"'Sit at My right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.'"

Psalm 110:1b

I was talking with my friend Robby last night, and he asked me what God has been teaching me lately.  I caught myself not really being able to think of anything, and I was ready to get down on myself.  So I answered by sharing a quick story of a minor event that had some personal significance for me, and I was able to pick out a little bit of a lesson: Pay attention to the little details and be thankful for the ordinary things of life, because God is working in all of it, even in the things you don't notice.

While part of me took that moment as a rebuke, saying, "Great, I haven't been as devoted to the Lord as I would like, and now I have to own up to it; but I just want to make something up to make it sound like I'm still learning something," I just realized that in the back of my mind, something or Someone was saying, "Sure, you haven't been committing yourself fully to the Lord, but that doesn't mean that you aren't learning something.  God uses everything, and all it takes is a new perspective to recognize how He is growing you.  Just look for it."  So He helped me find something, and it turns out that it's a much bigger lesson for me than it originally seemed.

I just opened up my blog and read the first few sentences of my last post, and I realized that had pretty much forgotten about the lesson I was learning just a little over a week ago.  I wasn't even finished learning it, because obviously learning to "give thanks in all circumstances" is a lifelong process.  So the Spirit convicted me, saying, "Why are you so caught up in learning new things?  If I have to always be teaching you something new, when will you ever learn the full extent of what I am teaching you now?  Be content to 'sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.'"  One cliché I've been taking note of a lot lately is when people say they're resting in a particular truth, and I've never really understood that.  But I think I finally get it.  I need to be willing to dwell on the truth I am learning long enough for it to sink in, and maybe even a little longer so that I can put it into action.  I need to be able to "rest" in the place where I am currently before I can move on to something new.  In this way, I think I've been showing myself to be very restless.  In fact, now that I think about it, it's been this way not just with specific lessons, but even with sermons and passages of Scripture.  If I've heard a message several times before, it's hard for me to listen intently to it again because I feel like I've gotten all that I can out of it.  But I know that's not true.  This has always been the case for me.  I've never been one to reread books over and over again.  Even if I loved reading it, when I'm finished with a book, it goes back on the shelf and stays there.  So I think God is telling me that it's time to mature and grow out of this part of my personality.  It's time for me to be patient and to persevere in sitting at His feet and listening for a while.

Peter says in his second epistle, "Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to make your calling and election sure, for if you practice these qualities you will never fall.  For in this way there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  Therefore I intend always to remind you of these qualities, though you know them and are established in the truth that you have.  I think it right, as long as I am in this body, to stir you up by way of reminder, since I know that the putting off of my body will be soon, as our Lord Jesus Christ made clear to me.  And I will make every effort so that after my departure you may be able to at any time recall these things" (2 Peter 1:10-15).  If I have not yet learned the qualities that the Spirit is trying to teach me and grow in me, then it is necessary for me to be reminded of those qualities so that I can continue to grow in them until the Spirit discerns that the fruits being produced in that area are sufficient for the time being, and it is time to move on to another quality.  If I do not allow perseverance to finish its work, I will never be mature and complete as the Lord desires for me (James 1:4), and perseverance cannot finish its work if I am constantly wavering between the various truths that I want to focus on.  Consistency in learning new things is of little value if I have no consistency in learning each lesson to the fullest extent.

So God's command to me today is this: "Come away by [yourself]... and rest a while" (Mark 6:31).  I need to remember the lesson He taught me last night regarding ordinary details and combine it with the lesson of gratitude from my last post, and I intend to "rest in that" for a while.

"Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus."

1 Thessalonians 5:18

Apparently, ungratefulness has been a theme in my life lately, and I didn't realize it until just now.  I was reading Psalm 106, and when I got to verse 2, the Spirit made a connection from there to my thoughts from my last post.

"Who can utter the mighty deeds of the Lord, or declare all His praise?"

The reason I had all the thoughts I was having before is because Satan was putting them in a place in my mind where they didn't belong, and that place had been left open because that was where my praise of God belonged.  I was looking for praise for myself in place of the praise I was supposed to be giving God.  I had forgotten just how much the Lord has done for me and has been doing for me since before I was born.

I've been noticing recently that I become indignant at seeing other people do and say a lot of the things that I do and say toward the Lord.  As should be obvious because of the topic of this post, ingratitude is what I noticed, and also a need to make the good deed and the other person's ingratitude known.  But then I realized that I do the same thing.  If I do something nice or achieve something and I am not recognized or appreciated, I take it personally and try to conjure up appreciation from others.  But it shouldn't be about my own reputation of being nice or successful.  It should be about doing everything as for the Lord and not for men (Colossians 3:23), and men includes me.  I shouldn't do things for the sake of receiving attention, but rather because God told me to do it and in obedience I give Him glory.

But not only am I guilty of seeking unnecessary attention, but I am also guilty of being the ungrateful one who fails to give God the glory He deserves.  Psalm 106:2 was a reminder to me this morning that it is impossible to recount all that the Lord has done and give Him enough thanks for all of it.  Therefore, there is no reason for me to get so caught up in what I am not (2 Corinthians 8:12).  Even if I am not the most desired person to be around or to be like, it doesn't matter as long as who I am leads people to Christ.  And if I am not in a position to influence someone in a deep way, then all I can do is pray that someone else is there to be God's light to them.  So any time I start to pay too much attention to the lies I'm being convinced of, I need to remember God's goodness and faithfulness and love.  Psalm 105:43-45 essentially says that God blesses His people so that we would listen to Him and obey Him, and He has blessed me far beyond earning mere obedience.  He deserves my wholehearted, joyful devotion in seeking Him, serving Him, and seeking ways to serve Him without being commanded to do so.  (That's not to say that I should look for big ways to glorify Him instead of doing the small things He tells me to do.  Whenever He tells me to do something, that's what I need to do.  But if I haven't heard a call to do something, then I am to "do all that is in [my] heart, for the Lord is with [me]" (2 Samuel 7:3).)  I want to remember every day just how much God has done for me and is currently doing for me, so that I would always be motivated to live to worship Him with my whole life.  I cannot thank the Lord enough for bringing me to where I am and for where He is leading me, because I know it will be good.  It may be hard and not so enjoyable, but true joy is not based on my circumstances.  "Joy is refusing to let what cannot be enjoyed keep me from enjoying all that can be."

So rather than remembering who I am not, I will remember who God is, and I will let that understanding move me to strive to be more like Him without getting discouraged by my faults and failures.

Enough is enough

I've had it.  I'm at a point where Satan has been taunting me and lying to me, presenting me with all kinds of convincing ideas about myself and about others, and I've gotten to the dreaded place where I'm almost okay with it.  I've kind of accepted the lies he's been telling me, even though I know that they're lies.  I just don't care, and I've been letting him accuse me and humiliate me before my own eyes, and I've been making God just sit back and watch Satan force me to beat myself up mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.  A big reason for it all is that a lot of the lies I've been believing are actually true, but distorted and put in a place in my focus where they don't belong.  But another part of it is that I haven't been consistent in seeking to be filled with the truth in studying God's Word.

Let me just list off some of the things Satan's been telling me about myself.

I'm not dependable.  I keep to myself and offer help when it's convenient to me or when I think I have something to offer, but whenever someone needs something and comes to me for help, I can't offer them what they really need.

I'm not responsible or mature.  I can't take care of things for myself.  Because I'm not dependable, even I can't depend on myself.  I have to rely on others to do the important research in order to take action on the things that matter.

I am not motivated, driven, or passionate about anything or by anything.  Nothing consumes me like it should.

I am not an independent individual.  I can't shape my own identity without having others around me to give me an idea of what I want to be like.  I copy whoever I last talked to.

I am not personal and open.  I don't share who I am with people because I don't even know who I am.  I don't make myself known to people, and I don't know how to seek to know people.  I also tend to project God's Word on others rather than receiving His words for myself.  I believe in my subconscious mind that I am not one of "the wicked" referred to in the Bible.

I am not humble.  I judge and I compare myself to others, unintentionally finding ways to put myself above others and to put others below me in my mind.  I am too obsessed with my reputation, ironically, of being humble, as well as my reputation for many other things.

I am not truthful, nor do I have integrity.  I have developed the habit of sugarcoating the truth to the point that it becomes a flat out lie.  I learned the habit from being lied to in the same way by Satan my entire life.  When I fail to meet the standard, whether it's God's standard or the standards set up by society, I hide behind my distorted, barely convincing less-than-half truth.

I am not an obedient doer of the Word.  I have been deceived to think that my hearing of the Word counts as obedience and that is enough, so I resign myself to disobedience.

I am not bold or confident.  I am a coward who hates to be humiliated, but who is too unmotivated to do anything to keep myself from being humiliated, so I lie as a coverup.

I am not accepting.  I'm too caught up in being prideful and judgmental to accept anyone with their public sins.  Sin separates man from God, and I am convinced that I am still close to God despite my sins, but everyone else is gradually falling away from the Lord.

I am not loving.  I don't know how to love.  I'm too afraid of being vulnerable and open and showing myself for who I am—because I don't know who I am or what people will see when I open up—to be able to love freely.  I'm too self-conscious and insecure to love.

I am not forgiving.  I can be very bitter.  I hold grudges easily, and it takes far too long for me to let go.  And my grudges are frequently about trivial things.

I am not joyful continually, as we are commanded to be in 1 Thessalonians 5:16.  In fact, I am often very negative and pessimistic, bordering on being depressed (although not clinically).

I am not a go-to person, whether it's for assistance, for someone to confide in, or just for having fun.  I am not an enjoyable person to be around—at least, not enough for anyone to go out of their way to make plans to be around me.

Maybe it's childish of me to think all of these things, even if they are coming from the voice of the devil.  Maybe I need to get over it and just go on keeping to myself some more.  Forgive me for being cold, but I really don't want any kind of sympathy about these issues, and I don't want to be forcefully convinced that all of these things are false accusations.  I already know that full well, but that doesn't change the fact that I still believe them for some reason.

Maybe this is why I've been having such a hard time with the series on identity at Wesley the last few weeks.  The main message has been about setting up a foundation of "truths" about our identity.  Part of the reason why I'm skeptical about some things being truth and why I'm okay with believing some of the enemy's accusations against me is that I am being convicted of things that I tend to overlook, and I'm tired of seeing the church overlook things that need to be addressed.  The focus of the church has become the truth that God is love and He has made us exactly who we are meant to be, so we condone sin; but the reality is that He is also the Righteous Judge who loves us too much to allow us to remain in our present sinful state.  He can't stand to see sin retain any sort of influence in our lives.  But anyway, I didn't realize it until just now, but the reason I've been struggling with the "ID Required" series is that it's my natural response is to deflect the message and redirect it to someone who actually needs it.  But the truth is that I actually need it, and I'm unwilling to be humiliated in accepting that I am unsure of my identity.  I've struggled with the series because I need to be reminded of God's truth, but I've been content to accept the lies for so long that the lies have become comfortable.  To accept the truth would be to undergo life-altering change, but I've grown too comfortable to want to change.

So I am now at war.  The Lord has revealed to me the treachery of the one I have been listening to for so long, and now it is time for me to fight back.  I pray that whatever truth exists in the enemy's accusations would be highlighted to me so that I can be convicted and moved to change, and I pray that my tolerance for anything other than the word of the Lord, in its purity and truth, would completely dissipate.  I can also rejoice in acknowledging these accusations as true, because it is in my weakness that Christ is shown to be strong.  My depravity contrasts God's holiness so that His glory is all the more awesome and worthy of worship.

While I deal with my personal struggles, I pray that I would always remember that it's all about Jesus, and that I would never forget that all things work together for His infinite glory.  And I pray that that truth would be confirmed as the Lord takes His glory for Himself by reshaping me into His image and molding me into a good and faithful steward of the blessings and grace He has granted me.  I pray that I would be able to leave behind my fleshly nature and grow into the character of Christ.

