Do not be anxious...

This semester has been my hardest semester of college yet and it's only going to get more difficult. Whether it's a 10 page research project, final exams or searching for an internship, there is always going to be something to direct my attention away from the sovereignty of God. Forgetting that God is omnipotent and sovereign over my life causes me to be anxious. I start worrying about graduating on time and then what I am going to do after I graduate, what job I'm going to get, how much money I'll make, and so on and so forth. These thoughts produce anxiety and stress that only make it more difficult to deal with these issues. If I had no choice but to worry my daily life would be strenuous and without joy. Thankfully, there is another option. God doesn't want us to worry about our lives at all. He knows that anxiety can greedily steal away our strength and joy. He tells us in Philippians 4:6-7,

"Do not be anxious about anything but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God and the peace of God which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus."

What an incredible promise! God wants us to come to Him with our worries and anxieties and He promises us that when we do he will grant us peace and not just any peace but His peace, the peace that surpasses all understanding.

I remember one day this past semester when I was working on a 10 page draft of a research project for one of my English classes. I had about four pages to go and I needed to send off a completed draft to two of my peers that night so they could review it for me. I had classes during the day and right after class I had worship practice so I knew I wouldn't be getting a considerable amount of work done on it until later in the evening. Now, usually I would be freaking out about getting it done on time but I wasn't. I was actually experiencing what it was like to place all your care on Jesus (I Peter 5:7) and to rest in His perfect peace. It was blissful.

It also made me wonder why I don't rest in Him all the time. If it feels so good to rest with Jesus why do I make every effort to exclude Him from my life? Why do I continue to believe that I can handle everything on my own, when deep down I know that I can't handle anything without my Lord and savior, Jesus Christ?

1 Peter 5:7 says to "cast all your anxieties on Christ because he cares for you." Jesus doesn't want us to carry a heavy burden. He wants us to be free. Bring your cares to Christ, leave your anxiety at the cross. Then walk. Walk and do not faint. Then run. Run and do not grow weary.

When God knows just what to say...

A quiet time on John 8:23 yielded one of the best experiences I have had during my times spent with God.

As I was reading John 8:21-30, verse 23 stood out to me. Jesus is speaking and He says,

"You are from below; I am from above. You are of this world; I am not of this world."

I was confused as to why this would stand out to me so I asked God what He would have me learn from it and I wanted to share with you what He said to me so here it goes:

Kayla,

Have you not realized what it took for Me to have you? Do you not yet understand the magnitude of your circumstances? You were a child of the devil, a citizen of this early world. I am the Son of God, a citizen of His heavenly and righteous kingdom. There is a great chasm between below and above and I stretched my arms across it for you! I did it for you! I suffered for you! I died for you! How can you still doubt your own worth? How can you despair of life and how can you compare yourself to others thinking that you should be the same as them or have the same things as they do. My dear, I didn't purchase you with My blood to make you become a clone of those around you. No! I purchased you with My very blood that you might stand out and be different! That you would know who your Maker is and fall in love with Me! Don't forget Me! Do not go after the lovers of this world. I will stop you! I will make My way go against you. I will not let you out of My arms. I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Do not forsake me now. Come, be quieted by my love. Let me rejoice over you with loud singing. Come my dear, My beautiful princess, let me speak tenderly to you. You are altogether beautiful, my love; there is no flaw in you.

I realized that I had been comparing myself to other people, trying to measure up to them or be like them. I've been struggling in this area for a long time. But God wants me to be unique. His body is diverse and He wants me to stand out from the crowd by becoming more like Christ, not by becoming like those around me.

Thank you God for exulting over ME with loud singing!!! (Zeph. 3:17)

Evangelism

Nearly every Monday night spent in Pigeon Forge, TN was spent going out into the streets of either Pigeon Forge or Gatlinburg and sharing the gospel. I remember my first night quite vividly. My team had been assigned Patriot Park in Pigeon Forge, and we parked the car in front of the cute little shopping center opposite the park. I was freaking out and so were my teammates. I remember saying, "Let's just get back in the car and go back to the cabin." I was probably thinking, "We don't really need to do this." That was Satan speaking through fear but even though we were all scared, team leader Carolina was there to save the day, speaking II Timothy 1:7 to us. "For God has given us a spirit not of fear but of power, love, and self-control." Isn't that awesome? Here we all were, scared and freaking out about approaching strangers and sharing the gospel with them and God, always being ready to help us combat the devil, whips out that verse, reassures us and brings us into willing obedience to him.

