I can’t believe how close I am to departure day. This trip has flown by so fast. Although I am not even close to being fluent in French, I have grown more accustomed to not understanding all of what people say and accustomed to thinking about my words before I speak. It’s been about two months now since I’ve been here and I feel as though God has brought me full circle. I am not sure how many of you have been reading or have at least read my first blog post. But It was the post I put up 5 days before my departure to Benin. I brought up 5 things that I wanted to keep with me in my heart and mind that God had been showing me. Number one: I am His Beloved and He is mine, number two: No more playing Defense, it’s all about the Offense, number three: He is in control, number four: It is His plans not mine, number five: there is no number five (take a look at my first post if you need to refresh on what all these entail). I am coming to the end of my journey here in Benin, but God is showing me more and more that it is just the beginning of my journey with Him. I know that He was speaking to me about these five points because they have been the building blocks to all that I have learned here in Benin. I wish….I REALLY WISH, I was a better writer who was able to express to you all that God has taught me in the last two months in a short, concise and clear blog post but as many of you have already discovered…I have not been blessed with the gift of writing. Therefore, you will have to pull me aside when I return if you desire to know all the juicy details.
For now I want to say that I feel like I have come full circle because it was if God had given me all the points for the dot-to-dot picture and during this trip He has helped me connect the dots and fill in the picture. I have never felt more like His beloved than I have in these past months. So much that it’s not just a feeling, it’s who I am. Now I can’t fully say “what” place I have with God in His whole grand scheme, but I CAN say that “I have a place”. It’s different these days. I wish I could explain to you how. I know I can say to those of you who are reading this that you too have a place with Him, and many of you will believe that but not understand it. I somehow, through His grace and wisdom understand that. I do know however that if you surrender to Him completely, and start looking for your place with Him, you will not only find it, but you too with understand it!
God has also shown me how real life is. How what He told us about there being a physical realm and a spiritual realm is true. We often live our lives just in the physical but God said we are in fact citizens of heaven. In my last post I spoke of how not everything has gone smoothly here and how we have had some rough points. Praise God for continually seeing us through. I must say that for my second point “no more playing defense, it’s all about the offense”, acknowledging the spiritual side of life has brought me closer to God. It has shown me more of who He is and that I do not have to be afraid….of anything. Neither do you! There are a few stories that I would love to share but feel they are more for face to face conversations. But I do want to say that the devil is real. Very real. As I stated in my first post, he is not playing around and he doesn’t wait for us to acknowledge him before he tries to make our lives separated from God. People around the world devote their lives to the devil and the destruction of Christ’s kingdom (Philippians 3:18-19). But in all this, God has given me courage to not fear the evil one and I cannot tell you how much more FULL life is now because I am standing in God’s light with my courage in him living in both the physical and spiritual realms of life.
I am growing more and more everyday. Not just as a person (even though I am) but just in life and being able to “experience” life. Everyday is the new adventure, this new shot at growing and living life to the fullest. The point I made about there being no number five seems so exciting now to me. The fact that there is no end of my journey with God opens up each day even more to how endless and even eternal life with God is. It fills me with such excitement and wonder!
Life is so much more full these days, my walk so much more purposeful. I cannot express in these typed words all that I have learned, but I can say it’s a lot. Not all of it has been easy to swallow mind you, but all of it has been worth the chew :p. If you desire to know more details about all that I speak about, feel free to ask me when I return home. Thank you all for your prayers and your support. I feel love pouring in from every direction! Blessings!
P.S HAPPY CANADA DAY! WHOOOO!
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Random:
Our leaders took us to a zoo!
We are also very patriotic today (who is our new friend you may be wondering? his name is Jon-Eh after our beloved John.A.Macdonald) :
why oh why is John-Eh cross eyed? I don't think that encooragges how intlelligent canada-ites R. So unrespresentivie.... unnrepstrentive.... unrepresenive...wrong of you.
ReplyDelete:) can't wait to see you!! :) :) miss you!!!