"5 Days" (well tech. three now)

“5 Days”

So in five days I will be on a plane off to Benin West Africa. Five Days! Wow how time flies! I feel like it was just yesterday I was announcing my acceptance to the call God had made in my life, and now I’m about to live it. In the next five days I will be focusing a lot on 5 things that will hopefully get me set for my trip. Number one, I need to pack. For those who know me, I HATE to pack so this will probably be the LAST thing I will be doing (hahahha). Secondly would be eating as much of the foods I love I can think of before I leave. My theory is that if I make myself sick on WAVES coffee, pizza, sushi, cupcakes etc. I won’t miss it too much when I’m gone. Thirdly, I need to work on my French. Benin is a French speaking country and I want to be able to at least be able to say hello in French, be polite in French, know my numbers so I don’t get ripped off with money, know how to ask for directions in French and where the bathroom is! After that I would say my fourth task would be saying my goodbyes. Nobody likes doing it, I definitely don’t, but it needs to get done. Get ready for the water works!!! Lastly I need to clean. Being away means my mother gets to use my room as either a hotel room, storage or for something crafty. I need to make sure all my stuff is packed up neatly and out of “her’ way……in “my” room.

In all seriousness this is not a vacation I am getting ready for. I am going so that God may shine His light through me to people who are surrounded by darkness. There are five days left before I get on that plane, and there are five things I thought I would share with you that God has laid on my heart and that I would love for each of you to pray will seep into my being during this trip.

Number one: I am His Beloved and He is mine.
For some time now God has been surrounding me with the passages from both Ephesians 5: 22-33 and 1 Peter 3:1-7. Yes these are the passages speaking about Wives and Husbands, but it is not what you think. I don’t know if there are others out there who can understand where I am coming from when I say this but, I have often ignored these passages in the past because I either didn’t think they applied to me or I didn’t want to seem like one of those Christian women always focused on marriage (it didn’t help that I went to Trinity Western…). Lately though, God has been showing something so brilliant and amazing in these passages. In Ephesians 5:25-28 it talks about how husbands should love their wives like Christ loves the church and in reading this God showed me how much He truly cares about me. I am like a prized possession, an item of great worth but if not taken care of properly I will easily break. I began to see more and more that God not only loved me and cared but that I was HIS. His Beloved. Someone He cherishes like I were His most valuable possession. Because of that He not only loves on me, He protects me and guides me and comforts me and is my everything. The biggest thing however that I grasped was not just that I was His Beloved (it’s easier to take that in knowing that He died on the cross just because He loved me), but I also saw that He is MY Beloved. If I am to see God as like my “husband” (all you Trinitarians are cringing right now….ahhah) but really…in the way he addresses it in Ephesians He loves me like a Father, a Friend, An all powerful God and like a husband…then I am in some ways the “wife”. It really shot out to me that if I am, then I really need to start acting like it. Submitting FULLY to my God. In doing so I am able to fully receive the love He has for me. These passages show how the marriage between husband and wife ought to be and how in opening each other up to the other in these ways, the true unity between the two can be had. In order for me to be able to really have all of the love God is giving to me I must submit to him, surrender my all to him. But not just that, He desires for me to submit in love to Him. He desires me. Growing up I never felt that God would want to use me, but now that I am fully beginning to see that not only does God love me, but I can love him back my eyes are open to a bigger world of possibilities. I am able to see that God didn’t just die because he loved me but because he loved me He died. He wanted more for me. He wanted me to be able to live a new life, a new life of holiness. This idea causes me to not only draw closer to Him, but to continually submit to Him so that I am everyday being made new and that everyday I can and will be used by Him.

