Ah training camp. I’ve been home for a couple of days processing all that the Lord did at camp and it feels like a distant dream, like it didn’t really happen.
It’s funny because I walked into training camp bracing myself for the worst ten days of my life after hearing a good amount of horror stories and warnings, but what I found in those ten days in Gainesville, Georgia was actually some of the best ten days of my life.
Although I was physically, emotionally, or spiritually uncomfortable throughout the entirety of camp, I have never been so free in the abundance of the heavenly father’s love. Whether I was sweating through my clothes, trying to sleep through a storm in my small REI tent, eating crickets for breakfast, showering with a bucket, or learning so much about the world and the way God moves that my head felt like it was going to explode, the Lord only became more evident as I had to lean on him for every ounce of my strength.
I walked into training camp overwhelmed and feeling extremely inadequate and unprepared for what was ahead of me, but Abba met me where I was at because He’s a good father that way, and He showed me more of what it looks like to be immersed in His love, that clinging to Him in my fear and discomfort was one of the greatest ways I could experience His power as we are all designed to find comfort in Him alone.
The two biggest lessons I learned through all of this were:
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We don’t grow in our comfort
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Salvation costs us nothing, but walking in the kingdom costs us everything.
Since being home, I’m already being pulled in a million different directions of where to find my worth and identity by the seemingly valuable things of this world that are only cheap distractions from an abundant life in Christ.
One of my favorite parts of training camp was the incredible authenticity and vulnerability in every conversation and relationship. I honestly had no idea what I looked like the entire time I was there because mirrors were few and far between, and personal hygiene took the back burner because of our crazy busy schedule. My face may have been broken out, my hair a little greasy, and my clothes a little baggy because of the tight dress code and new diet, but through that my relationships with others and the Lord found a new depth as we sought each other’s hearts and not appearances, a love not based on conditions but encouragement and admonishment, community that we are all designed for.
My favorite conversations took place on the dirty wooden deck at my squad meeting point, along with worship unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. We praised the Lord in complete unity, with every fiber of our beings, with bare feet and dirty clothes because the Lord doesn’t just want us in our perfect Sunday best, but in our messiness as we desperately grasp to be closer to him. Shouting Hallelujah because of His great power in our lives, we were all able to simply rest in the Father’s love for us, declaring His glory over our lives and embracing the newness of all Abba has in store.
This blog has only scratched the surface of all God is teaching me, but the greatest treasure I found at camp was that our heavenly father simply says: “I love you because I love you because I love you.”
He doesn’t need us to accomplish His work on earth, but he wants us to because that’s how much he loves us. When I realized there is nothing I can do to make Abba love me more, and nothing I can do to make Him love me less, I stopped making things about me, and that’s what walking with Jesus is all about. That’s the abundant life of freedom I had been hearing about all my life but never fully grasped.
When we stop making things about us and just give it all to Jesus: the glory, the pain, the obsession with ourselves, our need for approval and love, that’s when His glory and love increases all the more, because “from Him are all things, and to Him are all things, He deserves the glory.”
At training camp I learned that Jesus is worth it all, and I am pumped to walk with my heavenly father hand in hand into eternity, whatever it costs me.
Thanks for reading this today! I want to ask for your continued prayer over my team as we prepare to launch onto the field in just 7 weeks!! Please pray that our hearts would be open to everything the Lord has in store, and that He would remain at the center of it all. Please reach out if you have any questions, want to donate, or want to hear more about my journey! My email is [email protected].
Blessings,
Mallory Sailer