Now ready for anything the world had coming for us my partner and I approached our first victim (just kidding), our first person who we would share our illustration, known as the Bridge, with. He was a man, probably around his early 30s sitting with his adorable child who was heartily enjoying a very colorful lollipop that was also all over his face. So we approached him saying, "Hi, my name is Kayla and this is my friend Eriona. We're going around asking people to give their opinion of an illustration of the main theme of the Bible. Can we show it to you and get your opinion?" My friend was actually the one sharing this time so she started going through Romans 6:23 with him. About half-way through our presentation, the man's father came out of the store and we soon learned that the father was a pastor. We were amazed. All this time we had been sharing the gospel with the son of preacher. They allowed us to finish our presentation and we learned that the son was saved. That night was very encouraging even though after that we got several rejections. Each week it got easier but there were always those butterflies that refused to relent.

Now that I'm back on campus I wanted to put to use everything that I had learned over STP and for the past two weeks now my friend and I have been going out together once a week and sharing the bridge together. I can't wait to see what God has in store for us for the rest of the semester!

What do I know of holy?

"but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, 'You shall be holy, for I am holy.'" ~I Peter 3:16

What does it mean to be holy?

A word study on net.bible.org produced these definitions:

holy: set apart to the service or worship of God; reserved from profane or common use; free from sinful affections; pure in heart; godly; guiltless; acceptable to God

Oswald Chambers has this to say on the subject of holiness,

"Never tolerate, because of sympathy for yourself or for others, any practice that is not in keeping with a holy God. Holiness means absolute purity of your walk before God, the words coming from your mouth, and every thought in your mind--placing every detail of your life under the scrutiny of God Himself."

WHOA! God demands holiness, absolute purity, in EVERY aspect of my life. But how can this holiness be attained when every aspect of my being--my speech, my actions, my thoughts, my desires and feelings, my mind, soul and body--is completely, totally and all-inclusively infected, degraded and depraved by my sin?

We need to be holy and live holy lives--anything less is unacceptable to God. We gain this holiness through a relationship with Jesus Christ. He is our substitute, our propitiation for our sins. His righteousness is transferred to us and God reconciles us to Himself through him.

"God can put [us] into perfect oneness with Himself through the death of Jesus Christ, without a trace of anything coming between us any longer."

-Oswald Chambers

My fellow Christians, my brothers and sisters in the Lord,

Do you believe that we need to be holy? Do you believe that God can come into you and make you holy through the blood of Jesus Christ? Search your being. What parts of your life do you still need to surrender to God? What unholiness are you tolerating in your own life? Are you willing to give up the sin in your life so that God can work his holiness in you and bring glory to himself? Ask your heavenly Father, who is ready and willing to do all that you ask of him, to transform your heart, to give you a heart of absolute purity. We are called to be holy, and even more, we are destined for it. Don't let anything hold you back from attaining it.

Hello, my name is Kayla.

So now that you know what I am not, it is time to show you who I am.

I am a sinner who has been redeemed by the blood of Christ. I am forgiven for every selfish act, lustful thought, and ungracious word. I am the Lord's, a new creation (II Cor. 5:17). I am fearfully and wonderfully made in the image of God and bear Christ's image (Ps. 139:14). I am what God tells me I am, not the lies that the world dares to deceive me with. I am a bondservant of Christ, free from my sin and now a slave to righteousness. I am free from my sin, having been forgiven of every major and minor sin that I have committed in the past, am committing now in the present and will commit in the future. I am free from condemnation (Rom. 8:1). God is always with me and he has promised to never leave me or forsake me (Heb. 13:5). I have strong confidence in the Lord and the Lord is my confidence. I am a beautiful and mature young woman of God who has purified me by the blood of His Son. I am his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for the good works that he has prepared me for (Eph. 2:10). He has begun a good work in me and has promised to bring it to completion (Phil. 1:6). I am therefore, valuable and significant. I am fun, funny, silly and yes, a little weird. I am smart and have valuable opinions and insights to offer others. I am a child of God (John 1:12) and I am precious in his sight (Is. 43:4). God will give men in return for me and peoples in exchange for my life (Is. 43:4). He has loved me with an everlasting love (Jer. 31:3). I am lovable and worthy of pursuit for the Lord has loved me faithfully and pursued me relentlessly. I am who God made me to be and far be it from me to be anyone else.