Number two: No more playing Defense, it’s all about the Offense!
The other day I went to a speech contest at my old high school. I sat and listened to this young people, these children, express things that they really believed in. Before the event had finished one of the students stood up and began his speech. You could tell he was one of the cool kids in his manner, in the way he addressed the audience and the way they responded to him. He began his speech with a stutter here and there, I felt bad for him so I said a prayer that his nerves would leave him. He continued and to my surprise his speech was on how there is no God, and how those who believe in such an idea are not thinking for themselves. This broke my heart, but on top of that, it angered me. I wasn’t angry at him; he’s just a child in my eyes. I have prayed and believe that God will bring glory to His name because of it. My anger stemmed from the fact that the devil had just used a child, a child, to speak over his peers about how there is no God. Recently many things have come up that are showing me that the devil is on attack, and I am so pleased that the church responds in prayer because of it. I however believe that often enough, we wait for something to happen so that we can pray against it. Recently God has also put the book of 1 John into mind. He has used it to encourage and comfort me. In this book it also talks about testing the spirit and how there are so many liars and antichrists that are out JUST for the destruction of the glory of God. Philippians 3: 18- 19 says “ For, as I have often told you before and now say again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is on earthly things.” There are those in our world whose DESTINY is destruction. Many people have expressed their fears of me going to such a spiritual place spread the gospel. I am truly blessed by all your concerns and care. I however assure you that, I am tired of being on the defense in life and I am ready to step out and fight some offense with God. I was in a conversation with a few wise women the other day speaking out verse 20 of the same passage. There it reads “ But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Saviour from there, the Lord Jesus Christ”. We talked about how it was so comforting to know that this world is not our home and that it’s like there is a civil war going on in another country but our faith in heaven is kind of our Canadian embassy. We can rest in that and in the knowledge that we have a Saviour who will come and take us home to safety. This however does not take away from the fact that there is still a war going on. Hiding in the embassy takes one more person off the field. If we all hid away, we loose. God is the ultimate champion, we are on the winning side. We need to now start living like David. Walking out to Goliath as little as we are, knowing that God is right behind. And as Goliath laughs in our face, we throw the little rock with all His mighty power that knocks Goliath down. As I step into this country knowing that the people are surrounded by darkness, I just want to hold on to the fact that yes God is working through me to bring glory to his name, but that I don’t have to wait until the devil makes the first move. It’s time we played a little offense!

Number three: He is in control.
This one is just something I want to hold onto because I know that I can often become a crazy control freak and want to do things in my own power. I often get frustrated when things to go according to plan but knowing that God is in control will keep me level headed and keep my mind and heart in the right place.

Number four: It is His plans not mine
This connects to number three but God has laid it on my life in a way that is stands on its own. At Ethos, this young adults group I attend, the pastor spoke about this topic and made a few comment that rang loud in my heart. One being that God does not care about making me famous but making HIM famous and the second being that when you don’t know where you are going, remember who you are following. I think that understanding that God is God and we are man helps in us to not just trust in our own plans alone. As I stated before, I try and do things with my own power, and often enough it turns out to be for my own glory. In the very popular Proverbs 3:5-6 it says “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.” Therefore in order for me to know that things in my life will work out, I need to trust fully in God. I need to know that I may not always understand what is happening, but that because God is in control He will work it out for good. In going to a different country to do missions, I know that it will be very tempting to want to change the world all at once. But I need to remember that this is not about me at all, but about God. I need to let him take control and trust in Him. And when I don’t know where I am going, I need to remember who I am following.

Number five: There is no number five.
I feel that in the last 6 months God has shown me a lot. I have grown and matured in my relationship with God and I have never been so much in love. All those sappy cheesy love movies kind of make sense now. God has captivated my heart and I want Him to have it forever. In this however I know that I am not done growing and maturing and drawing closer to him. I am not done experiencing highs and lows. There is no number five because this is not the end of my journey. I am yet to experience more and grow more and I can’t wait. I want to keep this in mind on my trip so that I am continually opened hearted to what God wants me to learn.

Thanks so much for slaving through all of this and I ask that you do one more thing for me. Plase Pray that these points will not leave me while I am on my trip and that I will constantly keep my eyes focused on Him and Him alone.

To God Be the Glory!

(If any of you would like to help by supporting me financially as I have not yet reached my goal, please take a look at my first post at the bottom. Thanks a bunch!)