Glory in the Highest - Joy without Restrictions

"For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you." ~ Romans 12:3

I came to the realization last night that it's really not about me.  What's 'it'?  Everything.  Of course, I've known that's it's not about me and that it's all about God, but something made me really understand it for the first time.  And my understanding of that truth was extended even farther tonight at Wesley.  Lately selfishness has been a frequent topic of discussion in my Freshley small group as it pertains to the Wesley Foundation, particularly in what we call worship.  First, it must be understood that worship is not just music that we sing at church and youth group meetings; it's a way of life, just as prayer is, as modeled by Jesus Himself.  But in this context, I am talking specifically about music.

God loves us.  His love never fails; it goes on and on.  Our God is for us and will never leave us.  He always comes through.  All of these things are true, but what's the common theme?  God loves us.  His love never fails [us]; it goes on and on.  Our God is for us and will never leave us.  He always comes through [for us].  Now, I have nothing against the songs that sing of these truths, but when these (and others like them) are the most common songs sung by the body of Christ, it starts to look like Christianity is all about our comfort, our success, our sense of feeling loved.  Of course, God is also a common theme in each of these songs, but it's almost a disguise to hide the self-seeking motives behind a set-list that consists only of these kinds of songs.  And even when worship services consist of other songs that actually sing of God's greatness and His glory, we often enter into worship services expecting to come out with a good feeling.  Is that really worship?

Worship is meant to be glorifying to God.  It's all about Him.  It's not about me—it's not even about us.  It's all about Him.  This heart of God-centered worship as opposed to me-centered "worship" was the foundation of just about everything that God taught me tonight.  It started with the leadership prayer meeting before Wesley.  Joy came up as one of our prayer topics, and the prompt for our prayers on the matter was simple: Ask God for joy throughout the service tonight.  That struck a nerve inside me.  If I'm looking for joy from the service, I thought that meant that I was looking for that good feeling—that spiritual high.  I was talking with a friend earlier today about how Wesley and other ministries can often become like a drug: any time we're having a bad week, gathering with God's people to sing about Him and hear a teaching about Him is the cure.  But God doesn't want to be our drug; He wants to be our daily bread, our sustenance.  So I had some trouble for a minute with praying for joy.

But then the Lord pointed something out to me: I was refusing to be joyful because I thought that asking for joy was self-seeking.  Uhh... Wrong.  As John Piper puts it, "God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him."  Joy is good!  I decided then that I wanted to be able to have joy without restrictions, because if I disagree with anything that is preached, I tend to let it trigger judgmental thoughts that prevent me from having even a hint of joy, and then I can't focus on hearing God speak.  But I don't want the kind of superficial, self-seeking happiness that rejoices when I find pleasure and good things in life, but rather the true joy that loves when God's will is accomplished and that can never be taken from me because it depends on the Lord's glory, and He is forever praised.  But even if I do find myself looking for joy for my own sake and not because I absolutely love when God is glorified, I shouldn't let it keep me from being joyful.

When Wesley started and the music began, I couldn't help but belt my praises to God because of the joy He had given me in freeing me from seeking my own pleasure in worship.  Ironic, I know: in trying to not seek my own good, God filled me with joy, and I worshiped all the more passionately because He had given me what I supposedly wasn't looking for.  But I had a reason to sing joyfully: the songs we sang directly glorified the Lord.  It was all about Him.  (Maybe it's selfish of me to want to sing those kinds of songs instead of only songs about love because it makes me feel better about the kind of worship I'm offering the Lord.  I don't know.  Only He knows the motives of our hearts, so if I came across as judgmental in my observations and discomfort with typical worship sets, I apologize.)

A cool revelation God showed me tonight is that a candle is not lit for the sake of the candle itself or for the glory of the fire, but for the pleasure of the one who lights it.  Likewise, the fire the Lord ignites in our hearts is not for the sake of our own glory but for His, and His alone.  So let's burn like candles for the Lord, lifting up our prayers and worship as a pleasing aroma to Him.  Instead of constantly asking God to help us with our days, let's seek to do everything we do for His glory.  When we ask for help from the Lord, let it be for grace to give Him the glory He deserves, rather than for grace to catch the bus we're about to miss.  And let us ask for the faith we need to trust God and to fully understand that all things work together for the good of those who love Him and for His glory, even when it means dealing with difficulties (to put it mildly).

I'll finish up with some words of hope for anyone facing hardships: Because Jesus triumphed over death in perfect victory, we can trust Him to never fail us.  Jesus rose from the grave, and He is still alive today.  He has not died since His resurrection, so His victory remains secure.  He is in a constant state of victory, not only against sin and death, but also against any evil that may come our way to harm us.  So take heart!  The Lord has overcome the world, and He will be exalted in it all.

"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!"

2 Corinthians 5:17

So I've been learning a lot lately about what it means to truly devote myself to God in my music, specifically in my trumpet playing.  At camp, I felt like it wouldn't be right for me to play in the worship band toward the beginning of the summer because I didn't want to play just for the sake of playing.  I felt like I would be playing to stay in shape, and I wanted to leave that behind and focus on what He had for me.  But at the end of the summer when band camp and band/orchestra placement auditions came around, I realized that the Lord had given me the opportunity to worship Him with my talents all summer, but I had refused to take it for the sake of suppressing my pride.  I became the servant in Matthew 25:14-30 who buried the talent his master had given him, for fear of losing it or using it with no profit.  I didn't want to build up my pride by adding myself into the worship team and performing in front of the camp every week.  But all God was asking me was to use the talent He has given me.  I asked Him at the beginning of the summer to help me maintain my playing ability through camp, but I missed my chance, which was the greatest chance of all: to play in a worship band for a bunch of kids.  I could have played and allowed the Lord to redeem any pride that I allowed to build up inside of me, but I hid my talent away for the summer instead.  So I paid the price for it when my audition came around, although He remained faithful to help me through it.

Then last night happened: the Battle Hymn solo auditions.  Every year the Redcoat Band has three or four trumpet soloists who play the intro to the Battle Hymn of the Republic.  Eighteen people tried out last night, and by God's grace I ended up being one of the four selected to be Battle Hymn soloists.  I think He had a few reasons for giving me this honor.  First, He's giving me a chance to redeem myself and offer myself completely to Him by putting on display the talent He has given me.  Plus, up there in the upper deck, southwest corner I can put Christ on display for the people sitting up there by the way I act.

But He also has another reason that I just realized.  It's a continuation of what I was learning this summer: confidence.  My friend Shelby jokingly asked me earlier today, "Are you freaking out yet?"  My answer was to the effect of, "Not quite yet, but I'm sure it will hit me the night before and the morning of my first solo performance."  But then I realized what I had said.  I was pretty much forecasting my fear, surrendering my will to my nerves.  Yes, I said it based on my past experiences with big moments like this, but I don't have to be defined by my past.  Who I am today isn't bound to who I was yesterday.  This is both a blessing and a motivator: Because of my redemption by the blood of Christ, my past mistakes no longer determine who I am going to be; but on the other hand, all of yesterday's triumphs in Jesus' name are not enough for today.  Each day I am allotted 24 hours to surrender to the Lord, and I must give Him all of it.  Yesterday's hours of surrender do not add up to count toward today's hours.  This should motivate me to seek Him actively every day, because when Jesus returns, if I surrender something new to the Lord every day, the sum of each day's submission will be that much closer to consuming my entire being.  I should seek to surrender more of myself to God each day.  At the same time, just because I have tended to remain calm until my nerves hit me shortly before big performances or presentations in the past doesn't mean that that is how it's always going to be.  I am a new man every day.  Michael on Friday, August 24th is not the same Michael that existed on Thursday, August 23rd.  Neither am I the same person I was when I went in to my concert band audition last week.  And I am not the same person I will be next Saturday on game day.

Just like the Lord has been teaching me since the spring, I need to stay focused on the here and now and live one day at a time.  So as I prepare for my first performance of the Battle Hymn solo (well, at a football game, that is), I am determined to remember that "the old has gone, the new has come!"  Even though my nerves have typically messed with me immediately before performances in the past, I am choosing to trust in the Lord and know that He has given me this opportunity to worship Him, and worship does not require skill or perfect performance, but only the heart and intention behind it.  It is by His grace alone that my personal worship leads others to worship as well, and that is my prayer: that by my attitude in the upper deck, and as a Redcoat in general, others would see Christ in me and find that He is worth getting to know.

And I also apply this same prayer to my everyday life, asking God to help me remember to live each day as if it the only chance I will ever get to live.  I pray that I would constantly keep my eyes fixed on Christ, straight ahead, not turning to the left or to the right, and that I would always live life to the fullest of the potential He has given me in everything.  I pray that I would never be content with anything less than total devotion to the Lord in every area of my life.  When I feel spiritually dry, I want to learn to thank God, because that dryness means that I have experienced greater spiritual saturation before and I am hungry and unwilling to remain in a place that is not as advanced as I have experienced before.  I have drawn close to the Lord in the past, and I want to live in that position of communion with God moment by moment.  I want to be in a state of constant prayer.  I want my mindset to be one of taking thoughts captive and making them obedient to Christ (2 Corinthians 10:5).  I want my attitude to be one of constant worship and submission to the Lord's will as I live continually in His presence.  I pray that I would not allow myself to identify myself with my past failures, but that I would eagerly take hold of the truth that I am a new creation every day.

And I pray all of these things for all my brothers and sisters in Christ, and I hope you will join me in praying for these things as well.  God bless!

Overflow

Last weekend a group of us got together to pray for the school year, and overflow was a recurring word that night.  It seemed like God was implying that overflow is to be a theme for this year.  A few verses came to mind when I thought of the word overflow:

"You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows." ~ Psalm 23:5

"The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks." ~ Luke 6:45

"Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this,” says the Lord Almighty, “and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it." ~ Malachi 3:10

"Return, O my soul, to your rest; for the Lord has dealt bountifully with you." ~ Psalm 116:7

We were praying for the first Freshley meeting, and overflow first came up when I prayed that we would not have to generate any artificial love for the freshmen, but that the love we show them would simply be a result of the overflow of love the Lord has shown us.  If we love out of such a source of love, then God will be more than pleased to pour out more of His love on us so that we can continue to bless others with His love.  God loves to fill those who continually give because He knows that the more abundantly they are filled, the more abundantly they will give.

I believe the Lord intends to bless us this year with such a fullness of His Spirit and an understanding of His character that when we live for Him, others won't be able to help but notice.  I pray that we would be an adequate representative of Christ so that people would be able to see Him in us clearly through our own transparency.  I want love for others to be our natural reaction to the love God shows us, because He fills us with so much of Himself that we cannot contain Him within ourselves.  When my cup is filled to overflowing with the power of His Spirit, the only place I can store the extra blessings is in someone else's cup.  And if I sow generously of His Spirit, I will be emptied of myself so that I can reap abundantly and be filled to overflowing again.

So whether it's in humble acceptance of others, loving devotion, generous giving, being filled with peace and joy, or showing grace and patience, I pray that we would be characterized by a Spirit of abundance that longs to be spent for the sake of others so that we can be filled again, only to give of ourselves even more.

"Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!"

Philippians 4:4

On Sunday I wasn't feeling so great about being back in Athens—that is, outside of the Christian community that I'm so used to being surrounded by all the time.  Last year after the Freshley spring break mission trip to Jamaica, we had such strong, constant fellowship that we were always encouraging one another and helping each other grow in Christ.  This past summer at Camp Highland, I got used to being in the "camp bubble," where nothing from the outside world matters and where we can devote everything to the Lord, knowing that everyone else is doing the same thing.  But when the Redcoat Band was the first thing I jumped into when I got back to Athens, it was as if I had just come inside after being out in the bright sun, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the dim light.  I knew that the Lord intended to work here in Athens, and I knew that He would bring me back into the community He has blessed me with these last two years, but I was too nearsighted to really see and understand it in the midst of the darkness that covers so much of the band.  Just like with the kids this summer, my patience was tested during band camp, and I let it get to me.

