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in His wonderful face. And the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace.” I can’t even count how many times I have sang this hymn in my Southern Baptist church back home. But for some reason, those two words stuck out to me like never before. I considered what it meant for something to grow strangely dim. It was like I heard God whisper “It’s when you’re so focused on me that you aren’t even aware that the earthly things that once held your attention, whether good or bad, are fading away!” Because desiring things such as a spouse or career aren’t in and of themselves bad things, but when you want those things more than you want to know Jesus and His heart then yes, even those good desires become dangerous become you are making them an idol in your life. And the Bible doesn’t sugar coat it; our God is a jealous God. He wants all of us for Himself. He wants to be our all in all. But praise God, that He is such a beautiful Savior that He can captivate you in an instant. I just had to be willing to take my eyes off the things around me and look up to behold His glorious face. Which leads to my next point…
Ecclesiastes 1:14 “I have seen all the works that are done under the sun, and indeed, all is vanity and grasping for the wind.”
Exodus 20:4-5 “You shall not make for yourself a carved image—any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me,”
Psalm 27:4 “One thing I have desired of the LORD, that will I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the LORD, and to inquire in His temple.”
3. Surrender is beautiful.
Notice there how I said surrender is beautiful, but it’s NOT always easy. Although there is a part of surrender that is easy and that part is JESUS. He makes surrender easy. Think about it… He has proven Himself faithful every. single. time. and He doesn’t have to. He has nothing to prove yet He still fights for us, intercedes for us, and pursues us. I am so thankful that I am loved by a Savior worthy of that level of trust and faith. There is no one else who I am assured will always receive me with open arms and a sweet “Welcome home, my child!” On the other hand, what makes surrender so difficult is us. MY selfish desires, MY own will, MY flesh, MY doubts, and MY need for control that makes surrender so incredibly hard. Surrender is a mental choice that leads to living it out in faith. I am choosing to give it all to the One who gave His all for me. He can do more with my life than I ever could on my own. “Beautiful surrender is where I wanna be, wrapped within Your arms for all eternity. Come and take my hand, lead me where You please. That beautiful surrender is chasing after me.” My Spirit is proclaiming this from the depths of my being that I will follow wherever He leads trusting FULLY that He is a good, good Father.
Galatians 2:20 “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.”
Mark 8:35-36 “For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel’s will save it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?”
2 Timothy 2:13 “If we are faithless, He remains faithful. He cannot deny Himself.”
4. Shame has no place in my life…or yours as a Follower of Christ.
At training camp, distinguishing between shame and guilt was a topic covered many times. As Bill Swan taught, guilt says “I did something wrong” whereas shame says, “I am fundamentally wrong at the center of my being”. And it truly is so important to know the difference between these two things. Because the reaction to these feelings look VERY different. When we sin, as Believers, we should experience guilt because the Holy Spirit convicts us of our sin. The appropriate response should be confession to God and repentance. On the other hand, our typical response to shame is hiding and not repentance. Just look at what Adam and Eve did in Genesis 3. They hid from God and I know for me, when I am sitting in my shame, it’s because I feel like the Lord can’t possibly forgive me and that I’m not worthy of His love and grace. But, shame only has power when we hide; when we are exposed in the light of God’s grace we can experience healing. As Ashley taught, “Guilt is supposed to help us get back in right relationship with God since it is conviction and invitational; whereas, shame walks us out of relationship and distances/isolates us.” Shame is an attack on our identity, not on our behavior. Don’t listen to the lies of the enemy because our identity is in Christ and who God says we are. He calls us beloved, holy, and blameless. I know when I am struggling with feelings of shame, the enemy brings to my mind words like “unworthy, unlovable, worthless, a disappointment, invisible, alone, not enough, and of no value.” The devil knows exactly what triggers us to feel shame and He will use our own minds against us. Hold tight to the Truth that “our shame was great, but Jesus is greater!” God never intends for us to accept a life ensnared by our shame; rather, He wants us to fill our lives with His Truth and meditate on it in our minds daily so that when the enemy does try to cause us to feel shame, we can proclaim control over our minds that are being renewed each moment in Christ. I don’t think I’ll fully grasp that the same power that raised Christ from the dead, lives in us, and God wants us to use that power to be overcomers in Christ. Shake off your shame and give it to Jesus. Because when He bore our sin, He bore our shame as well. You can come before His throne boldly to repent of sin knowing that He will forgive You and cast it as far as the east is from the west. I would encourage you to read John 8:1-11. Jesus says the person without sin gets to be the judge. So, we can’t even judge our own sin! Jesus gets to judge it yet He made the choice to give us grace and sees us as worthy.
