Already Forgiven

My college's prayer team has spent days and weeks participating in 24/7 prayer for a number of years, and next week is our big Spring 2013 week of nonstop prayer. 24/7 Prayer is an "international, interdenominational Christian movement praying and working for reconciliation" spiritually, socially, and environmentally.

A couple years ago, while I was spending an hour in our prayer room on campus with a group of people for a 24/7 prayer week, I got the strong sense that God was speaking to me. This was before the really powerful sense of God's voice I felt when my vision clouded over and my heart beat faster, like when I was called to Asia, even though I haven't had that same experience in a while. Anyway, I felt as if God was saying, "I've already forgiven you." At the time, I had not been to counseling or expressed my need for confession or accountability yet. I didn't understand. It was almost like I could not quite process what God was saying to me, like I wasn't ready for it.

I'm not sure if I felt like I was being "super-righteous" or what, but I opened my eyes and looked for someone to whom I could tell what God had told me. I figured that since I didn't quite understand what he meant in reference to my own life, he must have meant it for someone else. I stood up and walked across the room to a girl I barely knew, who I'll call T, and I told her, "God has already forgiven you." She smiled at me, I smiled back, and I returned to my seat.

The funny thing is, she no longer attends my college, but I recently became acquainted with her blog. She is working with the International House of Prayer in the area where I used to live, and I am reading such encouraging and spiritually-motivating thoughts on her blog. A tiny part of me is like: Who am I to think I'm all high and mighty for God Himself to give me a message for this girl who is obviously closer to Him than I am?

I chastised myself for that thought, because why would I think that? Maybe she really did need to hear what God had told me. On the other hand, for several weeks after that night, I have questioned why I so distinctly felt God telling me "I've already forgiven you" if there was no point to it. Eventually, I gave up my concern for the circumstance and let it pass. Now, years later, it struck me tonight that perhaps that word from God was for me.

I have been out of counseling for over three months now, and I do not have all my problems solved. However, I am at a much healthier place in my life. I have learned positive coping mechanisms and successful thought processes. I have seen God in an entirely new light. And now even when the emotional roller coaster of that changing process is pretty much over, and it's tempting to get down on myself again, God continues to reveal little things to me. Like this thought tonight that maybe that word was for me: to prepare me for dealing with my crap and to prepare me for the time of learning after dealing with it.

His Words to me are:

I have already forgiven you. And I will keep forgiving you.

This is about more than the "sin that so easily entangles" that we all deal with everyday. This is about the deep tragedies of life from when we were younger, the sins we committed and the sins committed against us. This is about the sense of failing that grinds into our shoulders and backs and hearts and keeps us from standing up straight or letting our real faces show to the world.

Our God is not a God of anger. He is a God who speaks.

I have been praying for God to speak to me again, and I have been asking for more of Him since very early this month. I'm sad to say I have not been asking him consistently for these big things, but mostly I have been asking him for little things, like to "please let this computer open my document now so I won't be late to class." I know, those are ridiculous things. People write sermons on how we shouldn't treat God like a vending machine when they hear prayers like that.

Fortunately, those "little" prayers are teaching me something, too. A relationship with God is built not only on big things, but also on little things. Similarly, my relationship with my roommate L is built on "big" things, like finding time to Skype over Christmas or summer break or buying each other nice things for our birthdays. But it is also built on little things, like when I save her the chocolate piece at the end of a nutty ice cream cone. She loves the little chocolate piece. It's something small and meaningful, as crazy as that sounds.

A relationship with God should not be lived on Sunday mornings and during revival weeks. It should be lived in the day to day, and my seemingly petty prayers only serve to remind me to keep a conversation with God at the forefront. They remind me to ask God what he would have me do instead of constantly asking him to do things for me. He is so good and so patient and so graceful with an already-but-not-yet-resurrected-fallen-woman like me.

Oh, and by the way, the document opened before I had even finished my prayer. Even in the little things, God reminds me that he will always pursue me. He will always speak to me. He will always forgive me.

We are already forgiven.

Peace From the Heart of God

It's Tuesday of Spring Break week and I'm sitting on a screened-in porch in central Florida. The birds woke me up this morning a little before nine, and I had a breakfast of cereal and a clementine before reading the morning away. The sunshine is warm and the breeze is cool. When I walk down the tile and hardwood hallway, my feet make "plick-plick" sounds, like a museum. Yesterday, we saw manatees and a natural spring, and today we're going shopping before dinner with M's grandmother.