But there's a silver lining to this cloud.  Throughout the week of band camp, whether the directors and the rest of the band realized it or not, the gospel was being preached very subtly.  Despite the darkness that seems to cover the band, the teachings of Jesus Christ—the idea that we are to deny ourselves the immediate pleasures we so often desire, and that we are to humble ourselves and keep ourselves from acting like everything revolves around us—defined the lectures of the directors and lit up the band all week long, even when the band caused their patience to run thin.  And it all reached a culminating point tonight when Irby, a former Redcoat and one of the leaders of the Team United Redcoat Bible Study (TURBS), came to practice to make an announcement about the first TURBS meeting.  Just like any other Redcoat would do for announcements, he got up on the podium and explained what TURBS is all about... and he dove straight into explaining the gospel.  In front of over 430 people, Jesus Christ was proclaimed Lord and Savior by the power of His death on the cross and His resurrection.  I could hardly contain myself as Irby fearlessly preached the Good News as if it were a regular topic of discussion among the entire band.

I want to back up some.  All of that is what has been happening in Redcoats, but even more has been happening with Freshley/Wesley.  Sunday night, my friend Josh (he's more like a brother) got a group of Wesley leaders together, most of whom were on our Jamaica team last year, and we prayed for each other, for the freshmen, and for all of this year.  (My friend John also had another separate prayer night, which is really cool because we had two different groups praying passionately for God's will to be done.)  We spent the night in awe of everything the Lord is doing and has promised to do.  He used each of us to welcome Him and His kingdom here on earth in different ways and to encourage one another in the work and the gifts He has given us.  Needless to say, it was a very powerful night that got all of us fired up for the first day of classes.

Then we had Freshley last night.  Words can't describe it adequately.  During leadership prayer we packed around 100 leaders into the Wesley Prayer Chapel to worship the Lord and to seek Him in prayer for the freshmen and for each other.  I've never experienced such authentic worship through music before.  As we prayed, the words of the songs we sang seemed to echo our prayers and confirm to us that God is good and faithful to hear and respond to our prayers.  Prayer and worship seemed to blur together in a way I've never known before.  I've known that prayer and worship go hand in hand, but I've never actually experienced it in that way so clearly before last night.  I felt as if I was outside of myself worshiping God and seeking His will.  Typically there will be some kind of insecurity or self-consciousness that holds me back from worshiping with everything and pouring out my heart to God, but those chains were gone last night.  I found myself with the same excitement and lack of negative self-restraint that I had at camp when I was trying to motivate the campers.  And then we got to the actual Freshley service when the freshmen got there, and it was the same way, if not even more so because the freshmen were getting into it too.

During prayer, Elizabeth, one of the interns that I've had the privilege of going to Jamaica with two years in a row, and who will also be my leadership small group (LSG) leader this year, led us to pray that the Lord would create an atmosphere that is thick with the Holy Spirit and that is loving and welcoming and passionate about seeing God glorified.  I was talking with one freshman in particular after Freshley, and in his own words, the atmosphere was one of the things he noticed.

Just as I found myself with the same excitement and disregard for my own dignity that I had at camp, I was also taken back to camp in a kind of vision when we sang Into Marvelous Light.  I can remember countless times that my cabin would be lagging behind and my co-counselor (whoever it was that week) and I would have to jump up and start running to get them moving.  I had a specific image of walking up the hill from the cabins to the gym and suddenly taking off running, urging the campers to follow suit.  The Lord used that image to say that others will see and acknowledge our love and excitement and passion for God, and as we live out the abundant life we have been given, they will want to take part in it as well.  When we run into marvelous light, we run with a train of people following behind us.

So...  Yeah.  That discouragement that I had to deal with on Sunday?  It's been buried in the grave Jesus rose from.  I can't wait to see what God has planned for this year!  It may be difficult at times, but I know it will be good.

"Restore to me the joy of Your salvation, and grant me a willing spirit to sustain me."

 Psalm 51:12

So I've been back in Athens for almost a week now, and I'm not sure how I feel about it.  I feel like I'm going through a kind of culture shock coming from Camp Highland, where everyone is constantly pursuing God and pouring into each other, and returning to the Redcoat Band at UGA, where it's pretty much the opposite: people not only rejecting God, but actively running away from Him and tearing each other down.  I love being a Redcoat, but I'm not loving the mutual lack of patience between the band and the directors because it's causing my own patience to run thin.  On the bright side, when I have a task to do when I'm at the end of my rope, I focus only on that, and everything else becomes a blur.  But unfortunately, everything else becomes a blur, and I think I almost seem rude—not because of anything I say but because I don't feel like say anything at all.  And when I reach that point, things that annoy me, which I usually ignore, only push me deeper into that hard, hollow shell that forms inside me.  So while I've been focused and quiet during band camp, I haven't been able to enjoy it, and I may have even kept others from enjoying it to the fullest.

I'm also finding myself being a lot less social than normal, which isn't saying all that much because I don't talk much anyway.  But I usually like hanging out with friends, and I'm usually all about meeting new people at the beginning of the school year, but I can probably count on my fingers how many people I've met this past week.  Maybe it's a result of my impatience with Redcoats this year.  Or maybe it's a part of recovering from camp, where I met new kids every week; maybe I'm exhausted from meeting so many people that I just need to take a break.  But whatever the reason, it all needs to change before Monday because I'm going to be a Freshley small group leader, and I need to be ready to meet the freshmen with joy.

I'm about to head to Compass Church with my friend Greg, one of my co-counselors from this summer, so hopefully whatever is making me feel so spiritually drained will be fixed when I get back.

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So at Compass this morning the pastor gave a few key points about what it's like to live in God's will.  We read Acts 20:22-24, but the Lord directed me beyond the intended passage to verses 25-27: "And now, behold, I know that none of you among whom I have gone about proclaiming the kingdom will see my face again.  Therefore I testify to you this day that I am innocent of the blood of all of you, for I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God."  It was exactly what I needed because it convicted me.  Like I said this morning, I didn't meet very many freshmen last week.  By failing to do so, I showed a lack of understanding of the fact that it's very possible that they don't know Christ, and meeting me could be the last chance they get to meet Him.  Paul understood that when he went to Ephesus, and he made sure to make the most of his time with the Ephesians, knowing that he had very little time, and his time there could be the only chance for any of them to come to know Christ.  And when he left, he was able to say with confidence that he had done everything he could do to make Jesus known to them.  Sadly, I can't say that I've done everything I can to demonstrate God's love to my fellow Redcoats, especially to the freshmen.  I need to "be transformed by the renewing of [my] mind" (Romans 12:2) so that I can devote everything to the Lord.  And I need God to "restore to me the joy of [His] salvation" (Psalm 51:12) because "the joy of the Lord is [my] strength" (Nehemiah 8:10).  In whatever I do, I want to "work at it with all [my] heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, since [I] know that [I] will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ [I am] serving" (Colossians 3:23-24).  I don't need to work in order to earn my inheritance as a reward for my work; I want to be able to work joyfully because the Lord has already promised me an inheritance.

So as I prepare to start classes tomorrow, please join me in praying that I (and all our brothers and sisters in Christ) would find strength and perseverance in the Lord to be able to serve Him joyfully and with patience and to lovingly and urgently make Him known to everyone we meet, as if each conversation will be our last.

I was talking earlier with Bryan, my co-leader for our Freshley small group, and we both want to see at least one guy who doesn't truly know Christ join our small group and learn to passionately follow Him this year.  Whether it's through the Spirit's guidance through us or through the encouragement of other freshmen, we want to have the joy of seeing at least one freshman come to know Christ.  So please be praying for us as we rely on the Lord to minister to these freshmen that we will be meeting tomorrow.  And pray that our leadership and wisdom and love for our brothers in Christ would not be artificially generated, but that it would be genuine and would come from the overflow of God's love being poured out into us.

God is going to move in power this year, and I can't wait to see it!  It's going to be a good year.

Camp Highland: Summer 2012 — Psalm 40:5

"You have multiplied, O Lord my God, Your wondrous deeds and Your thoughts toward us; none can compare with You!  I will proclaim and tell of them, yet they are more than can be told."

This verse definitely sums up my experience at Camp Highland this summer.  After nine weeks in Ellijay—two weeks of training and seven weeks with campers—I can't help but praise God for everything He has done in me, through me, and for me at camp.  He has taught me and grown me so much over the last two months that I can't imagine what I would be like now if He hadn't called me to work at camp.  I just want to share some of what the Lord has done for me this summer.

To start, my whole experience with Camp Highland began when my friend Lauren applied and was hired as a counselor there.  When she was hired, she was told that they still needed five more male counselors, so she told me and got me to apply for the job.  Now, I had originally planned on going to Montenegro on a mission trip with the UGA Wesley Foundation, but when the money didn't come through (because all of it went toward my trip to Jamaica through Freshley), it appeared that God did not have Montenegro planned as my direct mission field this year.  He did have a reason for making me sign up for the trip in the first place though: so that I could pray for the team specifically while they were there.  So even though I wasn't directly influencing the Montenegrins, I was able to support my team and influence the nation through prayer.  Anyway, God had a different mission field in mind for me: the youth of the Atlanta area gathered in Ellijay, Georgia.  So when I heard about the camp, I immediately applied without much thought.  Something inside of me told me that that was what the Lord had planned for me this summer.  And since I was hired and I got back a week ago from spending my entire summer there and I saw several lives changed (including my own), I think it's safe to assume that that voice (the Holy Spirit) was right.  (Interestingly, the Montenegro trip happened to be during staff training for camp, so having to back out of the trip opened up my schedule to allow me to work at camp.)

When I got to camp back in May (I can't believe that was over two months ago!), I spent the first two weeks there getting to know the rest of the staff and learning how to run all of the activities I would be facilitating this summer, including the Mammoth rock wall, the Drop Zone swing, and the High Ropes course.  We also did a few team building activities, or initiatives, some in the Low Ropes courses and some in the gym and on the field.  Those first two weeks were incredible, mainly because we had a really relaxed schedule that set aside the whole morning for a brief session that set us up for the day's Bible study, TAG time (Time Alone with God), and a debrief session so that we could share what we learned during our TAG time.  That meant that we spent nearly three hours every morning just meeting with God.  It was great for each one of us individually because it gave us time to study sections of Scripture we might not have put much thought into before, and it was also really cool to hear what everyone else was learning because all of it was helpful for more than just one person.  It was great getting to hear the wisdom the Lord was sharing with all of us, and it showed the unity of the body of Christ in that the Word speaks to all of us in different ways but for a common purpose: to draw us closer to God and to each other, and to help us become more like Him.  Just thinking about it right now, all of the staff seemed to be marked by a few specific gifts and characteristics of God: freedom, passion, wisdom, and love.  As the summer went on, I got to see how these traits played out in each person uniquely, and it was cool to see how God worked through all of us differently with similar results.

Anyway, week two of staff training came along, and we were given a chance to practice what we had learned by facilitating initiatives for Calibrate, the leadership team from Stone Mountain Park's SkyHike and Wild Adventure.  (Throughout the summer we had various outside groups come to camp for their own purposes (Stone Mountain staff training, Journey and Invest training before heading off to Kenya, and Florida College's Georgia Camp during Camp Highland's week off).)  Now, before I applied to work at Camp Highland, I never could have seen myself being a camp counselor.  I'm just not that energetic, outgoing kind of person that most camp counselors are.  Plus, even though God gives me wisdom to share through my blog, I'm usually not much of a talker, so I didn't know how I was going to know how to lead kids, let alone a group of college age leaders for the Stone Mountain staff.  Wisdom that comes in big waves and can be recorded in blog posts is one thing, but moment-by-moment wisdom to know how to answer spur-of-the-moment questions is another thing entirely.  So when we had the opportunity to lead initiatives for Calibrate, and even when we practiced within the staff bubble, I didn't really know what to expect.  But I found the Lord giving me grace to know what to say when I needed to speak, and that became a major area of dependence for me the entire summer.  And God pulled through all summer long.