Romans 8:1 “There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.
1 Corinthians 2:16 “For who has known the mind of the LORD that he may instruct Him?” But we have the mind of Christ.”
John 3:17-18 “For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.”
Isaiah 50:7 “For the Lord GOD will help Me; therefore, I will not be disgraced; therefore, I have set My face like a flint, and I know that I will not be ashamed.”
5. God is in the waiting.
I truly think this was one of my favorite things the Holy Spirit showed me while at training camp. We sang, “Take courage my heart. Stay steadfast my soul. He’s in the waiting. He’s in the waiting.” And truthfully, at first, I had no idea what it meant or what I was singing. But God opened my eyes to this Truth that He is there in the moments and circumstances where we aren’t certain of what lies ahead and even what He’s doing in the present. He is always working as a faithful God who never sleeps or slumbers. We just have to trust that He’s walking beside us every step of the way. As my wise friend Nancy said, “He is a light to our feet and that might just mean we have enough light to see the next step but not the whole path.” Man, was that convicting! As a self-proclaimed planner and control freak, being uncertain of what God wants me to do terrifies me. I read Psalm 29 while at camp, which says in verse 4, “The voice of the Lord is powerful; the voice of the Lord is full of majesty.” God may be gentle when He speaks but He is not timid. So, I know I’m going to hear His voice in His perfect timing, which to be honest, more often than not, is not in my timing. I can promise God will use seasons of waiting to draw you closer to His heart and reveal Himself to You. He desires for us to be a part of what He’s doing… it just might take some patience (or a lot of it) and for us to be silent.
Psalm 27:14 “Wait on the LORD, be of good courage. And He shall strengthen your heart; wait, I say, on the LORD!”
Micah 7:7 “But as for me, I will watch expectantly for the LORD; I will wait for the God of my salvation; My God will hear me.”
Lamentations 3:24-26 “The LORD is my portion,” says my soul, “Therefore I hope in Him!” The LORD is good to those who wait for Him, to the soul who seeks Him. It is good that one should hope and wait quietly for the salvation of the LORD.”
6. I will see His goodness.
This was a promise I felt the Lord engrave on my heart about halfway through training camp. I had been struggling with fear and one morning I was sitting on the front porch of the Lodge reading Psalm 27. It says in verse 13, “I would have lost heart, unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living.” And this was the verse I kept coming back to the rest of camp and even today. I felt the Holy Spirit whispering to me, “Don’t lose heart Kayla; you’re going to see my goodness all around you if you’ll just follow me with your whole heart. I am doing a work in you and around you that you can’t even see yet.” We don’t have to wait for Heaven to experience His goodness. We can experience it now in His beautiful creation. We can see His goodness in the eyes of an orphan or in the first breath of a newborn baby. He is always good in every situation. Sometimes, I just need that reminder that in my own life, Jesus sees me and He hears me and more importantly, He wants me to see His goodness and it is evident all around me.
Psalm 119:68 “You are good, and do good; teach me Your statutes.”
James 1:17 “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning.”
Psalm 84:11 “For the LORD God is a sun and shield; the LORD will give grace and glory; no good thing will He withhold from those who walk uprightly.”
