It has taken me a long time to write the second part of this blog.
I could blame it on a busy schedule, one that has been full of preparations. After all, I’ve had a lot to do! I’ve made countless trips to Target and REI. I’ve scheduled lunches and made visits to certain colleges to say goodbye to friends and family. I’ve been taking time to talk to friends as much as possible before they are no longer a text message away. I have been doing what needs to be done before I depart for 9 months and leave behind what has been normal to me for the past 19 years.
Originally I had planned on writing about the second half of training camp.
But the truth is, since camp I have been in this place that I call the “In-Between.”
Not completely submerged, but dipping my toe in.
Knowing how Christ wants me to live, but living how I want instead.
I met the most beautiful people at training camp. I don’t mean that they were all physically attractive or had picture-perfect features. I mean that they had the most beautiful hearts. God let me meet and experience these people who had huge hearts full of compassion. I saw these believers who were so in love with The Lord. I met so many new people who had such a crazy faith, and they radiated beauty.
These people are not in between. These people are all in. They surrender their lives daily to The Lord and are committed to being His child.
As I watched these people it made me think, ‘I want that. I want my relationship with God to look like that. I want that love. They’re different and I want that’
Is that not what we’re called to do in our day to day lives?
Are we not called to act in a way, in every situation and in every single thing that we do, to be different because we love The Lord?
Are we not called as disciples to make people ask, ‘What is different about this person that makes them like this?’ And also say, ‘I want that?’
It is easy for me to be distracted by the world that I live in. It is easy for me to curse at the person that is going too slow on the highway, to react negatively when I hear gossip about me, or to be quick to fall into a place of frustration when things don’t go the way that I expected them to.
It is almost natural to react in a way that is solely based on what I am feeling in that exact moment.
But in the middle of pain, suffering, and hurt we are called to react in Christ. How often do I react in a way that is not in love or that doesn’t reflect God? The people around me see the way that I respond to situations like these.
How often do they see Christ?
Am I all in?
OR am I still in the “In-Between?”
As I continued to learn more about each of my fellow campers and future teammates they revealed that they weren’t as perfect as I first thought they were. Each had their own struggle, but the difference between us is that they decided to act out in Christ instead of letting their emotions take control of their reactions.
The one thing I have learned a lot in the past month is that I too am not perfect. I think for a long time I have believed that I have to be perfect before The Lord. I have thought I have to be completely healed or fixed in my brokenness before the Holy Spirit can live inside me.
However, Jesus called the broken hearted, He called the sick.
“The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit,” Psalm 34:18
I have also learned that there are things in my life that separate me from The Lord. Some of these are things I am not ready to let go of yet. This sin keeps me from growing in Christ, a selfishness I haven’t been able to escape from.
But we have a choice. It is not God that separates us from Him but our sin. It isn’t God’s wish that we are separated from Him—He hates that! It’s our own sin that keeps us from drawing closer to the Lord. The choice is to act on emotion or in the way we want instead of allowing Christ to fill our lives, fill every decision, to fill every action.
Our lives here are nothing compared to the eternal life we will have in heaven. But how we decide to live our lives can make a huge difference on who else gets to join us in that eternal life.
One conversation.
One reaction.
It could be all it takes for one person to say, “I want that”.
God doesn’t call us half way; he calls us all the way.
He says to surrender our lives, to lay down our selfishness and worldly desires so that we may live for Him and be disciples of His word.
He granted us these lives. Don’t we owe it to Him to do what he put us on the Earth to do?
So how will you live?
In the in-between…
Or in complete surrender to the one who laid His life down for yours?