So after all our training on the equipment and our practice with briefing and debriefing, and after two whole weeks of soaking up all that God wanted to pour into us before starting camp, the campers finally arrived on Monday of Week One.  What an adventure.  Throughout the summer I found the Lord using me in ways I never could have imagined being used.  To begin with, as introverted as I am, God had called me to spend my entire summer getting kids pumped up about knowing Jesus and living for Him.  And not just any kids, but I spent the entire summer with kids between the ages of 9 and 14—fourth through eighth graders.  Somehow God gave me the energy, patience, wisdom, and love to be able to lead the 62 kids who passed through my cabin this summer, along with the handful of other campers outside of my cabin that I got to talk to.  Some weeks tested me more than others, and some were more rewarding than others, but each week had its breakthroughs and lessons from God.

Week One.  I didn't know what to expect.  I was encouraged at the end of the week by how much God worked through me and how little I had to worry about because of the confidence He gave me as I relied of Him.  That week was just the start of something I came to realize throughout the summer: when I worry about not knowing what to say, I won't know what to say; but if I just open my mouth and let the words come out, without doubting whether or not the words mean anything, God speaks through me clearly without any hindrance from my self-consciousness.  I had one camper that week who was a big thinker on spiritual matters.  This particular fourth grader asked a lot of tough questions that I would expect to hear from high schoolers and even some of my friends at UGA.  The one question that sticks out the most in my mind is "How do you hear God, and how do you know if you're hearing Him?"  I don't really remember how Greg, my co-counselor, and I answered him, but I know that the Lord spoke through us to him, and I hope and pray that the answer will help him as he continues to walk with God.

The Lord also taught me a lot about loving those who are difficult to love that week, and He continued to teach me that all summer.  Before the summer started I had written my prayer for the summer in my journal, so toward the end of the summer I went back to that page to see what I had written.  I was amazed to see that I had written that I wanted to have "a heart for the least likely."  In other words, I wanted to be able to show God's love to the kids who make things difficult.  I wanted to see breakthrough in the kids who seemed to not be getting anything out of our discussions.  And the funny thing is that, as Greg pointed out, because I prayed for a heart for the least likely, God gave me the least likely.  Anyway, that first week I had one camper who made things pretty difficult.  He was easily distracted and wasn't the best listener most of the time.  But after several one-on-one talks with him, from both me and Greg, his behavior seemed to improve.  I actually came to like hanging out with him as the week went on.  I began to see that he was just looking for attention and for a role model, because his behavior was a result of a less than ideal home life; so when he started receiving positive attention, his output starting reflecting the input he was getting.

And what's awesome about that camper is that he came back the next week.  This time he wasn't in my cabin, but that made things more interesting for me because I got to hear all the positives that he was getting that week instead of seeing everything, good and bad, play out personally.  My favorite comment from him was toward the end of the week when he asked me for a dollar to get something out of the vending machine.  First, a little background: he had spent the whole first week trying to borrow money from me and from other campers because he didn't have any of his own.  But week two, his grandparents had given him $20 to spend, and on Thursday evening he still had $11 left because "my grandparents gave it to me and I don't want to spend all of it because I want to have something left to give back to them."  And even more encouraging was when his counselors that week told me that he was pretty much leading their debrief discussions rather than being a distraction.

As for my own experience with Week Two—or, as we call it, Week 1.2—I had a great time!  That week most of my cabin was either all in for Jesus or at least interested.  There were two specific kids who I could tell got a lot from that week.  One of the kids had so much wisdom, and he was very inquisitive.  He would ask question after question, diving deep into the meaning of Scripture, looking for life lessons and interpretations of whatever he read.  One night we, the three counselors, washed our campers' feet at the end of the day as a display of humility and leadership by service.  After we were done, a couple of the kids, including the inquisitive one, said that they wanted to wash our feet, so they did.  Afterward, while the rest of the cabin was getting in bed, another camper pulled me outside to talk for a little bit.  Throughout the week this kid was probably the most enthusiastic kid in everything we did, whether it was doing the Drop Zone, debriefing Nitro Crossing, packing up to camp out under the rock wall, or just sitting having TAG time in the morning and cabin time at night.  He said that a lot of times when he prays he feels like he doesn't really connect with God.  Again, another comment I would expect to hear from someone my age, this time coming from a rising sixth grader.  Conveniently, God had been teaching me a lot about prayer throughout the school year, so He allowed me to use what He had taught me to encourage my camper.  The words He gave me were along the lines of "Jesus prayed the Lord's prayer as a model for our own prayers, so praying with the Lord's prayer as a guide is one way to ensure that we're praying with the right intentions.  Pray that God would be glorified before asking for anything, then pray that His will would be done before your own; then ask for what you need.  And keep no sins hidden from God (Jesus didn't need forgiveness of sins, but He included this in His prayer because He was demonstrating how we should pray), and ask for protection against the devil's schemes.  The best way to learn to connect with God through is to pray.  A lot.  When we pray often, prayer becomes easier.  It becomes a natural response in any situation because we see results, and we know that we will see more results if we continue to pray, so we pray even more."  Then on the last day of the week, when we were going around the cabin talking about our takeaways from the week, this camper said that that week had changed his perspective on reading the Bible, and he was a lot more interested and excited to not only read the Bible regularly, but also to study it in depth.

The next couple of weeks were really hard for me, and I get the feeling that I learned more from those two weeks than most of my campers did.  I learned a lot about patience and the hope that does not disappoint (Romans 5:5).  One cool thing from Week 1.3 was that I had the nine-year-old son of the founder of Camp Highland, and since his parents own the camp, he's been around for a few summers.  I had him in my cabin the first week too, and there was a noticeable change in him the third week.  The first week and the beginning of the third week, it was a little bit of a challenge to keep him interested in our discussions.  He just wanted to get to the next activity.  But toward the end of Week 1.3, he started really getting into our debriefs and TAG times and cabin time discussions.  It was encouraging to hear from his mom that he took note of my knowledge of Scripture, and apparently it's hard to impress him.  So it was cool seeing how God used my extreme thirst for the Word when I first started really following Him to build up a store of Scripture that I could draw from at any time (Psalm 119:11), so that one kid would notice and want to have that same desire for the Word.

One thing from Week 1.4 struck me hard: halfway through the week the campers started identifying me as kind of a disciplinarian (in eighth grade terms).  I wasn't used to that, and that made me realize that I had to work on my patience with the kids so that I could direct them on the right path in love instead of strictly forbidding the wrong path.

The following week was a week off for most of the summer staff.  Some people stayed behind to help with a camp Florida College was running on Camp Highland's property, but most of us went home for a week of much needed rest.  That week taught me a little bit about hunger and thirst for God.  Sometimes when I'm not physically hungry, if I eat a little bit, I find that I actually had more of an appetite than I realized.  And it's the same way spiritually: if I know that I should pray and read the Bible but I don't feel like it, if I do it anyway it might make me realize that I really do want to spend more time with God in that moment.

Then Week 1.6 came around.  That week God showed me a lot about authentic passion for His glory.  I'm pretty sure He showed that to a lot of people that week.  During Week 1.4, the Chapman family, the family that owns and runs the camp, left to go to Alaska.  They spent that entire week, as well as the week off and the first half of Week 1.6, away from camp.  But they were not any farther away from God than we were while they were gone.  In fact, when Mr. Bill came up to speak the first day he was back, it was obvious that he had spent some, as he likes to say, rich time with Jesus, getting to see just how awesome and how worthy of all glory He is.  Interestingly, the night before, my cabin had been talking about the same thing.  Two of my campers had been asking a lot of really good questions that had both me and my co-counselor searching deep in our knowledge of Scripture to be able to provide answers for them.  But the one question that stood out to me was, "What does God look like?"  I tried to find Exodus 33:18-23 and 34:5-8 to use as an answer, but I wasn't sure of the Scripture reference, so I couldn't find it.  God had a different passage in mind that night.  We went to Isaiah 6 and saw how the glory of the Lord completely filled the temple, and how the sound of His praises were so powerful that the entire temple shook.  We saw Isaiah's reaction to seeing the Lord face-to-face, with such all-consuming conviction and repentance and awe at God's power that when He asked who would go to the nations as a messenger of the word He wanted to proclaim, Isaiah eagerly jumped at the opportunity to play a part in giving God just a piece of the glory He deserves.  One kid in particular was amazed when he heard just how awesome God is.  The Spirit very much filled us all that week.

That Thursday night, Chad, one of the full-time staff, came to me to say that the person who normally speaks before Friday morning TAG time wasn't there, so he asked me to lead it instead.  I'm not much of a public speaker.  I write a lot, but talking isn't my strong point, especially in front of large groups.  But the Holy Spirit gave me peace and kept me from getting nervous.  Now, that week was the first—and only—week that I had campers who actually wanted to go off and read on their own during TAG time.  It was refreshing to not have to say, "Open your devotional and read today's section, then open your Bible and read the related passage."  They just got their Bibles out and started reading.  So I decided I wanted to get some of their input on what they thought I should say the next morning.  So we talked about it that night, and I was amazed, and I still am, at the wisdom that came from those twelve- and thirteen-year-olds.  The next morning when I went up to deliver the message before TAG and to debrief afterward, I got a little nervous beforehand and my heart rushed a little as soon as I was done, but I felt no anxiety at all while I was speaking.  I don't even remember most of what I said, because it wasn't me speaking.  As I was trying to plan the night before on what I should say, I had some kind of mind block that prevented me from thinking clearly.  When my exhaustion from the day's activities became too much, I decided to just pray and go to bed, leaving it all up to God.  And the Lord was faithful to speak powerfully and clearly through me because I wasn't mentally present enough to be a hindrance to His voice.  I had some notes and a general idea of what to say, but my plan wasn't so solid that I was determined to say everything I had planned.  The Spirit just flowed freely, without hindrance from my plan (or lack thereof).  In that moment, the prayer "Empty me of me so I can be filled with You" was answered.

A little background on that week: After getting back from my week off, something inside me made a decision on the day the campers arrived that I didn't want to get to know just the kids in my cabin, but I wanted to hang out with kids from other cabins too throughout the week.  So as the campers arrived, I made a real effort to get to know the names of as many kids as I could, and I made sure to acknowledge them and talk to them some throughout the week.  Being a typically shy person, I have to say that was a little out of my comfort zone.  But it became a huge blessing Friday morning because when the Lord spoke through me, He spoke to everyone, but He especially spoke directly to the people I had gotten to know and who had gotten to know me, which was really cool.  The Christ-centered fellowship that whole week was like nothing I had experienced all summer.  It was awesome!

Week 1.7 presented me with a little roadblock, but it became a huge surprise and an incredible blessing by the end of the week.  I had one camper who required a lot of one-on-one attention, especially at the beginning of the week.  His family is moving to Africa to be missionaries, and it wasn't exactly the most exciting thing for him to be leaving his home in just a few short months.  It took him a while to become entirely present in the here-and-now, but when he finally got it Thursday evening, he transformed like I've never seen anyone transform before.  He went from being reluctant to play Tribal Games (Camp Highland has an outpost in Kwambekenya, Kenya, so the teams we use for our Tribal Games represent the tribes that exist in that area of Kenya), to telling me that he didn't want to wear shoes because he needed to practice for Africa so that he wouldn't make kids sad by wearing shoes when he visits orphanages where the kids don't have shoes.  He went from not listening, to seeking approval from the counselors before doing anything.  He even asked the worship band to play a specific song for him, and it changed the entire week for everyone there.  Friday night the band played Lose My Soul, by TobyMac, mixed with Open Up the Skies, and whereas we were all used to hearing a few feeble voices in the audience singing during worship, the entire camp sang back that night as if making a bold declaration.  I think this particular camper finally started to realize why his parents are taking the whole family to Africa, and it started to click with him just how important it is that they go and take the gospel of Jesus Christ with them.  I'm thankful that he came to Camp Highland that week, because it wasn't just his life that was changed.  I'm still amazed at the change that took place in him, and I'm excited and honored to get the chance to partner with him and his family by supporting them as they move to Africa.

