What up fam?! 🙂 I miss and love each and everyone one of you!!
One windy, stormy day in Africa, as I sat and read in my tent, I thought it would be nice to get this thought out in writing;
So it’s been raining and blowing literally all day for the past two days, like legit, all my Floridians out there, not like hurricane Isaac which we all know was a joke, more like Katrina. Which is weird because it apparently hasn’t rained here since August. Now most would say this is a bad thing because we can’t go out and do the work with the boys home being built, cleaning it and what not, but we WERE able to do a different kind of ministry in it’s place which was equally as great and still formed relationships. People had the chance to cook and spend intentional time talking more with the women who work mostly on this plot of land, keeping it up, cooking and what not and we all had the opportunity to grow closer as a team sitting, listening to worship music while we colored, drew pictures, talked about which pizza provider is best as far as delivery goes (LITTLE CESAR’S HOT AND READY ALL THE WAY BABY). I got to write a few blog posts, I even got to read my bible and actually just sit there and concentrate on reading it without having technology or previous obligations to attend to or stress about, just pure rest and total submersion in the Lord (Which was nice after all the traveling and the vast amount of jet lag that remained). It led me to thinking about an illustration that paralleled us all taking fortress in this little bamboo house in the middle of a storm. It’s a lot like those pillow fortresses we ALL used to make as kids (Whether you admit it or not!). Those were the best things in the world, inside that little fortress was the best escape a kid could find (Still valid for me today but now I just have my tent to fortify), whether it was to escape to find a place to be alone or to escape the monsters, or to have a castle to escape all the lava on the floor. It was a place of fortitude. Kind of like how we have to find fortitude in God, with all this craziness going on in the world and all these things happening whether they be good or bad or just busy-ness, getting alone with God is the best way to escape the madness that is the world nowadays. God IS those pillow forts you used to make as a kid.
At training camp they emphasized the difference between two words, Solitude and Isolation.
Solitude- Alone with God; Just you and the Original G.
Isolation- Just flat out alone; Allowing space for the enemy to creep in.
When you feel overwhelmed or like life is crazy or hard, creating that pillow fortress and finding solitude with you and God so can just chill together is so incredibly important. “God just wants to chill with you” – Brian Morgan (My man bun-rocking youth pastor)