7. I will carry a “YES, LORD” attitude in my Spirit.
This was a new heart change for me this week. Learning to have a “Yes, Lord” outlook on life was honestly something I had never focused on before. It’s a conviction to be conscious to say “Yes” to everything the Holy Spirit asks me to do whether it’s to pray for a stranger on the street, to share the Gospel with an old friend, or go to the ends of the earth to love on widows and orphans. No matter how seemingly big or small, I feel like Abraham in Genesis 21 and that God is bringing me to the top of the “mountain” to see if I’ll say “Yes, Lord! Not my will but Yours be done.” And that’s a hard place to be because it requires abandonment and for us to die to ourselves. Just look at Abraham. I don’t think there was a single part of him that wanted to sacrifice Isaac but He was determined to be obedient to God because He knew that He was a faithful keeper of His promises. At least it is easy to say “yes” to someone who so is worthy of our “yes” and who so faithfully and graciously says “yes” to us in return. 2 Corinthians 1:20 says, “For all the promises of God in Him are Yes, and in Him Amen, to the glory of God through us.” Let that sink in… God says “Yes” to us for every promise that belonged to Christ. Christ gives us His heavenly inheritance yet considers us His inheritance. Wow! I was driving home after camp and these words began playing: “I lift my hands and say that I need You. I lift my heart and say that I love You. I give my life. God, I am forever Yours.” It reminded me to surrender because everything belongs to God. We have a treasure that we could never afford in Jesus and it is freely ours. My life is hidden with Christ in God and He will never lead me astray from His will if I will just seek His face. I want to be a child who says “Yes” to the Father without reservation and in complete freedom. So, I am going to say “Yes, Lord” and cling to the One who said “Yes, Lord” to dying in my place.
1 Peter 1:3-4 “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His abundant mercy has begotten us again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and that does not fade away, reserved in heaven for you,”
Matthew 26:39 “He went a little farther and fell on His face, and prayed, saying, “O My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will.”
Luke 9:23 Then He said to them all, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me.”
Psalm 51:17 “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and a contrite heart— these, O God, You will not despise.”
8. I am hungry for more of Jesus.
One of my favorite songs we sang all week says, “I was made by You. I was made for You. I am unfulfilled without full communion.” I can’t emphasize enough the importance of communing with the Lord, of building a relationship with Jesus Christ, and of fixing Your gaze upward on God. We were made to know and be known by Jesus. My soul longs to know Him deeper; it is hungry for communion with the Father. By definition, communion is “the sharing or exchanging of intimate thoughts and feeling.” Praise God that He is always ready and waiting to commune with His people! Not only am I hungry to know the Lord but I am hungry to share Him with others. I am longing to see people come to know His redemptive love and unending grace. I am hungry for His creation to meet their Creator and for Jesus’ name to be made known to the nations. Let me tell you, God has been so good to me. I will choose Him because He first chose me. I will love Him because He first loved me. And I will lay my down for the Gospel because He first laid down His life for me. God taught me so much about Himself this week and my own heart too. He brought me back to my first love: Jesus. He revived the desire to love Him, honor Him, and cherish Him all the days of my life as His bride.
Psalm 73:25 “Whom have I in heaven but You? And there is none upon earth that I desire besides You.”
Revelation 22:17 “And the Spirit and the bride say, “Come!” And let him who hears say, “Come!” And let him who thirsts come. Whoever desires, let him take the water of life freely.”
I am 100% sure, without a doubt, that God wanted me at this training camp. He needed to break me down so that He could build me back up on the one, true foundation that can’t be moved: Christ alone. He had to loosen my grip on anything that wasn’t Him. One thing that will stick out to me that Pastor Deon said one night was that “When it comes to God’s character, He’s always predictable. But when it comes to the way God works, He’s totally unpredictable.” God is always faithful, kind, loving, just, holy, righteous, giving, powerful, good, trustworthy, and constant; however, His thoughts and plans are so much higher than ours. We can’t see things the way God sees them and we don’t have to. We just get to choose to love Him, serve Him, and worship Him even amid our uncertainty and lack of understanding. Deon also said, “What we read in the Bible is the least we can expect God to do.” All the miracles, works, healings, and salvations are just the beginning. If I can challenge you to do anything, it would be to cling to Jesus and look for His goodness all around you. You will see His faithfulness in the rain, see His beauty in a stranger’s smile, and feel His love encompassing you in the warmth of the sunshine. I promise you won’t regret it.