That camper, along with one the following week, fell under the category of "the least likely."  But the funny thing is that those kids were the ones I connected with the most all summer.  When God gave me the least likely, He gave me a desire to see them changed by His love and His devotion to them, so He gave me a determination to reach out specifically to them.  Maybe that kept me from connecting with the other campers because I spent so much time pouring into those few, but I believe that the ones I connected with were some of the ones who most desperately needed someone to reach out to them.  Now, I'm not proud to say that there were a few times when I almost lost my cool with them, but those moments taught me and prepared me so that I could hold back and rely on God to give me patience the next time a difficult situation came up.  And He had grace for me too: the kids barely seemed to notice when I almost lost it, and they even seemed to respond more willingly afterward.  Sometimes I had to be blunt with them, but the Spirit gave me the grace to be able to say it in love.  And that helped me understand better when He had to be blunt with me and tell me to take a step back and calm down before doing anything else.

So what did I learn this summer?  A lot about patience: God put a spotlight on my impatience so that I could see how much I need His patience.  As I was praying at the end of the week off before starting Week 1.6, I asked God to not only give me His strength when I find that I'm weak, but to make me weak so that I would have no other option but to rely on His strength.  And boy, did He ever answer that one.  He also taught me about confidence: instead of thinking about what to say and worrying about whether not it was the right thing to say, I often found myself saying things without really knowing where it was coming from.  When I simply opened my mouth and allowed God to speak through me without hesitating to think about what I was saying, I had less fear about what I was saying, and the Lord's Word had much more power than if I had stopped to think about it and formulate my own sentences.  Prayer was another big lesson: I neglected prayer a lot this summer, unfortunately; but when I made time to devote myself to prayer (Colossians 4:2), the Lord responded in big ways.  The conversation about Isaiah 6 and what God looks like came after I spent my night off in prayer.  (Each staff member gets a night off every week, where we get two hours or so to rest and regain our strength and energy to be with the kids for the rest of the week.)  I had planned on doing my own Bible study during that time because my morning TAG times were becoming slack because I was so used to always having to keep the kids focused that I couldn't stay focused myself.  But instead, the Lord called me to pray.  And I saw immediate results when the campers arrived back at the cabin.  And finally, I learned about love and humility: sometimes love requires us to allow ourselves to be humiliated or to suffer pain.  It takes a Romans 12:10 heart, a heart of servanthood and a desire to almost competitively put oneself below others.  When my camper was walking without shoes Week 1.7 in order to honor the kids in the African orphanages, I was so moved that I had to join him and take my own shoes off.  It was uncomfortable and sometimes painful, but the heart behind it is what counts, and I have to say that that kid's statement convicted me and really humbled me.

I feel like I pretty much just recounted the highlights of the summer, and I didn't really elaborate on what God taught me, but I still have a lot of processing—a lot of personal debriefing—to do before I fully understand it myself.  So if you've stuck with me this far, congratulations on finishing this whole post.  And thank you for keeping me and the whole Camp Highland team in your prayers this summer!  Please continue to pray for us as we head back to school, and pray for the campers, that their experience at camp would leave a lasting impact on them.  Pray that this summer wouldn't be a mountaintop experience that we have to come down from, but that it just be the beginning of an upward journey toward God.  And pray that that "upward" journey would actually be a process of lowering ourselves and allowing the Lord to keep His promise in James 4:10.

"How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!  How vast is the sum of them!  Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand.  When I awake, I am still with you." ~ Psalm 139:17-18

"Whatever else I do, I must pray." ~ R.A. Torrey

It frustrates me to no end knowing that prayer is a last resort for many people.  It makes me sick that it's often a last resort for me.  I knew it before, but it really caught my attention at camp this summer.  When someone would get hurt, the first response was always to try the first aid kit, and if that wasn't enough, then we would go to the nurse.  Sometimes the problem was beyond her expertise, and we would just sit there perplexed, waiting for some improvement.  And I hated that I didn't have the boldness to skip all of that and make God my Plan A.  I mean, sure, I prayed when someone got hurt, but it was always a private prayer while Nurse Emily was trying to help the patient.  I don't understand.  It's a Christian camp, and the nurse was our primary healer...  This isn't to put down camp, because it's a great camp, and this is definitely not to belittle Nurse Emily, because she did a great job all summer.  I'm just frustrated with my own timidity and fear of not getting an answer to prayer.  I'm tired of making the Lord, the Healer and Provider of all good things, Jehovah-Rapha and Jehovah-Jireh, my last resort.  I want to fearlessly claim the promises of Jeremiah 17:14 and Mark 11:24, knowing that God is faithful to respond to expectant prayer.

I'm really encouraged by my friend Rebekah, who, whether she realizes it or not, gives off a sense that she lives in constant communion with God through prayer.  Whatever problems she faces, she doesn't hesitate to immediately and completely commit it to the Lord in prayer.  Whatever joy she is presented with, she thanks God out of her deep love for Him because she knows His blessings flow from His love for her, and thanksgiving welcomes increased blessings.  I was just reading her blog, which is what got me thinking about all of this, and in one post she wrote that she "prayed endlessly" about a decision she had to make and that it would allow God to be glorified all the more adequately.  And the thing is, I believe it.  Often people will say, "I'm praying for you," but in too many cases, it's just something people say.  In reality, what they mean is, "I sympathize with you, and you have my thoughts until I move on to the next thing."  But I know that Rebekah means it when she says that she's praying endlessly about something.  And I get the feeling that it's not a last resort for her.  It's not just something that she tags onto a practical method of obtaining blessings as a way of improving her chances of getting what she asks for.  Prayer is her method.  Everything else is an answer to prayer, so prayer should come before anything else.

God is convicting me right now, showing me that I allowed my busy schedule at camp to crowd prayer out of my life this summer.  Rather than being a time to meet with God personally, I allowed prayer to become a quick, mindless means of getting something I needed, and only when other methods didn't work.  I did find time to truly pray, but those times were few and far between, and they became more scarce as the summer wore on.  But now I want to return to that place of complete dependence on the Lord that I was just getting to know before the summer started.  I want prayer to become second nature for me, but not in the sense that it becomes a mindless habit, but that it would become my natural response to any situation.  I want to pray so often—and I don't mean quick, ten-second prayers, but real, passionate, earnest prayer—that when my schedule starts to wear me out, stress and fatigue would not crowd prayer out of my life, but prayer would be so ingrained into my being that it would leave no room for stress or fatigue in my life.  Just as Jesus did, when life starts getting too busy, I want to learn to make even more time for prayer than in the easy, relaxed times.

At this point, my plan is to go back to work at Camp Highland again next summer.  So now that I know the effect the busy schedule has on my prayer life, I pray that God will help me to devote myself to praying with my whole being so frequently that no amount of stress of weariness or discouragement would be able to uproot prayer from my life, but that prayer would so completely consume the soil of my life that there would be no room for the seeds of stress, weariness, and discouragement to even be planted in me.  I pray that I will always be ready to pray, and that seeking the Lord would always be my first response, not my last resort.  "Whatever else I do, I must pray."

"This is what the Lord says: 'Cursed is the one who trusts in man, who depends on flesh for his strength and whose heart turns away from the Lord.  He will be like a bush in the wastelands; he will not see prosperity when it comes.  He will dwell in the parched places of the desert, in a salt land where no one lives.  But blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in Him.  He will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream.  It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green.  It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit." ~ Jeremiah 17:5-8

Taking Root

I decided to go for a walk through my neighborhood today, and the Lord seemed to be drawing my attention to all the trees around me.  After walking and thinking for a while, I didn't seem to hear anything from God, so I took a different approach.  I keep catching myself trying to figure out interpretations of images on my own, and I know that isn't what the Lord wants me to do.  So when I caught myself trying to conjure up some deep insight as to the significance of trees, I allowed my single train of thought to become a two-way conversation with God instead.  I immediately found the Lord asking me questions, just as Jesus did to His disciples and, interestingly, the same way I did with the kids at camp this summer.  Actually, He only asked me one question: I had been thinking about roots, so He asked me, "What are roots for?"

A tree's roots dig into the soil the tree is planted in and absorbs water and nutrients to feed the tree.  They also serve to anchor the tree in the ground for stability.  However, contrary to the cliché, roots don't actually dig all that deep—they grow outward rather than downward.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.  First off, when I started answering God's question, I noticed something about soil and dirt that led me to think of the song Beautiful Things, by Gungor.  When a tree is planted, it isn't planted in a bed of flowers, where everything is nice and pretty.  In order for a tree to grow properly, it has to be planted in fertile soil, plain old dirt.  There's nothing special about it.  It's just dirt that has been prepared so that the tree can be planted in it.  In the same way, our lives aren't founded on big, exciting moments.  Those things come and go and can even draw our attention away from God, just like flowers can use up the nutrients a tree needs.  Our lives are founded on the continuous stream of everyday living: the ordinary dirt of life.  We find joy and hope in the simple things because we see God in them, and our ability to find joy in the dirt of life enhances our ability to see God in the bigger, flowery moments of life.  But we don't find our satisfaction in the simple things; we find our satisfaction in the goodness of God that is revealed in them.  Yet we hope for the dirt of life because we know that it will result in the growth of our relationship with Christ.

If a tree's roots grew straight down into the ground, the tree probably wouldn't be very stable.  Plus, it wouldn't get the nutrients it needs because most of the necessary nutrients lie close to the surface.  Likewise, if we dig deep into a particular aspect of life, we become hindered from gaining the spiritual nourishment available in all of God's creation.  We focus on that one thing too much and become so attached to it that, if it were eliminated from our lives, we would go down with it.  Instead, we need to learn to not dig our roots deep but to spread our roots wide.  A healthy tree will have roots that span two to four times the diameter of its crown, the distance covered by the visible part of the tree above ground.  For visual reference, the crown of a tree is the size of the shadow created under it at noon, when the sun is directly overhead.  The roots of a healthy tree will spread two to four times that distance, beyond where the shadow reaches.  So a healthy spiritual life is one that can find God in such a wide range of simple things that the person's outward life cannot demonstrate even half of what he is taking in from the Lord.  A healthy spiritual man does not dig his roots deep into one simple thing of life so that he loses his ability to be nourished by it, but rather he spreads his roots wide to gain the most growth from all sources of nourishment.  A man who digs his roots deep shows insecurity and a need to be comfortable.  But a man who spreads his roots wide shows a willingness to step out of his comfort zone and seek the Lord in ways he has never known before so that he can gain the most out of life.  He knows that God is found in all of the simple things of life, not just in what he is comfortable with, so he seeks to find as much of Him as possible.  That way if a single aspect of his life is removed, he is not shaken because he still has plenty of other sources of strength in Christ.