This year is the beginning of a new season in my life. I'm throwing away the mask and forgetting my fears. This year I'm embracing the person that God created me to be and if anyone doesn't like me it doesn't matter because I wasn't created to please people; I was created to please God. His is the only opinion that matters.

"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ Jesus he is a new creation. The old has passed away, behold the new has come." ~II Cor. 5:17

"I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made." ~Ps. 139:14

"There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." ~Rom. 8:1

"for he has said, "I will never leave you nor forsake you." ~Heb. 13:5

"For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them." ~Eph. 2:10

"And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ." ~Phil. 1:6

"But to those who did receive him, who believed in his name he gave the right to be called children of God." ~John 1:12

"Because you are precious in my eyes, and honored, and I love you, I give men in return for you, peoples in exchange for you life." ~Is. 43:4

"I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you." ~Jer. 31:3

Stolen Identity continued...

My identity had been stolen by fear; by passing judgment on myself and others before even giving them a chance, before giving myself a chance. I felt like everyone was shutting me out, that they didn't like me or they thought I was weird or something. Then I realized the obvious--I was the one shutting everyone out, keeping my heart closed toward them and labeling them as unworthy of my trust. And I realized that the reason was that I wasn't comfortable with who I am and not only was I not comfortable with me but I didn't know who I was! So around this time a speaker gave a talk on finding out who you are (God has a funny way of teaching you what you need to learn at exactly the right time). One thing he said was that to find out who you are you have to figure out who you are not. The next morning my friend shared with me that for her devotion she was making a list of everything she wasn't and was then going to write a list of whatever was opposite of the other list. She encouraged me to do the same and I did. So my readers, here is what I am not:

I am not a relationship addict, a flirt or desperate for attention. I am not someone's toy. I am not a bra size or a pant size. I am not the clothes I wear, the house that I live in or the car that I drive. I am not the people I know or the attention I get. I am not the job that I work, the school that I go to or the major I pursue. I am not what people say about me or think about me. I am not how much I talk in groups or how much people notice me. I am not the devil's slave, a slave to others or even a slave to myself. I am not the sins I've committed, the past I'm ashamed of or the problems I've created. I am not alone and I am certainly not forsaken. I am not my struggles, my weaknesses or my insecurities. I am not the mistakes that I make or the stupid things that I say. I am not the instrument I play or the things that I do. I am not how many good quiet times I have in a week or how many times a day I pray. I am not the lies I've believed in the past or the lies that I believe now. I am not stupid, boring or inadequate. I am not ugly, worthless or unimportant. I simply am not.

Stolen Identity

This summer I learned that I care too much about what others think and say about me. I compare myself with others and always judge myself to be inadequate. I find it difficult to relate with others because I don't want to risk being real with them. I don't want to show others my true self because I feared they wouldn't like me, that they would judge or reject me. I wanted to let them into my life but my insecurities held me back. Instead, I would run away. The first couple of weeks of STP I kept to myself as much as possible. I preferred being alone to being around people because I knew I was safe alone. Safe from the judgement and rejection of others, and safe from embarrassing myself. As a result I noticed that I didn't bond as well with the girls in my cabin as everyone else did and I missed out on a lot. I didn't want to spend the rest of the summer on the outside of every inside joke so I tried to rectify the situation by being more outgoing. In my first attempt to be more social I went out with a group of people to grab some food. As soon as I got in the car I regretted my decision to go at once. My entire demeanor changed and it seemed that I was incapable of even manufacturing happiness. The second time I went on a hike with four other girls. I thought being with a smaller group would help matters but one small incident put me into a pretty terrible mood and I couldn't hide it. I'd always been able to mask my feelings fairly well. Why couldn't I do it now? From that incident and for the remainder of the hike my thoughts were focused inward. I couldn't understand why I was always the one who had trouble fitting in, who had difficulties opening up to people. I seemed to miss out on everything and I didn't understand why and it made me upset. All throughout my life I've felt like that, like a black sheep lost within a hundred white ones. When I found others that I could trust, that I could truly be myself with I stayed with them and they became my refuge but to the rest of the world I wore a mask of continual happiness. Nothing was ever wrong and nothing bothered me or made me upset. However, I soon realized that the line between my true self and my mask had become very vague. I didn't know who I was or what was part of the real Kayla and what was only manufactured. My identity had been stolen.