There is nothing like a peaceful place to set your heart back in line.

I have friends at college who are heavily into philosophy, apologetics, and psychiatry. Several weeks ago, I had a conversation with a friend who changed her major from education to philosophy, and, although she never said it aloud, I found a beautiful reminder in her major-change: studying philosophy seemed to lead her closer to the heart of God.

See, God is a God of truth. Many even say that "all truth is God's truth." If this is true, then philosophy (which is basically logic, ethics, and wisdom), would lead its follower deeper into the God of all logic, ethics, and wisdom. That is why the world does not deny Christ, but proves him.
(I hope my philosophy friends can share their thoughts on this!)

When I found myself in this beautiful setting for spring break, in which the mornings are for reading, the afternoons are for fun, and the evenings are for fellowship, I wondered if perhaps this peaceful setting could and would lead me closer to the heart of God: the heart of a God who is peaceful and welcoming.

Psalm 118, the Bible reading for the Lenten devotionals I get each morning, made reference to the goodness of God. My phone call last night with my roommate reminded me of God's goodness and grace, provision and hope, and then today, reminded again of the peace here, I sought out one of my favorite passages: John chapter 14.

John writes, "I am leaving you with a gift--peace of mind and heart. And the peace I give is a gift the world cannot give. So don't be troubled or afraid." (John 14:27)

Even though the peace of this week will fade away when I return to the busyness of next week's school assignments, I am reminded that God's peace, the kind this world cannot give, will not fade away. He is the rock I can cling to during this storms of this life.

Twenty-One: Expectations vs. Reality

Maybe this is what twenty-one feels like. I thought to myself. A couple days ago, a few days before my birthday, I sat with two friends as we pondered and discussed housing arrangements for next semester... My last semester living on a campus as a college student. What. Then the conversation shifted to grad school. We want to look into a certain school together, maybe apply, see about living in that town. Hold on.

How am I this old? How am I planning for student teaching and Thailand and grad school and after college already? How am I already to the point of making my own budget, cooking my own meals, saving for that strange and crazy world after graduation? Graduation has always seemed like a far away pie in the sky. Something only for grown people, adults with plans and dreams and futures lined out. I don't even know what I'm eating for dinner most nights, how can I figure out my plans for the rest of my life?!?

Okay, deep breaths.

See, the thing is, I am not alone. No one else knows what they want to do. And even those who do will see their plans changed twice or thrice over during the course of their lives. It's okay to not have it figured out. It's okay to make mistakes. It's okay to make a weird choice and suffer the consequences. It's okay to budget wrong or spend too much and have to pay the "stupid tax," as my grandma calls it.

Because, you see, I am only human. Becoming an adult does not mean that you are somehow more than human. Adults make mistakes all the time.

So I guess it comes down to expectations verses reality. For example, I had once hoped that I would be in a dating relationship by my 21st birthday. Yet I always saw myself as a very independent and very single college graduate. I know things can happen between now and graduation (I've got a little over a year), but I've started to wonder if this really is the place where I will meet the guy God has for me. I wonder if we will start dating in college or sometime later.

When I had decided on a school for college, my mom's boss told her that the school I eventually chose is a great school, spiritually and academically. She told my mom that the reason this was important is that I will probably be meeting my future husband here. I agree with her in that typically you would find great guys at a great school, but it is frustrating to me when people assume that is why girls go to college. I am not going through four years of college to get my MRS degree. Come on now. I'm going through college so I can be equipped to teach for the rest of my life. I'm going to college for experiences I otherwise wouldn't have been able to have, things like living on a hall with thirty beautiful and crazy ladies in a building with almost ninety squealing freshmen girls. I'm going to college so I can have experiences like traveling to Hong Kong and Laos last summer to teach English and befriend students. I'm going to college, a Christian college, so I can learn how my faith interacts with and calls me to my career, how God works in the secular arena. All of those things can happen simultaneously with marriage, but the point is that marriage is not my focus in this.

Expectations verses reality... I didn't expect to get married right out of college, but a part of me did expect to date here. A part of me did expect certain relationships to be different. And yet looking back, I'm encouraged that God did not allow certain events (and allowed others instead). He knows what he's doing!

Another expectation verses reality is that I often expected that college would change me into a totally different person. In all honesty, I am different. I am much more likely to talk to people I don't know well, much more likely to share about my faith, much more likely to worship freely, and much less likely to worry as much as I did in high school. Yet, I am still the same person. I've dealt with a lot of crap and pain, but I am still dealing with it. I am very, very different, but I am still me. I am still an introvert, I am still a "J" personality, but I feel as if I am more well-rounded now.