But it doesn't stop there.  A tree does not take root only for its own growth.  If we could examine the thoughts of an animate tree, I believe it would have other living creatures in mind.  A strong, healthy tree is not only stable and immovable, but it also provides shelter, produces fruit, and spreads seeds.  In the same way, a person whose roots are spread wide, not being so attached to one particular thing but finding joy in all things and being content with whatever he is given—this person will not stop at his own spiritual growth but will be determined to do for others what the Lord has done for him.  His strong roots in the Lord will allow him to be an unshakable source of shelter for those in need of hope and comfort.  The growth he finds in prayer and in his study of the Word will give him a foundation from which to bear fruit, actions that demonstrate God's character, which will draw to people to enjoy the sweetness of the fruit and to seek more.  And the joy he finds in the Lord will cause him to desire to see the same results in the lives of others, so he will spread of the seed of God's Word and His love, specifically by bearing fruit.  The seeds of a fruit tree are carried by the fruit it bears, and the seed will not come if fruit is not produced.  Similarly, we must bear fruit in order to effectively spread the seed of the gospel.  And we can find encouragement in this: even if our fruit goes unnoticed by those we intend to reach by our good deeds, the fruit we bear still carries seeds to plant new trees.  So even if our actions may not seem to have had an effect on someone, we can know that somewhere down the road someone will have a lasting impact on that person's life, and the Holy Spirit will take root inside of him.

So let's grow to be strong trees—oaks of righteousness (Isaiah 61:3) planted by streams of water (Psalm 1:3), abiding in Christ and bearing much fruit (John 15:5) to leave a lasting impact (John 15:16) so that all may see and know that we serve the Living God (John 15:8) and that they might see His glory and power and desire to serve and worship Him as well (Isaiah 6:1-8).  Rather than digging our roots deep, let's spread our roots wide so that we can be firmly anchored in Christ and well nourished by His Spirit, allowing us to serve others effectively and adequately give God glory.  And let's seek to grow our roots in the dirt of life rather than in the flowerbeds, because we know that Jesus makes beautiful things out of dust.  The greatest things in life are not those that are very clearly outwardly glorious but rather those that the Lord makes glorious, no matter how unlikely and apparently useless and irredeemable it may seem.  Worship God in the dull, everyday moments, not just in the big, emotional moments, because the majority of life is made of the simple things.  As long as the big moments are the only times we give glory to God, Jesus has no hold on our lives.  But if we learn to devote our everyday life to Him, then our whole being will truly be committed to Him.

With all your heart

For the last six weeks I have been in Ellijay, GA, working at Camp Highland as a counselor.  Camp Highland is a camp whose mission is to lead children (fourth grade to high school senior) into a growing relationship with Christ through high adventure.  So that's what I've been doing for six weeks.  Well, four weeks, to be more accurate, because the first two weeks were for staff training without campers.  It's been an amazing experience and a lot of fun, but also very challenging and revealing as it has been exposing areas of my life that I need to work on, specifically regarding my interaction with kids and people in general.  The Lord has been putting a huge spotlight on my impatience during these last four weeks, an aspect of my life that may not be obvious in public situations but that I know to exist in my home life, and I've been seeing it come out a lot especially during these last two weeks of camp.

The most important thing God has been revealing to me, though, wasn't fully revealed until tonight at Upper Room, my high school youth group's student-led summer ministry.  This week is our break for summer staff, and the revelation that God showed me tonight was that I grow dissatisfied and discontent when I don't commit all my ways to the Lord.  When I know that I should be spending time with God but I don't do it, I feel empty and I begin to doubt Him.  This shows my desperate need for Him, my urgent need to spend quality time with Him on a daily basis.  When I start to lose my desire for Him, I start to doubt Him, and when I begin to doubt Him, I lose my desire for Him.  Thankfully, though, He caught my attention while these thoughts were running through my mind tonight, and He brought me back to Himself.  He showed me just how much I need to spend time with Him, even when I don't think I want to, because He knows that deep down I really do want to spend time with Him because I need to.  If I begin to lose interest in Him when I neglect Him, then the opposite must also be true: that my desire to know Him more will increase as I spend more time with Him.  So even if I don't think I want to spend time with the Lord at the moment, if I do it anyway, He will be faithful to increase my desire for Him.

During the last few weeks at camp, I began to notice that I wasn't making the kind of time I needed to spend with the Lord.  As a result, I started feeling spiritually drained.  Fortunately, God blessed me by continually pouring into me so that I could pour into the campers even though I wasn't actively seeking to be filled in my own personal quiet time.  And now that I'm at home, my neglect of my TAG time (Time Alone with God) is exaggerated.  Don't get me wrong: I still had a block set apart for TAG time at camp, but it was always spent facilitating discussion with the campers rather than studying on my own because my campers have all been eighth graders or younger, so my co-counselors and I have had to keep them focused.  (This was a blessing though, because the fourth, fifth, and sixth graders I had the first two weeks really dug deep into what we talked about during our TAG times, and I learned a lot from them and from God speaking things through me that I never would have thought of on my own.)  Anyway, in response to my complacency, God gave me a wake-up call tonight by showing me that, if I will devote myself to seeking Him wholeheartedly, He will satisfy my desire for Him even as He increases my desire.  In fact, He has to increase my desire for Him because my current desire to know Him cannot match the measure of His glory that He wants to reveal to me.  So if I will seek to know Him more, He will satisfy me and continually fill me with more of Himself.  But if I grow complacent, He will continue to show His glory, but there will be no room in my heart to contain my understanding of His goodness because I will have no desire to receive such knowledge.  So I will have no desire for Him, and as I see His glory all around me and have no room to contain it in my heart, I will begin to feel empty because I do not have what the Lord is offering me.  Therefore, I must seek Him every day with all my heart and devote my whole being to Him.

A main theme at Camp Highland that comes from our many high adventure elements is "Always stay connected."  The point we try to make to the kids through this image of staying connected by way of harnesses is that we always have to be connected to God, through prayer, worship, Bible study, and fellowship with other believers.  But one lesson in particular that stuck out to me during week 4 (or as we've been calling it, week 1.4) was when one camper, a rising high school junior, said that we can stay connected through love and obedience.  It may seem like common sense, but it hit me hard when I first heard it: prayer and Bible study is not the only way that we can come to know God more; if knowing God means becoming more like Him, then it makes sense that becoming more like Him can also help us get to know Him better.  So if we love as Jesus loved, we can grow closer to Him just as effectively as we could through studying His life on earth and reading about how He lived.  Love and obedience are just as much a part of godly living as wisdom, if not more so.

So as I seek to commit myself wholly to the Lord every day, I pray that I would not only seek Him in His Word and in prayer and worship, but also through joyful obedience to my parents and to those in authority over me and also through unconditional love and humble, faithful stewardship of the gifts and talents God has given me.  I pray that there would be no aspect of my life that might raise questions about my complete devotion to the Lord, but that Jesus Christ would be the Lord of my entire lifestyle.  "If Christ is anything, He must be everything." ~ Charles Spurgeon

"Let it not be said of me that I held back anything from You."

Jamaica 2012: Reflections and Revelations, Visions and Visuals

Sorry it took so long for me to finish this post.  There was a lot for me recount, and with school drawing to a close, it was hard to find enough time to sit down and write everything out at once.  But now that finals are done and I'm back at home, I finally have time to finish my thoughts and to process everything that happened in Jamaica.

Once again, thank you to everyone who supported me in my mission trip to Jamaica over spring break.  It would not have been possible without you, and I was very blessed to be able to go because of you.  So thank you!

If you read my previous post about Jamaica, congratulations on surviving the whole thing.  Even if you didn't make it through the whole thing, you know that God worked in some amazing ways over the course of the week in Port Maria and even up to this point.  He's taught me so much since that Saturday when we boarded the plane headed to Jamaica, so I'm going to try my best to keep this as organized as possible.  I'm sorry if it gets scattered.  And I apologize to anyone who managed to get through my last Jamaica post because there's still much more to read.  This post will probably be longer than the last one.

Up until this trip, I had never really had any visions to speak of.  Instead, God typically spoke to me through what I like to call "visuals": scenarios or pictures of things I have seen before, or sometimes even something I am seeing right at that moment, into which the Lord speaks meaning.  He then interprets those scenarios or pictures to me and applies them to real-life situations.  (Maybe that's the same thing as a vision, or at least along those lines, but I have a certain idea of what visions are, and I hadn't had very many of them up to this point.)  That's how the trip started out: with a particularly detailed visual.  As I sat on the plane looking out the window at the wing below me, I saw heat being emitted from the engine beneath the wing.  I saw this as the plane pulled onto the runway and seemingly went in circles.  The anticipation of takeoff was almost suffocating.  We were finally on our way to Jamaica!  At least, we would be once the plane got in the air.  The plane seemed to drift slowly around the runway.  This whole time, the heat waves coming from the engine were wildly rushing toward the tail of the plane.  Finally, the plane started rumble as it picked up speed, but it turned out that we were just moving from the waiting area to the actual runway.  When the runway was finally clear and we were good to go, the plane lurched forward, speeding down the runway, and in seconds we were in the air.  This whole time, God was speaking to me through all that I was seeing and experiencing.  That night I shared the visual and its interpretation to my small group.  As the plane rolled slowly toward the runway, I felt slightly impatient, anxious to get in the air, to hurry up and get to Jamaica, but we seemed to be going nowhere.  Yet below us, the heat waves were moving just as quickly as ever all the time.  At that point in time, I felt like there were people on the trip who may have been feeling like they were not growing in Christ at the same pace as everyone else around them.  I didn't know who those people would be; I was just interpreting the visual—or more accurately, God was interpreting it for me.  To those people, it seemed like everyone around them was always on fire, always walking closely with the Lord and always ready to act when they hear His voice.  But they felt like they kept picking up momentum only to lose it moments later.  In response to this interpretation, God gave me some encouragement for anyone feeling that way (if this is you, listen up): You may feel like you're moving slowly and getting nowhere compared to everyone around you, but in reality, you are moving toward the runway for takeoff.  Everything you are doing serves as another step toward the ultimate goal the Lord has set before you.  Be happy for the people around you who are on fire for Christ!  Be happy that they are growing, because they are the ones who will help you grow.  Then when the plane finally gets in the air, it is by no effort of the passengers, but by the skill of the pilot and the physics of the plane and the air around it.  When you finally reach a point of noticeable growth, be humble.  You have no right to take pride in getting yourself to that place of growth because it is only by the capable hand of the Lord, our Pilot, that you were able to get there.  And He is the One who is keeping you there.  And when you touch back down on land, be ready to exit the plane and do what you came to do.  Don't forget that you would not be at your destination if it hadn't been for the plane and its pilot.  God teaches us in our spiritual highs and times of growth, and He uses these times to draw us closer to Him.  But as the spiritual high fades, we must not forgot what we have learned.  We are coming off of the spiritual high for a reason: to share and put into action what we learned in that time of growth.  Don't be disappointed to get off of the plane, but don't be too excited to stay in your destination for too long.  Temptation and trials often come with spiritual lows, so be on your guard.  But don't forget to serve others with what you learned in your spiritual highs.

So... yeah.  That's the wisdom God shared with us to start off the week.  After small group/family time, Daniel, one of the Wesley directors, gave a message on service.  He presented three main qualities of good, God-pleasing service: authenticity, consideracy, and excellence.  True, humble, loving service must be authentic, coming from a heartfelt desire to serve.  It has to be considerate, putting others before oneself in every way possible, considering not just others' outward needs but also their thoughts.  (Some people may not want assistance with some things because it might make them feel inferior or useless.)  And we must strive for excellence in all that we do, never doing things halfway.  After the message, along with a time for prayer and worship, Josh pulled a few people aside to have a Bible study, which was awesome!  He was hungry for more of what God had for us, so he put himself, and several others, in a position to be ready to receive it.  While Daniel was speaking, God reminded me of an image someone had shared with me before: humility is not just the act of putting others above oneself but also the act of lowering oneself below others, like several people on a ladder, each trying to get lower to lift the others higher.  The lower we make ourselves, the higher the Lord appears to us.  So during our group discussion, God made this challenge to us: Compete with one another to be the lowest of all slaves—humble yourselves below those around you, and if everyone does the same, John 3:30 ("He must increase, but I must decrease") will become a reality.  This challenge came from Romans 12:10: "Love one another with brotherly affection.  Outdo one another in showing honor."  (I just remembered that I heard this challenge at one of the meetings for the Montenegro mission trip that I will not be going on anymore.  So even though I'm not able to go, there was a reason I was part of the team, even if only temporarily.)  The topic of service brought up the matter of our weaknesses that hinder us from serving to our fullest potential, which eventually turned into our general weaknesses, doubts, and fears.  It was a very productive conversation because exposing these weaknesses allowed the whole group to pray against those things.  And we were all encouraged too, either by knowing that we are not the only ones who suffer from our weaknesses, or by shedding light on how to deal with those weaknesses, or simply by knowing that our brothers and sisters in Christ were praying for us.

