Where I am.

“Come, let us return to the Lord. For He has torn us, but He will heal us. He has wounded us, but He will bandage us. He will revive us after two days; He will raise us up on the third day that we will LIVE before Him. So Let us KNOW, let us press on to KNOW the LORD. HIS going forth is as certain as dawn; and He will come like rain, like spring rain watering the earth.”

Hosea 6:1-3

     The last couple months have been a journey. I left my home and country with anxiety and anticipation of the things to come.  I arrived in South Africa to find more than expected. I found I had gotten myself into something far deeper and better than I could have hoped for. It was uncomfortable, new, and challenging. It continues to be. Over the course of the next couple months I have been taken to new places, cultures and met many new people. From them, I have learned. From them I have been challenged. And through them, I have even been hurt. It has been quite the journey. I have had times where I have felt so alive. I felt like I was exactly where I was meant to be and I was living for who I was created to be. There were other times where the Joy of life was harder to find every morning. I came to a place where I wasn’t living on “the daily bread.” Instead, I found myself holding on and trying to survive on the stale pieces of God’s presence and Word that I had discovered in the previous days. Because of this, my world began to close in around me. I started to become an island. As I was searching my heart and trying to understand myself and understand what God was doing in me during that time, I came to the realization that what Romans 11:18 says is so very true. “…Remember it is not you who supports the root, but the root who supports you.” As I began to grasp on to these words, the “restoring of the soul” that Psalm 19 talks about came to be true. Just as Jeremiah 15:16  talks about, as I ate the words of the Lord they became my joy and delight came into my heart.

     As we arrived in Peru at the end of April God was bringing me into this place of joy. He had taken me out of the mourning over the things of the past, renewed my mind, and showed me the hope that there was for my future.  I got a fresh understanding of who I am in Christ and what exactly that means for me. I had this sensing in my heart that God’s promise of “no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love Him” was going to become real to me during our time there. Oh man! Hope was birthed in my heart! I can’t tell you, it was like God ignited something in my heart and I knew, I just knew that He had incredible adventures in store for me and my team.  As I continued to hope, ask and pray for God to do incredible things in and through us, I saw the mute speak, the blind see, and the lost saved! I saw people return to the Lord in the most miraculous ways and I saw God’s promise being revealed as I held on to the hope of the promise in my heart. He was faithful. HE WAS FAITHFUL!  And He was faithful exceedingly and abundantly more than I could ask or hope for! (Eph 3:20)

         God is shattering my mind. He is shattering the box that, over time, I have created for Him to be in. He is restoring my soul. He is bringing me to life. He is helping discover how much more He has for me. More Joy.More peace.More growth.More security and certainty.  More adventure. I can be the fulfilment of the promises what is encompassed in my inheritance of being in Christ, I just have to continue to walk in it.  I recently heard someone say: “Sometimes we don’t understand, therefore we don’t obtain the promises.” The challenge for me now is to continue to seek to understand and walk in the promises as God continues to reveals to me how.

     Praise the Lord for the epic adventure I am on with Him! I am in awe of the Awesomeness that I am seeing Him do around me. He is good. He is faithful.