Someone once told me that in college, we become over-exaggerated versions of ourselves. As we grow older, we mellow out. After college, we "slide into" the personas we discovered ourselves to be during college, and it gets toned down a bit. I think that is a great way of putting it.

Therefore, I'm becoming myself.

In all actuality, this is earth-shattering. See, I started this blog exactly 3 years ago today and named it "LosingMyself" because I wanted to focus on the fact that the purpose of life is not to go and do and "find" myself, but to lose myself in Him. I wonder if that is a correct way to look at it. I wonder if that is how I see life anymore. For example, I feel most alive when I am serving God in the capacities in which he's gifted me. I love teaching and I feel as if God has given me abilities to teach. This is becoming more Christ-like, through service, but it is also definitely becoming myself. What if becoming like Christ is really becoming who I was meant to be originally? As in, what if becoming like Christ is honing and developing the elements of me (and Christ in me) that are good?

I wrestle with this here because it is very intriguing to me. I have been facing up to who I am as I grow into me each day, and I wonder, yet again, if this is what twenty-one feels like. I still have two days, but I feel as if I'm getting much closer.

I wanted to share this blog post from December 2011. I had just finished Fall semester sophomore year when I composed this post referencing the acts of growing and serving in the season of singleness. I wrote:

...After this summer (spending five weeks in Asia [June-August 2012]), and my junior year..., what kind of person will emerge? A stronger, deeper, healthier, and more Christ-like person, that’s my prayer. I made a list a couple months ago of qualities I desired in my future husband, but also qualities that I would seek to reach as well. One such quality was the ability to attempt difficult things. Challenging things. Things like ministering overseas, but also things like becoming yourself.

I think too many of us are afraid of who really are, but like my psychology professor always says: “There must be a ‘me’ before there can be a ‘we’.” A Relevant Magazine article discusses the importance of singleness as it relates to your individuality: “Making the most of being single means being on your own. It’s just you and God. Being single is about discovering who you are, setting personal boundaries, knowing your likes and dislikes, your passions and the desires of your heart.”

I'm three-quarters of the way finished with my junior year, and I am so encouraged by the prediction I made at the end of 2011. I have become myself so much more during this time and I am grateful for that.

A final expectations versus reality moment: I did not expect to experience God as much I have since I've been in college. There was a time months ago when I specifically knew that God was speaking to me. I wrote about it in regards to going to Asia, "My heart skips a beat, my peripheral vision clouds over, I can’t breathe." It was definite. However, there was a long time in which that did not happen, and it hasn't happened recently, which led me to wonder if God was still speaking to me. Or is it just that I'm not listening?

My roommate challenged me to ask God for more of Himself, so I did. This past week, I had time with God each morning for five straight days, which I haven't done in a while. He also showed me some amazing things through not only that time with Him, but also the consistency of his love and his provision. For example, I have been yearning for a while for God to show me my new name. Our September spiritual emphasis week at college focused on our brokenness, and how God wants to come and sit with us there. At the end of the week, we were given the opportunity to take a small stone to remind us that God is giving us new names. A connection was made to the invitation Jewish people would give friends they were inviting to a wedding. In a sense, God is writing our new and true names on our invitations to eternity with him. I was reminded of Isaiah 62:4, as God is renaming Jerusalem. I was pondering this desire when my morning devotional was on Zephaniah chapter three. We are all familiar with verse 17, but I wanted to draw your attention to the remainder of the chapter (emphasis mine):

For the Lord your God is living among you.
He is a mighty savior.
He will take delight in you with gladness.
With his love, he will calm all your fears.
He will rejoice over you with joyful songs.
"I will gather you who mourn for the appointed festivals;
you will be disgraced no more.
And I will deal severely with all who have oppressed you.
I will save the weak and helpless ones;
I will bring together
those who were chased away.
I will give glory and fame to my former exiles,
wherever they have been mocked and shamed.
On that day I will gather you together
and bring you home again.
I will give you a good name, a name of distinction,
among all the nations of the earth,
as I restore your fortunes before their very eyes.
I, the Lord, have spoken!"

Maybe twenty-one will be about accepting who I am and who God made me to be: a single adult allowing God to change me and refine me to become more Christ-like and more me. And I'm okay with that.
In fact, it's a pretty exciting adventure. Let's do it.

Edited 3/25/13 at 9:54pm for labels.