Woah. These past 10 days have been incredible. I came in expecting to be trained for this 11 month journey I am about to embark on and expecting the Lord to do something great.
I came out with so much more: I gained 36 new family members who I trust deeply and am beyond stoked to do ministry with, I learned and experienced great intimacy with the Lord that has changed the way I go about my daily life, I got to see the in’s and out’s of an incredible organization, doing so much Kingdom work, that I am humbled to be partnering with.
So much happened these past days that if I tried to write it all out here, you would be reading for days. Here’s my attempt to compress 10 jam packed days of training camp into bullet points.
10 things I learned at training camp:
1. What you believe about yourself greatly effects the way that you live your life.
Believing lies about myself is something I am really great at. But this week was a fresh start and I chose truth. I am choosing to believe the truth about who I am and was created to be. This is a daily fight, I must continually go back to scripture and renew my mind. Exchanging false messages with the truth that God has declared over me.
2. Be rooted in what matters.
As believers and followers of Christ it is essential that we are rooted in scripture. What an amazing gift the Lord has given us in the form of his written word. We must be rooted in scripture, in truth and in love. For what we are rooted in produces the fruit in our lives good or bad. I for one, want to be producing good fruit.
3. Women are strong because of their vulnerability.
All things girly – not really my thing. However, for two days of our training, us girls got the chance to spend time together while we sent the boys off to hike 18 miles in the woods. (to be honest, going into camp I definitely was thinking I would much rather go hiking than sit and talk about my feelings). What a sweet time it was though. Femininity is something I was always trying to push away, trying to prove to everyone how “strong” I was. But here’s the thing, we were all created in God’s image, male and female. The Lord has many masculine qualities to him, but he also has feminine ones as well – tender, loving, giver of life – we as women reflect that side of him and that is good. Further more, we need to start speaking that worth into one another as women. The culture we live in tears us down enough, lets not enforce that more.
4. God wants to be intimate with us.
Man this was a big one for me. As someone who doesn’t remember living a day without the Lord by my side, I was sure that I had this one down. The Lord wants a relationship with us, that is what I have been taught my whole life. I’ve known him for 21 years, I must have a good relationship with him, right? Kind of, not really; was the answer I came to. The Lord is with me always, yes. But do I invite him into what I am doing always? No. Do I truly know him? Not really.
God is a good Father and a perfect gentleman. He will not barge into your life and what you are doing. He sits and waits patiently for you to invite him in. He knows what is going on, but he wants you to tell him!
Awkward as it might be at first, if you want to step into greater intimacy with the Lord try this: plan a part of your day, everyday to meet with him, block it out in your schedule. Then talk out loud to him about anything and everything your life. This discipline is something I have found greatly, helpful in my pursuit of intimacy with the Lord.
5. God is a good Father.
God is full of love and grace; a type of love and grace that we can’t even fully comprehend. He does not treat us according to our history, but treats us with love according to our destiny. He knows at your core who you are, who he created you to be. One of my favorite Psalms says this “He remembers that we are dust.” He KNOWS we will mess up and fall yet loves us despite it, and in it. He wants us. He is good and he desires good things for you.
6. We are human, We are broken, We are not useless
God wants to meet you and I where we are at and will use us in our broken state. He does not need us to “fix ourselves” before being used for the work of the Kingdom. He will use our pain, our joy, our triumphs, and our failures if we are willing to bring them to him. Let’s not insult his authority and love in our lives any longer by continuing to live believing we can’t be used by him until we fix ourselves up.
7. I am not the great I AM. I am who I am only by the grace of God.
These sentences where quite convicting to me and the kick start of what the Lord work on me the whole week. My worth and value comes from God, I am nothing without him. None of my strength will save me, none of my strength will make me good. Being a “good girl” is something that I have been placing my value in for far too long. My good is no where near good enough. It is the grace of God that makes me who I am and I am forever grateful for his saving power in my life.
8. You have to give up control.
This point has a lot to do with the pervious one. For far, far too long I have been relying on my own strength and control of situations to guide my life. I was “good”, I didn’t do very many “bad” things. Yes I loved the Lord, and knew that by his sacrifice I was saved, but I was still trying to control everything with my own strength.
Over and over visions and words of letting go and allowing God to do the work in my life were spoken over me. He has been waiting patiently all this time for me to stop trying and striving and start to just be who I am.
9. I am a child of God and that is enough.
Who I am is his, who I am is loved. God and his love is enough for me. Being created by him makes me enough, period.
10. Community is essential. Community is hard.
Health community is lacking within the church in a lot of ways, but it is so essential to our survival. Living in healthy community next year with my squad and teammates is also essential. True community requires high courage and high humility. It requires deep love, healthy communication and a willingness to press forward when it gets hard. When healthy community exists though, the Lord is glorified and people are ushered keeping into their sense of identity. When life is spoken, people thrive and the world knows that we are set apart – John 13:35.
If any of this resonated with you, I beg you to bring it to the Lord and see what he has in store for you. Trust me when I tell you it is so much more that you could ever image.
There is so much more that happened in these past 10 days and there will be more blogs to come talking about that. I’d love to have a conversation with you to talk more about any of it if you would like. Just contact me!
I will leave you with these two thoughts, as I hope that by sharing this part of my world race journey, it might stir something up in you to dive into a deeper journey with the Lord.
There is an invitation to more. How far are you willing to go?
It is going to be hard. How are you doing to deal with that, will you keep pressing in?
