I am about 4 days away from going to Training Camp and I am nervous but excited at the same time. I really don’t know what to expect but I know that it will be good because the Lord is going to show up. I will experience first hand on what its going to be like living out of a backpack and to take cold showers outside for 10 days. I will be meeting my team (my Squad) and getting to know them. I will be having to do a physical fitness test. I will be learning what to expect when I am out on the field. Most importantly, I will be meeting with the Lord everyday and asking him what he wants me to learn from this experience.
Recently, the Lord has been showing me what its like to have abandonment from people and things to be able to have full abandonment on God. As this is my last week at the job I have committed a whole year to, I have experienced a mourning process of leaving things and people I know to only move onto this calling that God is so urgently giving me. Its not just a mourning process of leaving that job but starting to realize I have to leave my friends and family for a whole year. I have been realizing that I am seeking to spend as much time with them as I can possibly do. But at the same time, I am naturally starting to feel more disconnected from them, not by anything I say or do but because the Lord is setting it up that way for it to become easier. He has showed me that I can’t rely on them as much because they wont be there on this missions trip and I need to rely on God as much as I rely on the people I love and trust because he will be there for me during this missions trip. Its a beautiful thing to see happening in my life but also really hard because there are times where I want to go back to relying on family and friends and then I realize I probably shouldn’t and how I just need to go to God instead. Its a different way of thinking and at first I have to renew my mind and the way I think about it because it is only natural to go to people first. Sometimes the root of relying on someone or people in general is so deep that I don’t even realize I do it until I slow down and reflect. That is what the Lord is having me start to do. Everyone has to go through a mourning/healing process to get to the freedom and peace in every situation in life. There can’t be true joy until you have uncovered and taken out the hurt. We will never be done growing and going through things in our life until we are dead.
God is so good and gracious. He is such a gentlemen when it comes to showing things I need to see or change or heal from. He does it one at a time and sometimes some take longer than others but God is there for me and what ever he needs to be for me in the moment or each day, he is.
God has given me so much freedom and love and joy and peace in my life. He has uncovered a lot of hurt that I have had to walk through and I know there is still more that I don’t know about yet (in his timing). But right now I can rejoice in the Lord and what he has done. I can dance and sing and laugh with freedom and joy because I know who I am. I know the Lord and he knows me. Our relationship is so intimate and its growing more and more each day. I still struggle but through the struggle there is peace and love and joy beyond what makes sense in the natural. God has given me everything I need in every situation and every moment. I am honored to be given such favor and treasure from heaven because I don’t deserve it. The Lord says, “you are forgiven, you are a saint, you are free, you are delivered and redeemed, you are pure, you are loved, you are chosen, you are my daughter, you are my co-heir, you are my beloved, you are my warrior, you are everything to me not because of what you do but because of what Christ has done on your behalf. Jesus paid the price so you can be all these things and stand in my presence unashamed and righteous.” What an honor that Jesus would do that for me and every single human being that ever has and will exist. That is powerful. Its so simple but yet so complex.