All of that was day one, and not even the first full day.  The first full day came with all new surprises from God.  As expected, seeing the Jamaicans dance at church and getting to dance with them filled everyone with a lot of joy.  But not only did I get to see the joy that the Jamaicans so obviously demonstrated, but I also got to experience some of their hospitality that morning when one of the women saw that I didn't have a program and shared hers with me throughout the service as needed.  They made all of us feel very welcome, as if we were regular attenders at the church.  Toward the beginning of the service, they recognized everyone who had birthdays or anniversaries coming up that week and prayed for families that were in need or experiencing difficult times.  They even sang for one of the girls on our team whose birthday was that day.   They made the church body feel like a real family, sharing simple everyday blessings and hardships, showing themselves to be a community that genuinely cares about its members.

Later we had our first night of identity prayer, a lot more people were interested in it than I expected.  The idea behind identity prayer is that God will give us new names in heaven based on who He has made us to be and His plans for us.  This name is grounded in our identity in Christ.  Some biblical background for identity prayer can be found in Isaiah 62:2:

"The nations shall see your righteousness, and all the kings your glory, and you shall be called by a new name that the mouth of the Lord will give."

So what identity prayer is is asking God to reveal to us the name that He plans to give us in heaven.  This can be an actual name, like Michael or Hanani (I'll explain my name in a little bit), which will have a specific meaning behind it, or it can be a title or a spiritual "occupation" like Peacemaker or Giver of Life.   These names are meant to be encouraging, because they show us how the Lord sees us, and they are to lead us to strive to live up to the name, because they show us God's plan for our lives.  We had some really cool and inspiring names come up throughout the week.  In addition to actual names, we also talked a little bit about why we choose to make our names known or to keep it private.  Spiritual names are meant to be between God and the person He gives the name to.  It's a personal thing.  But at the same time, I know that sharing my name helps me believe the name belongs to me, which enables me to live it out better.

I had actually heard about spiritual names and identity prayer before the Jamaica trip, but I decided to sit in on the meeting and maybe get some confirmation from God that the name I believed I had received really was my name.  I'm still looking into it because my name situation is a little weird.  Senior year of high school, I was reading the Bible, just jumping around to different passages, and I came across an interesting name.  I completely forgot about it until last year.  Last spring I was talking with some friends about spiritual names, but I didn't really consider asking God for my own name.  Maybe I did ask, but I don't remember.  Either way, I didn't receive my name then.  But then over the summer, for some reason I was thinking about names.  Not spiritual names.  Just names.  I don't remember why.  I was either thinking about names for kids or, for whatever reason, names that I would like to have if I ever decided to change mine.  As I was thinking of these names, a set of syllables formed themselves in my mind: Hanani.  It sounded like a name I had heard before, so I looked it up, and it was then that I remembered seeing the name senior year.  I looked up the definition, and Hanani means "God is gracious."  But God wasn't done yet.  He told me that He hears me and that that would be part of my name.  I knew there was a name that meant "the Lord hears," so I thought about it for a minute and remembered the story of Hagar and Ishmael: Hagar named her son Ishmael because God heard her request for a child, and Ishmael means "the Lord hears."  So together, Hanani Ishmael means "by His grace, the Lord hears and responds."  That definitely stood out to me because of the way that God called me to follow Him when my grandpa died.  (If you haven't heard the story, this is it in a nutshell: My grandpa was a pastor, so when he passed away I prayed 2 Kings 2:9, asking God for a double portion of the Spirit He had given my grandpa; just a few months later, He answered my prayer by changing my life at my youth group's winter retreat and making me realize that I had been missing something my whole life even though I had always gone to church.  I didn't deserve to be heard because I had been calling myself a Christian even though I wasn't actively living it out, but He answered me anyway.)  But He still wasn't done yet.  He was done for the time being, but He added more this year in Jamaica.  The first night of identity prayer, I asked God if the name I thought I had received was the right one for me.  Then out of nowhere the name Lemuel popped into my head.  I was a little hesitant to accept it as my name, or even a part of it, and I still kind of am because Lemuel doesn't sound like that great of a name.  Besides, I didn't have a computer with me, so I couldn't look up the definition of the name.  But I decided to look into it anyway.  I went to Proverbs 31 to see if I could figure out some meaning for the name by looking at it in context.  Then I became a lot more willing to accept it as part of my name.  Lemuel was a king, a son who listens to authority, one who abstains from earthly pleasures in favor of righteousness, and one who speaks for those who have no voice.  I pieced all that information together and came to the conclusion that Lemuel was an intercessor, someone who effectively prays on someone else's behalf.  I didn't realize it until just the other day, but this was confirmed last year when Michael, my Freshley small group leader, called me a prayer warrior, and again this year in Jamaica when Josh prayed for me Thursday night and shared a vision of an army with me on the frontlines.  Then shortly after arriving back in Athens, I read a devotion out of Oswald Chamber's My Utmost for His Highest that said that God doesn't make promises just to show us that He keeps them but also to show us that He has ownership of us.  In other words, if you hear and receive a promise from the Lord, He is saying, "You are Mine, and because you are Mine I will keep my promise, and you will know that you are Mine."  A few days later, I remembered that I still had no idea what Lemuel actually means, so I looked it up, and it means "belonging to God."  I don't know if that means anything to anyone, but for reasons I can't seem to put into words, it meant something to me.  So anyway, now my name is Lemuel Hanani Ishmael: an intercessor belonging to God whose voice is heard and graciously answered on behalf of myself and on the behalf of those I pray for.  So that's how the first night of identity prayer went for me.  And throughout the week, I became more and more aware of the reality of my identity, and I am still coming to fully understand who God has called me to be and how to live in that identity.  I have been learning a lot about my identity these last few weeks.  For example, God has been giving me a lot of advice and encouragement for other people, and I realized that because my identity is in Christ and Ishmael means "the Lord hears," I also hear the Lord because His Spirit is in me, and the Spirit hears; so I have been hearing from God on behalf of those who needed to hear from Him.  I have the characteristics of Jesus because Christ lives in me.  I've been seeing Lemuel in me a lot too, as God has been answering a lot of my prayers in very noticeable ways.  I'm still relatively new to the idea of fervent, ceaseless, effective prayer, so it's been cool to see the Lord answer my prayers in very specific ways that I can actually see and know that God answered me.   He also confirmed to me that Lemuel is the right name for me when He led me to Proverbs 21:1 ("The king's heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord; He turns it wherever He will") after we had some prophetic encouragement time a few weeks after Jamaica, and my friend Tenaya said that she saw me as a river going wherever the path of the river turned, showing that I go wherever the Lord directs me without trying to rebel and keep going in the direction I was already headed.  Anyway, I hope all that I learned that night puts into perspective just how much the rest of the team received throughout the week.

The next day was the first workday.  My small group was assigned to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for all the groups to take to their work sites for lunch, so we got up early that morning and got to work.  After breakfast, we packed up our lunches and gear and boarded the buses to go to our work sites.  I was on the farm that day, and what a first workday it was!  We spent the day getting rid of the weeds on the side of a mountain where McGuiver, the man who owns the farm, grows a wide variety of fruits and vegetables.  The girls pulled up the smaller weeds while the guys chopped down the bigger weeds with machetes.  After our lunch break, we got back to work, but the breeze caught my attention, causing me to stop and listen.  I felt like God was very present at that moment, not in the way people like to say a lot at worship services when everyone is feeling emotional and drawn into the music, but in a way that it actually felt like God was about to speak audibly.  He didn't, but it was close enough.  As I listened, I asked God to speak, and I started praying.  As I prayed, words flowed through my mind, and at some point my thoughts seemed to transform from my own thoughts into the Lord's voice.  He said, "I will show you My glory."  Just to make sure we're clear, I didn't hear Him say this audibly.  The words ran through my mind as a thought and seemed to be coming from God.  When I "heard" this, I excitedly asked Him how He would show me His glory and where to look.  He answered, "Seek My face in the trees," so I looked around at the trees surrounding us in the jungle we were working in.  I saw bright red flowers on the treetops all around us.  His glory and His presence was surrounding us, uniting us as one body of Christ by closing us in together.  When I saw that, I doubted that I had seen the Lord's glory in the way He wanted to show it to me yet, because I felt like there was an interpretation for what I saw that I hadn't received yet, but then He said in the process of saying something else, "I have shown you My glory."  It turned out that He was showing me the way He was going to show His glory throughout the week: through the unity of the team and the way He speaks to individuals in the body of Christ in order for whole communities to hear Him, and how things that one individual hears may be connected to what another person hears.

Then He told me to wander.  We were back to chopping and pulling weeds, and McGuiver was clearing a pathway off to the side, so I was led to go in the direction he had gone.  I didn't go very far, though, so God made this convicting, piercing comment: "Show Me your glory."  I have been placing my glory in my reputation, not in Jesus Christ, which was why I couldn't find the boldness and humility to follow McGuiver.  I didn't want to do something that might put my reputation at risk, whatever it may be.

As we finished hacking away at the bigger weeds and proceeded to pull the smaller weeds out by hand, God revealed a reflection to me of Jamaican versus American faith.  We don't have weeds in America like the giant ones we had to cut down in Jamaica, but we have more of the smaller weeds everywhere.  The Jamaican church focuses a lot on "being good," as one of the small group leaders mentioned during our leadership meeting Sunday night, while the focus of the growing American church is a lot more on prayer and visions and encouragement, etc.  The Jamaican church has a lot of surface issues to deal with in their society—and of course America does too—but the American church looks at the inner spiritual needs that are harder to handle.  The larger weeds we hacked at with machetes, easily cutting them down, while we had to get down on our knees to pull out the smaller weeds by hand.  Too often we leave those smaller weeds untended, and they grow to become those larger weeds.  We in America look at pride, anger, and envy, and we don't do anything about it, but those are the most dangerous weeds: the ones we ignore.  We need to get down on our knees in prayer to uproot even the tiniest of weeds before they can grow into bigger weeds that suffocate the crops we want to grow.  I found out later that the whole metaphor about pulling up weeds by the roots applied to the life of a fellow small group leader, but not necessarily with weeds representing sin.  Her "weeds" were the things in her life that she was holding on to that she needed to let go of.  As she began uprooting her weeds, God took her to Isaiah 61:3, calling her an oak of righteousness, "the planting of the Lord, that He may be glorified."  This image of weeds and oaks of righteousness has been coming up over and over again in the last two months.  Ironically, the mural we were painting at the infirmary was of a tree, and Isaiah 61:3 was painted next to the tree as a caption when the mural was finished.  A few weeks ago I had a vision (an actual vision this time, not a visual) of a tree being uprooted from a garden full of weeds and replanted in a rock—the Rock.  Before the Jamaica trip, I went to the "Prophetic Rooms" at Wesley, where the interns give prophetic encouragement, and one of the things they said to encourage me was that they saw a large rock representing stability, and they saw that I was firmly rooted in Christ.  I don't think it's coincidence that the words "rock" and "rooted" went together both in the Prophetic Rooms and in my vision.  Anyway, God showed me a lot of unity in His work through this one revelation about roots, trees, and weeds.

