(FYI… this is a little of what happened at Training Camp. I plan to write more later.)
So we’ve been having this really intense time at training
camp. They have been talking about a bunch of different things, like Sin, the
Law, Fear, and Love.
Above all, Love.
This is really a different experience for me, yet so
strangely familiar. I “grew up� per se in a Pentecostal Church, where the works
of the spirit and speaking in tounges and healings were the norm. I am used to seeing that sort of thing, and
hearing words I can’t understand. So that isn’t new. Neither is the feeling of being
somehow “lacking� because the Spirit of God doesn’t seem to manifest Himself in
that way to me.
I used to think there was something wrong with me. I always
heard people speaking in tounges, and I wondered why that never happened to me.
I remember praying to God, “Jesus, I will speak in tounges if you want me to,
but I’m not going to fake it. I want it to be real. I want it to be you.�
Not that the people I know who speak in tounges are faking
it, that’s not what I’m saying. I just know that I am not going to fake it.
And it has never happened.
So I would associate that as God’s way of telling me,
“Kirsten, you just don’t have enough faith. You doubt me, you don’t believe
enough.�
Which was always strange, because I remember crying and
pouring my heart out to God, telling Him how much I love Him and I believe in
Him, why couldn’t He let me have this gift so I could be like “everyone else�? And now, even here in this place, I began to
doubt my faith again, because I wondered why I never seem to catch that whiff
of the Holy Spirit of God, where He invades my logical mind and my words become
something more than mere words. Still,
it never happened. God seems to have chosen to NOT manifest the Spirit in my
life that way.
So I struggled for the first day and a half. Teaching on Sin
and the Law had no real effect on my spirit. I didn’t understand why. The staff
is speaking about how we can live a free, abundant life, and for some reason, I
found myself wondering what my problem was?
Even on a symbolic journey through the woods, my feet and
hands bound by rope and blindfolded, with my sins on display for all to see,
did nothing to awaken some sort of emotion in me.
I remember continuing to ask God, “Why doesn’t this mean
anything to me? Why can’t I get INTO this? Why am I struggling to HAVE an
experience?�
And He spoke so gently to my tortured soul, “Kirsten, it’s
because you’ve ALREADY had this experience. You’re Okay.�
I felt a bit foolish, as I realized how right God is, (of
course) because here I am, desiring to have some sort of breakthrough, only to
be told I have already had it.
Not that all of my sin has been dealt with in perfection,
that will only happen when I am with Christ in heaven. Yet I have found
healing, and I am living that abundant life that ALL of these other racers are
beginning to experience for maybe the very first time in their lives. It was
naïve of me to think that all of the Racers would be at the EXACT same place in
their spiritual journey, yet that was what I assumed. No, we are all travelling
along the path of life, and we are at different stages. I am so grateful for
the experience I have had, the healing I’ve gone through, the abundance I see
in my life. Now I can experience the other side of the coin, encouraging these
amazing people to grow in their own.
