This week, God has brought me to His altar and to my knees. I feel like someone in those movies who is in the midst of a huge fiery explosion and then, just when the audience loses all hope, emerges from the fire unscathed. This is God's faithfulness.

Although it felt like the enemy's flaming arrows were coming from all directions and too innumerable to dodge, the Lord did not allow a single hair on my head to be harmed, just as He promises.

"You will be hated by all for my name's sake. But not a hair of your head will perish. By your endurance you will gain your lives."
Luke 21:17-19

God is faithful and true. He acts on His promises if we choose to claim them. Through this week, in times of despair I found that Psalm 49 pointed me towards the truth that He is an ever-present help in our troubles. When I was caught in a whirlwind of hopelessness, the Lord gently reminded me to be still and worship. Although I have by no means perfected this, the Lord has shown me time and time again that He is worthy of our complete trust and obedience.

Just a few weeks ago I was reading a devotion about faith. It described 3 different kinds of faith: 1.) acting on faith when there's evidence, 2.) choosing to have faith when we feel it, or 3.) choosing to step out in faith even though the world and our emotions tell us otherwise. As I read that, believing I was stepping out in the third and most obedient kind of faith, I didn't realize how much more God wanted to teach me about it. Throughout the whole situation, even though I did not believe it at the time, God was teaching me a lesson about what faith actually looks like.

So often, I feel like my "Christian walk" better glorifies God when I feel completely inadequate. When I finally come to the end of myself, I'm emptied, reliant, and broken at his feet. But it's in those times of weakness where the words of Paul reign true: "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness..."

Lord, help me to remember that being broken at your feet is far better than being whole on my own throne.

RA Training Debrief

Debrief

God has been giving me a much needed perspective change this past week. People are important. With the busyness of life though, sometimes I forget that very important statement. I am tempted to think that whatever task I’m trying to accomplish, or that even myself, is more important than genuinely loving the people around me.

The past few days of RA training have been heavy. Crushed dreams and past hurts have been resurfaced through reflective activities. I have been witness to many tears and people whom first seemed like nothing could faze them have taken on a new humanity. Hurt. It’s something so common but so untouched and unspoken about. It seems easier in this society of selfies and Netflix to avoid talking about the things that really matter.

God has been showing me a couple of things through these very raw past days. 1.) I am quick to judge and 2.) The world is in search of hope and healing. Even the most adamant agnostics have broken down and admitted that they simply aren’t enough. Lord, this world needs you! And oh, they are so aware of it.

These past few days I have felt weak. Completely void of life and energy. It’s been a weak of long days and not much time to myself. I have felt very incapable of “being an ambassador of Christ.” Instead, I have felt frustrated, unworthy, and sinful. I found myself being hard on myself, “Christina, you’ll never be a good witness to your staff if you don’t read the Bible and feel holy. I couldn’t have been more lied to.

The words from these songs come to mind: 
“Rid me of myself, I belong to you.” 
"The art of losing myself in bringing you praise." 

Although I don’t feel holy or worthy, I am worthy because he loves me. I’ve realized that the times in my life where I feel the most incapable and unequipped are the times when I’m most available for God. It’s the times when I stop trying to push my own agenda that God is able to reign in me. I’m slowly figured out what God means when he asks us to rid ourselves. He demands that we are unable to be filled by anything but His presence and grace. It is by grace that people are able to find me appealing in the slightest. Praise God rain has come to this desert soul!

Lord, help me to not forget that it is by grace that I have been saved and set free. Keep me humble and continue to rid me of myself. In those moments where I’m tempted to form judgments, remind me that while I was still a sinner, Christ died for me. Reign in my heart.

“So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, 2 complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. 3 Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. 4 Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. 5 Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus,6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. 9 Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

Philippians 2:1-11