What God taught me Wednesday and Thursday kind of blended together.  Wednesday at the work site I saw a lot of unity, both within the team and between the team and some of the students at the school we were working at.  Some of the kids helped us clean up when were done working for the day, and some of us got to play soccer, dance, and sing with them.  As we finished laying the last of the cinderblocks to complete the wall, I got to talk with a student named Douwarne.  He reminded me a lot of myself.  He was quiet and reserved, but he seemed curious and wanted to make conversation, so he found things to ask me about America.  We talked about school, my lack of a girlfriend (haha), and my abstinence from alcohol, which he seemed surprised about.  After only being exposed to American college students who come to Jamaica to party and drink, seeing a group of Americans who don't drink seemed to be new to him.  It's sad that that has become the image we Americans have made for ourselves in the world.  Anyway, it was cool getting to talk to Douwarne and hopefully being a positive influence and a light for Christ to him.

As God spoke to us more and more about identity throughout the week, it all seemed to reach a culminating point around this time in the week.  I've realized that I have a lot of expectations of myself, and I project a lot of my expectations on other people—not that I expect the same things of other people that I expect of myself, but I believe that they have the same expectations of me that I have of myself.  And that often defines who I am and what I do.  I don't want to do anything that would draw unnecessary attention to myself by doing something that nobody would expect of me, something that might change their perception of who I am.  And as the Lord revealed this to me, I realized the reason for spiritual names, at least in my case: God defines us and shows us where He wants to lead us by giving us names with a calling.  It's easier for me to do something if I know that it's expected of me, so having a name with a calling helps me to know what I'm expected to do.  For example, to me Lemuel means intercessor, so because God and most of the Port Maria team, as well as the Montenegro team and a few other people, expect me to pray, it makes it easier to pray.  Knowing that there are people depending on me to pray serves as a reminder to me that I need to pray.  I found this to be true when I was talking to my friend Alex on the Montenegro team and I said that I'd be praying for the team, and she said, "You know, I actually believe you.  A lot of people just say that, but I really believe you will pray for us."  That was really encouraging to me, and I hope she knows just how encouraging it was.  A couple days later, I found myself thinking about what she said, and I immediately started praying for the Montenegro team and their trip, which starts tomorrow, May 15th.  Speaking of which, please pray for them as they finish getting everything together for the trip, and pray that God would go with them and protect them and establish their work in His name, and that He would be glorified in everything they do.

Okay, now back to Jamaica.  I would say that Thursday was my favorite day, but there was so much awesome stuff that happened throughout the week that it's hard to say if I actually had a single favorite day at all.  But I'll go ahead and say that Thursday was my favorite day.  Why?  Well, after our extra half hour of sleep and after eating breakfast, we headed to Trevor's church to spend time praying and worshiping the God who allowed us to spend such an amazing week in Jamaica.  It was incredible seeing so many people gathered in one room passionately praying, especially the freshmen.  Andrew led worship as we prayed, and Bob, the director of Wesley, interjected prayer topics to direct our focus, because united prayer has a special place in God's eyes, as Jesus said in Matthew 18:19-20: "Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by My Father in heave.  For where two or three are gathered in My name, there am I among them."  Toward the end of our time there (I always forget how long we were there; it felt like an hour or less, but I'm pretty sure it was longer than that, I'm just not sure how much longer), Bob opened the floor to anyone who wanted to pray for anything specific.  The idea was not to give any explanation, but to just take stage and pray out loud so that everyone else could agree with the prayers.  Seeing so many of the freshmen and leaders go up front and pray for the Jamaicans and for Athens and for our team with such complete surrender, giving everything to God, was amazing.

But the blessings of the day didn't stop there.  After that we went to Galina Primary to play with the kids, who were having field day.  I didn't really know what to do for most of the time we were there because I'm not very outgoing, and I'm not great at playing with kids.  But when Ashley, who was carrying a little girl in her arms, said that the girl wanted to get on someone's shoulders, that was something I could do.  I don't even know the little girl's name, but she seemed to enjoy it, and I loved it.  I never really thought about it until now, but that's how God wants us to come to Him: He wants us to seek Him, and He wants to carry us on His shoulders—He wants us to be completely dependent on Him, unable and unwilling to do anything apart from Him—and He wants us to take joy in knowing that He is completely in control, because He loves it when we depend on Him and ask Him to serve us in the ways He wants to serve us.

We didn't stay at Galina Primary for long.  We left in two groups at different times because we only had one bus.  The other two were either at Kermit's church or at the infirmary, where the groups were finishing up the roofing of the church and the mural at the infirmary, in addition to whatever was left to paint on the overhang at the infirmary.  Back at the Casa Maria, we just hung out until dinner, then we went to our team meeting.  It still gives me chills to think about that night.  All week I had been wanting to pray for each person in my small group family individually, and I had already gotten the opportunity to pray for Josh and Jack, so when Jasmine, one of the interns, said what we would be doing that night, I got really excited because God was showing me even more unity in the desires He had given us.  Each of the leaders went to the interns and directors to receive prayer for an outpouring of the Holy Spirit, and then we went to our freshmen and prayed for them.  I have to admit, even though God has called me Lemuel, an intercessor, I feel like I don't know what to pray a lot of times, so praying for the freshmen was really revealing to me because I felt like I was just praying what I knew to pray instead of letting the Spirit pray for me.  But I know the Lord answered anyway and will continue to answer.  And it was cool praying for each of the freshmen with Rebekah because one of the jokes about Wesley style/Korean style prayer/the "holy roar" (although it's not really a joke) is that if you don't know what to pray for, you can just listen to the person next to you and steal their ideas, and it seemed like Rebekah definitely knew what to pray for because the Spirit was praying for her.  And it was awesome getting to pour out into the freshmen individually, with specific prayers for each one of them.  It made it feel like we really are a family, every single one of us.

After we prayed for the freshmen and Josh prayed for me and Rebekah, we went to our small groups, where we basically debriefed on the entire week, since we didn't have much time left there.  Josh and I walked in late, so they caught us up, and then I shared a vision I had had the day before.  I saw a map of Jamaica, like on an iPhone GPS, with the blue dot marking where we were in Port Maria, and circles radiating out from the dot.  Then I saw the dot move back to Athens, GA, as were returned to the States.  But as the dot moved, a copy of the dot was left in Port Maria, with waves still radiating from the city.  And as we arrived back in Athens, the dot start giving off waves in Athens while the other dot continued to emit waves from Jamaica.  This was meant to show that the impact we had in Jamaica would have a lasting effect, even after we were gone.  The Holy Spirit would still remain in Jamaica, working with what we did and working in the places we were unable to reach in our short time there.  And at the same time, the Spirit would also go with us back to Athens to work in us and through us at home.  What came next blew us all away: Jack said that he had heard pretty much that exact same vision last summer at a conference in Chicago.  The speaker had a map up on the wall, and she put a pin on Chicago and drew circles out from the city, and she did the same thing with Atlanta.  Eventually the circles overlapped each other, symbolizing the way that the Spirit's work becomes known all over the world, and His work in one place serves as encouragement to His disciples in another place, which spurs them on to even greater things in Jesus' name, which then encourages more people until the whole world is one big dot emanating waves of the Holy Spirit.  And this is being proven even now.  While I was in Athens, I heard about a lot of stuff that was going on at home in Woodstock and Kennesaw, GA, there's been revival among a lot of my friends in State College, Pennsylvania, and I've been hearing about all that's been going on at Bethel Church in California for a while now.  In fact, this past semester, Bethel chose to target Athens as a center for ministry because they believe that God is going to move powerfully in and through this city.  So as Bethel sent teams on mission trips throughout the world, they sent a team to Athens to encourage the body of believers here.  They went to Africa, eastern Europe, southeast Asia, South America, and of all places, Athens, Georgia.  In addition to these "dots" on the map, Wesley also sent teams to Peru and New York over spring break, and they are sending teams to Brazil, Cambodia, and Montenegro in the next few weeks.  Again, if you could be praying for the Brazil and Cambodia teams along with Montenegro, I'd really appreciate it.  I also have friends going to Israel and back to Peru, another friend who is going to North Africa with Café 1040 (he actually left today), a friend from Puerto Rico, and a friend from Japan who came to UGA as an exchange student who came to know Jesus Christ while he was here and will now be taking Him back to Japan with him!  And there's so much more going on in the Kingdom, as we head out to work at camps this summer.  My friend Meg is working with Lifeworks in Colorado; Bryan is working at a camp in Montana; Taylor, John, Katie, and Anna are working at a camp in Maine; Amanda is working at Snowbird in North Carolina; and I'm working with Lauren and Devin at Camp Highland in Elijay, GA, starting next Monday.  I can't wait to see all that the Lord has planned for this summer!

Anyway, back on track with Jamaica, Friday came around all too soon.  But we got to enjoy some time together and with the other Jamaica teams, which was a lot of fun.  And that evening all of the small groups sat together at dinner, which surprisingly hadn't happened until then.  And then we had the talent show, Jessica and Jasmine gave the leaders encouraging notes, and I think we had the last night of identity prayer that night.  The last one might have been Thursday night.  I don't remember.  Either way, identity had become a huge part of the trip, and I later found out that identity was a big part of all of the Jamaica trips, which showed even more unity, which is really cool.  God was staying true to His word in my visual at the beginning of the week, when He showed me the "fire in the forest" flowers and told me that He would show me unity.

Even though the trip was just about over, God wasn't done speaking to me about the trip.  As the plane took off the next day, I looked out the window back at Jamaica, and I saw clouds covering the whole island.  There were no clouds over the water.  Just over the island.  The iPhone GPS vision came back to me, and the Lord connected that vision to what I was seeing at that moment: the Spirit of God was hovering over the entire island of Jamaica, ready to rain down and fall upon the Jamaicans and bring revival throughout the island.  Our work was done there for the time being, but the Lord promised that He will never stop working there.  He will always be working to bring the Jamaicans to know Him fully, and He is preparing the land, even now, for next year's Freshley team so that we can know Him more.

Remember that airplane visual I mentioned all the way at the beginning of this post?  Well, I originally thought that it was about our work that we would be doing in Jamaica, but it turned out that it was actually about our return to the States.  Obviously, the whole Jamaica trip was a huge spiritual high, but for a lot of us it was a gradual high, if that makes sense.  Instead of being a kind of spiritual high that can never be reached outside of a mission trip or some intense spiritual experience, the kind that of spiritual high feeling that can easily be lost in an instant after returning from the trip, this was a lasting kind of spiritual high, the kind that leaves an impact on our way of life.  The Lord brought us to Jamaica for a reason, and we were only able to be there by His grace.  He brought us to the point of take-off, and Jamaica was that point where the plane was stable in the air in a constant state of growth and forward motion.  But the plane has to land eventually, and so did our spring break mission trip, so we had to come back to America.  Now we have to remember all that the Lord taught us while we were Jamaica and use it to glorify Him in all that we do.

One of the things that Josh emphasized throughout the week was one of the main themes of Freshley this entire semester: the time is now.  We also seem to look ahead to the future, looking forward to what's next, or look back at the past, dwelling on things that could have or should have been, and we never focus on the here and now.  Now that the plane has landed and we are back in our true mission field, we have to focus on the task at hand.  We can remember all that God did in Jamaica and thank Him for it, but we are here now, not in Jamaica.  Even if you didn't go to Jamaica, whether you supported me or prayed for me and the team, or if you're just reading this because you were curious about what happened while we were there, ask yourself this: What is the task at hand?  What does God have planned for you right now?  Who has He called you to be, and what does He want you to do right now?  Whatever your task may be, do it well.  All for the glory of God.

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http://www.facebook.com/v/10150763695974880
If you read my last Jamaica post, this is the same video I posted before.  Even if you've already seen it, it's worth watching again.
This is a video my friend Andrew made to sum up the whole trip and the mark it left on us.  Even if all that I wrote doesn't give you a clear idea of just how much the Lord did for us, in us, and through us while we were there, I hope this video does it justice for you.