honestly… i think i might talk too much…
so, here i am in Byron Bay Australia to be part of a staff team on a 6 month long course called a Discipleship Training School. this past week, all of our students arrived to the base & began to get settled in. i can’t even begin to explain how excited i have been for the past month or so, just waiting for them to finally get here! i felt kind of like i imagine a long-lost relative might feel in anticipation of finally meeting someone they’ve been thinking & praying about for ages.
it’s been so cool to watch too, cuz for the most part there seems to be a tight knit friendship growing quicker than i would have expected.
It’s been amazing so far, exceeding my expectations. this group has a wisdom & depth that i’m incredibly thankful for because it encourages & challenges me in my own walk.
i don’t see myself in a typical hierarchal leadership position, but one of servant leadership. i am just here to be used as a processing tool for the students, which lifts a huge weight off my shoulders, to know i’m not responsible for imparting incredible amounts of wisdom on my own… where the only difference between them & me being here on this school where we learn all that God is pouring out is that i’ve already done it once.
anyway, during this last week as we’ve all been getting straight into the school & getting to know one another, God has really been speaking to me. speaking truth into my heart, melting the lies that i’ve let take up residence there since before i can remember.
unworthy, deserving of rejection, never good enough, incapable.
this has been and still is a difficult process for me, since these lies, & more importantly my utter belief and reliance upon them, has shaped the way i make decisions and think of myself my entire life.
i’ve let these so called ‘truths’ dictate how i go about making friends & keeping them. let them determine if i could even try to push for my dreams to become reality. i’ve never allowed myself to believe that i deserve anything, that i am worth anything more than someone’s opinion of me. that anything i do or think could actually be declared exceptional.
it was when we were sharing our testimonies that some of this started to become evident to me. i would be listening to people share their stories, & i would just cry. even the people sharing were dry eyed, but not me. and i didn’t really have an explanation for it. i just figured ‘i’m too empathetic, i need to stop emotionally putting myself in that situation.’ and although it is true that i’m empathetic, that was not the reason i was breaking down.
i don’t know when this happened but i realized the reason i was crying was because i still felt second rate. all the points in the testimonies i could relate to the strongest were ones of unworth or rejection or fear, etc. but that unlike the people sharing, i didn’t feel any kind of victory over my issues. i thought “damn, i’m supposed to be a leader, but they are way ahead of me. i’m not even good enough to be here doing this.”
but Jesus’ strength is made perfect in weakness, and a friend reminded me that my appointment as a leader comes with an anointing from God, and not to despise that. so i came home and read my bible, looking up scriptures that challenged my false beliefs of who i am. because the Word is truth, so to not believe what it says about who i am in christ is to call God a liar. to not agree that i am fearfully and wonderfully made is to call God a liar.
on saturday night i was prophecied over, very specifically, and it did 2 things: 1) strengthened my flimsy faith that God indeed cares about little old me, very much. so much that He would use complete strangers to talk to me & respond to specific phrases in my heart. and 2) i have been given permission to kick insecurity’s arse. the dreams, oh the huge dreams growing in my heart, were placed there by God & He is big enough to help me accomplish them. I am no longer allowed to believe the things the enemy has been whispering for a lifetime.
they say the people who come back to staff are back because God wasn’t done yet… i’ll second that.
so. honestly… i guess you could say i’m growing.
