So I admit, there has been some radio silence on the missionary blog (20 days to be exact), and the reason being that this counseling school is just plain harder than the DTS. We’re tackling some deep uncomfortable subjects and at the same time have been confronting some serious spiritual warfare. I’ve been wrestling with loneliness, fear, uncertainty, shame, and unbelief in some serious ways these last 3 weeks and I didn’t want to prematurely complain about the progress I didn’t know if I was making or not and I definitely didn’t want to curse God.
These last few weeks have been a test for me, a test to see if I could wait and trust in the Lord and I can see now what a blessing it has been. I had been struggling with the classes and not knowing if I was receiving what I felt I was “supposed” to be receiving. I was struggling in the area of finances, my petition of financial support on the blog went completely unanswered and so did the letter I’d written that my parents graciously sent out for me. With the finances uncertain, my Spanish competency still questionable for Biblical counseling, and a lack of a specific word, the outreach after this theory phase loomed ever foreboding in the near future. But God, in His ever present method of teaching me has continued to prove Himself faithful. My perfectly timed 2 week quiet time study of the book of Nehemiah spoke to me strongly of trying to grow and do something for the Lord amidst challenges.
Nehemiah 4:17-18
“Those who were rebuilding the wall and those who carried burdens took their load with one hand doing the work and the other holding a weapon. As for the builders, each wore his sword girded at his side as he built, while the trumpeter stood near me.”
Last Saturday during a Skype call with my parents we began talking about what life would look like for me after I returned home to Santa Cruz and it’s a subject that I’d felt God had been speaking to me about. I began listing things that I’d felt I had to pursue when I returned home: 1) Immediately seek out spiritual role models and mentorship. 2) Find a partner to start a community group with and begin teaching all the things that I’m continuing to learn from my DTS and Counseling schools. 3) Only live with other like-minded accountability seeking Christians. 4) Continue working with the Vintage Faith children’s ministry but bump it up to every Sunday if they could use me. 5) Continue to keep God in the first place in my life, and not let the fire He’s put in me fizzle out. As far as “career plan” specifics I was still rather confused but I’ve seen in the last 7 months how making decisions to focus on God have only led to growth and blessing and so whatever I’d be doing needed to include God as a priority. My parents in response asked me if I’d thought about my church, Vintage Faith’s, one year long 20+ hour a week internship program “Protégé” and I said that it sounded like something worth praying about and looking into.
After looking up the program details on the internet I began to get excited, being apart of this program satisfied all five of my homecoming goals and even included free rent in Santa Cruz; best of all the program started right as this school was ending. The dates seemed to line up perfectly, I had a really good feeling about it, and after a quick prayer decided that I needed to write a letter of interest and pursue a next step. 2nd Kings 7:3-14 recounts a story with the morale being: If you don’t have any options, don’t just stand around with you’re arms crossed. Yes Pray, Yes Trust, Yes wait on the Lord, but we need to take steps if we feel moved by the Lord to do so that He can open doors that we can have the option of praying to go through. So I wrote Vintage Faith Church and waited for a reply… I got one the next day: The Protégé program was already full.
What!?! This seemed so right, what’s going on God? Are you really with me? But I was encouraged to still apply because as the beginning of the program approaches you never know what could happen and so I filled out the application and submitted the whole thing to God. With no clear options before me I spent the last week heavily in prayer, I felt compelled to spend every hour at lunch reading the Bible and I decided to trust. To trust that God WAS still with me, to remember that He has been with me this whole time and has blessed me so much since I’ve committed this season of my life to Him in YWAM. I was lent a bunch of Christian books in English; I had 2 leaders give me really nice encouraging words to “remain” in the Lord and trust that His way was the best one for me. At the end of the week all of the my challenges were still present but by the grace of God I had peace that the big things would get worked out because God really had been answering all my “little” requests for encouragement and guidance.
Nehemiah 8:10b, 12b & 18a
“For this day is holy to our Lord, Do not be grieved, for the joy of the Lord is your strength” “Because they had understood the words which had been made known to them.” “And he read from the book of the law daily, from the first day to the last.”
You see, the Devil is never going to take a break from lying to you. He’s going to tell you that God isn’t with you, that God isn’t real, that you’ll never change, that you’re all alone and if we don’t bathe ourselves in the truth then we leave ourselves really venerable. The Bible is the truth of the Lord and spending an extra hour a day in it was just what the doctor ordered. And this blog entry is about to get even better because, once again, God proved to me that he hears and answers prayers.
I received an email from one of the pastor’s at vintage faith on Friday to see if we could arrange a Skype call, and after some email coordination we made it happen that evening. Apparently, the day after I’d emailed them my application to the Protégé program someone dropped out, leaving an internship working with the college ministry open. During the course of our conversation I was able to share a bunch of my testimonies from my schools so far and by the end I received an invitation to be apart of the program! After asking my YWAM leadership, I received a blessing from them to take part in it and so I’m coming back to Santa Cruz a bit sooner than I was expecting! I still need to get my plane ticket all sorted but the last day of the Counseling School is the 10th of September so I’ll be flying back as soon to that date as I can.
God really used that initial “fullness” of the program to teach me an important lesson in prayer and trusting Him; God continues to bless me and direct my path as I put Him first in my life and I’m so encouraged! God is real! He’s personal, and He loves us wants to bless us just like the Bible says!
Nehemiah 12:43
“and on that day they offered great sacrifices and rejoiced because God had given them great joy, even the women and children rejoiced, so that the joy of Jerusalem was heard from afar.”
I’ve already finished "Out of the Silent Planet"(dug it) and “Boy meets Girl”(pretty sold on the idea of courtship). Working on “Mere Christianity” right now for the first time and loving it!
Rocking the muck boots! A rainy Pichilemu winter = lots of mud
No comments:
Post a Comment