You revive me.

WOW have I slacked. But let me just say, this semester has been an ABSOLUTELY incredible.

God has proven Himself faithful again.
And again.
And again, and again.

I have been drenched with blessings straight from His hand.

There have been too many life-shaping things that have transpired to not testify about His faithfulness and not speak about them. So here are my top 3 blessings this semester, and, of course, they are even better than what I was praying for:

1) I have discovered friendships between 3 girls this semester that I know I will have for forever. He has answered my prayer of giving me people whose hearts beat as mine. They’re passions and their desires and their spirits are all like mine. We have the true heartstrings of sisterhood and I have never meant it more when I say that I love these girls.

FINALLY!

2) My classes have been fantastic. I am enjoying going to class. Like, what.

Learning about Speech and Language Pathology has made me so excited. Everyday I learn more, the more I fall in love with it. And after this next week of finals, I am a semester closer to starting this dream career! I’ve started learning sign language and LOVE. IT. It is so mind-blowing how intelligent people are who use this mode of communication. How they are able to think and move their hands so fast, as where we just speak to get our point across. They must use their full body to communicate not only their words but their emotions. It seriously is amazing and has shown me yet another beautiful side to my Lord and God. Not to mention I get to LEARN it and get GRADES for learning it.

Another blessing.

3) My Bible class this semester has been the best I have ever had in my life. I have learned so much about Acts through Revelation, and so much more. We’ve discussed topics such as miracles, baptism, the Lord’s Supper, womens’ roles in the church vs. mens’, predestination, the history of the church and why Paul and the other writers of these books are writing about what they are, the literal and symbolic nature of Revelation, when to interpret the Bible literally and when to take only the principle from the story, the Jew/Gentile struggle and reconciliation, EVERYTHING.

I feel like I understand SO much more than I ever have before of why I believe the way I have been taught to believe and what this kind of truth means in my life.

I have been challenged to dive head first into Scripture and ASK QUESTIONS. It’s quite alright if I read something and don’t understand. It is healthy if I am confused when I’m done reading. That means that as I’m reading I’m paying attention to what the Word is saying instead of mindlessly scanning the words I’ve read my whole life. I don’t need to shove it aside and throw the safety blanket of “I don’t have to understand everything to be a Christian” over my brain’s tangled mess.

I am learning. I am learning. I am learning.

It is this class that is causing me to fall in love with the Word like never before.

I love reading about the power of Christ’s resurrection. I love reading how I, TODAY, am the one that completes the faith of the men and women of old. What we do with our faith COMPLETES theirs. I complete it. We complete it. I love reading about how the Spirit is described as a rushing wind. This is who my God is, rather than some disconnected and uninterested Being that we chant to every week. He is real. He is ready to include us into His story.

I find myself in awe of His love just by these three blessings.

And there have been hundreds!

From learning how to worship with a pure heart, to days where the weather is absolutely perfect.

Thank you my sweet Jesus for this unbelievable, unreal end to my freshman year.

Of course, you know I can’t blog a post without updating what God has been teaching me on the inside since the last time I posted. So here we go:

Time has been flying and so have been my thoughts.

They seem to jerk back and forth from one extreme to another. One day I’m pumped for the future, ready to get it going, and the next my mind analyzes every single action and word, wondering what in the world I’m going to do.

My heart is completely open and pushing toward mission work still. Sometimes the push is more like a forceful dragging because I get so excited for it to be here.

But I still have heartstrings here.

Every bit of me wants to do this, but there are things that I know I’m holding on to.

I need the strength to be willing to let go of everything if the time calls for me to. I need the patience to wait until I see if there’s any need to let go at all. If that time comes and I see that I do indeed need to let go, I need the faith believe that I will be OK wherever I am.

I feel so silly even questioning in God’s sovereignty over it. He sees big picture. He knows it all. Literally. All about my life. All about your life. He knows. He can see where every decision I make leads.

And I can’t. I can’t see it all and I can’t know everything. There isn’t a possible way for me to be able to take a turn and look into the lenses that God looks through.

And that’s the problem. When it comes to the future, there’s a mind block. There’s quite literally NO WAY anyone can know the full extent of the blessings and curses to come in every decision made. And here’s where the problem happens with me. I’m such a planner. I love to know. I love to be prepared. I love the feeling of getting things done and putting that check next to things. I love that exhausted feeling at the end of the day where you know you’ve gotten a lot more done than you expected to. That feeling of being efficient. And I would consider that as one of my strengths.

But that’s my downfall as well.

I can’t always know. And I can’t always be sure. Sometimes decisions have to be made before I can have any kind of idea if it was in fact the wisest choice, and all I have to go on is a whim. I hate that feeling. I hate feeling like there’s something I could have done better. That feeling of,

“If I just would have known.”

“If God would have just told me straight out what He wanted.”
"If only I could have seen this coming and started preparing myself for this sooner."

If something goes wrong, I always feel like there could have been SOMETHING I could have done better. Or some kind of sign I could have picked up on. Feeling unprepared, caught off guard, or having doubts is something I don’t deal well with. And I know it comes from a place of liking to be in control. I like to be in control of as much as I can. Not so much dictator-esqe type of control. I mean just being able to determine my own outcome as much as it depends on me. My mind functions and works in the attitude, “Well if I can do it the way I want, why not? Why ask for help when I know I can get it done the way I want it done?” And I don’t think anyone is far removed from this. Everyone has a remnant of this kind of thought processing. If you know you can get something done and it be exactly how you want, why pass the duty on to someone else that you aren’t sure can produce the same outcome?
This is so wrong. This is so anti-dependant on God and community.

And here’s the truth:

This is where God comes in and turns it all upside down…or is it right side up?

Faith.

Your mind that is full of doubts, uneasiness, anxiety, uncertainty, fear of no control.

 

FAITH.

So much struggle and trust and uncertainty in one word.

One word is what holds me back from living the life I was made to live.

And I feel like I just can’t do it.

I can’t just allow my future and my relationships and everything that is so important to me just free-fall. I can’t. It’s all too important. Where I live and what I do and who I serve and who I marry lead in completely different directions, and each direction’s destination lead to completely different lives. How can I let such huge choices just be.

How do you find the peace to just dwell, knowing what a burden making the wrong decisions can lead to?

You find it through faith.

Not the faith you’ve grown up around your whole life.

This faith is the faith of Abraham.

Gen. 22:2-5.

“Then God said, ‘Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about.’ Early the next morning Abraham got up and saddled his donkey. He took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac. When he had cut enough wood for the burnt offering, he set out for the place God had told him about. On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. He said to his servants, ‘Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you.’”

The faith that was not just willing to kill his own son, but was on his way up the mountain to do it. The faith that turns around to his servants as he’s leaving to sacrifice his son and says, “WE will came back to you.”

And how much more faith does it take to believe God will spare you from killing your son than it does to believe that God knows full well what is best for your future?

All I can think is how shameful, how small, how weak, how fragile my faith is.

But I am learning how to strengthen it. I am asking God constantly to strengthen it for me. To come inside of me and work. Because I can no longer live my life in fear of making the wrong choice. Everything has to be soaked with faith. From my prayers to my relationships. When I pray without faith, God tells you and I that He does not hear it. He TELLS us that! And I cringe at how many prayers I have prayed in a spirit of not knowing if God will do anything.

Oh God forgive me for that.

It is the hardest thing I have ever had to learn because these kind of lessons take time. And by time I mean days. And months. And years.

But I am praying, I am trusting, and I am falling more in love.

I am being molded into a woman of prayer and woman of faith.

How can I complain about that?