LuV iS a VeRb

As part of the program every Thursday we were required to take three hours, from 8-11am and have an XTAWG or an Extended Time Alone With God. This time was to be spent in God's word, in prayer, in meditation and just being still. As someone who struggles in her quiet times, this terrified me. The first Thursday came around and a lot of people were just so excited to get into the Word. I was smiling, trying to be excited but inwardly I was dreading the next three hours of my life. I did have a little bit of guidance from articles like "How to Spend a Day in Prayer" and "31 Ways to Praise" but I still wasn't thrilled about this whole XTAWG thing. After the first one, people would talk about what God had taught them or what verse he had laid on their heart. I remember coming up dry not feeling that I had any meaningful experiences during that time. I hoped that no one would ask me how my XTAWG was because i didn't want to have an unsatisfactory answer.

I didn't feel like I was experiencing God or capable of experiencing God the way my friends seemed to be and I was frustrated. I had also been struggling with feeling the love of God in my life for some time. I was even at the point of doubting my salvation, feeling like my heart was behind my head in that my head knew what the truth was but my heart lacked the same certainty. This scared me. This issue came up in one of my conversations with my team leader, Carolina. She asked me, "What do you think the signs are of someone whose heart has been changed by God?" I responded saying, "A repentant heart, a desire to be godly, confessing of Jesus as Lord and Savior, etc..." She asked me, "Do you have those desires? Are you willing to repent?" In tears I nodded yes. But again, this was only reassuring to my head. What about my heart?

I was doing my XTAWG outside and I was reading I Cor. 13 and the book of I John. (That's a lot talk about love by the way.) I paused for a moment and thought about how my friend Emily had gone in to work an hour early so I could get there at the time I had been scheduled to come in and I looked around me at the majesty of the mountains and the beauty of the earth around me and I remembered the work of Christ on the cross and I realized that God loves me. Pretty profound right? Ha! All these years of being a Christian, growing up being told that God loves me and this is my big revelation. Yes, God loves you, Kayla. I thought I knew that but something about that particular moment made me believe it, made me appreciate it.

God's love is not the love spoken of in love songs or the feeling of eternal bliss at the beginning of a marriage. God's love goes beyond that. It's something that we know we have by what God has done for us not by what we think we feel. Feelings are temporary and cannot be trusted. But God has shown his love for us through his Son, through the beauty of his creation and through other people. Love is not a feeling. Love is a choice, an action. Love is a verb! I challenge you this day to take the love that God has given you and to lavish it upon others. Love others extravagantly!

"God is love." I John 4:8

"Love is patient and kind. It does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all thing, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends." I Corinthians 13:4-7

2 months + STP = 1 unforgettable summer

Imagine that for two months of your summer you will be living in Pigeon Forge, TN in a cabin with 11 other people (strangers, maybe acquaintances at best), working at Dollywood, and focusing solely on your relationship with Christ. Having been denied access to TV and internet and being cramped into tight quarters, you are forced into a world where you can't escape the present reality by running to your room and locking the door behind you or getting on facebook chat to talk with a friend who only tells you what you want to hear and not what you need to hear. You're forced to make good use of your time because if you don't do Bible study now there will be no time to do it later. Your day is scheduled from the moment you wake up to the moment you collapse on top of your bed from exhaustion. You wake up no later than 8am so you can do your quiet time, if not because you want to then because someone is bound to ask you about it later. Then you do a little bit of Bible study or whatever and by 10am it's time to get ready for work. Work from 11-7:30 and it's 8pm by the time you get home leaving you less than 10 minutes to get yourself somewhat presentable for A) evangelism, B) workshop, or C) Nav Night.

Sound intense? Yeah, it was. Would I do it again in a heartbeat? Yes, yes I would.

I spent my summer focusing on three things: 1) my relationship with Christ, 2) my relationship with others and 3) myself. I studied the book of 2 Timothy, did daily quiet times and weekly XTAWGs (Extended Time Alone with God) where I would spend three consecutive hours simply focusing on God, His word and prayer. I learned how to get along with other girls through living with them as well as relating to the opposite sex through work, Team Date Nights and casual interactions. I also engaged on 1:1 conversations with my team leader whose job it was to disciple me and to help me along the way during this spiritual journey. Through those conversations I was able to learn more about myself in 2 months than in my entire lifetime, but we'll get into that more later.

This blog begins as a description of what I learned at the Navigators' Smoky Mountain Summer Summer Training Program 2010 (SMS STP 2010). It will continue as a way to release a mask that I've worn for years without realizing it. May these posts about my experiences be as encouraging to you as my experiences have been to me.

Thanks for reading!

<3 Kayla