When Kyra and I entered Chipotle today for lunch my eyes fell on a man sitting by himself on the other side of the restaurant. As soon as I laid eyes on him I felt a pressing on my spirit that urged me to go talk to him. I was incredibly nervous for some reason and suppressed this feeling, trying to block it out by studying for my cell biology lab practical exam. Each time that I tried to read the words on the pages I was reminded of the man. I felt the Lord convict me: Is this exam really more important than he is? Frustrated and nervous I continued to act as though it really wasn’t that necessary that I talk to him. I’ll probably get rejected anyways, I told myself. The enemy was trying his hardest to convince me that it wasn’t important or that I would simply get rejected. By the time Brent showed up to the restaurant I knew that I needed to go talk to the man. I confessed to Brent and Kyra what I felt like the Lord was asking of me, but I was still nervous. Brent began sharing a story and, as I was listening, I turned my head to make sure the man was still there. I watched him pick up a napkin as if he were wiping down the table in preparation to leave and I immediately leapt up, full of conviction, and nearly ran over to his table, sat down, and introduced myself. I felt very strongly like the Lord had asked me to tell him how much he is loved by God. The first thing he asked me was, “What else did He say?”
This question caught me completely off-guard, as I don’t get asked that often. Stuttering I responded, “Uhm - I dunno. I feel like He told me that He loves you, and I feel like He wanted me to come tell you that.” “Oh yeah? What else did He tell you?,” the man asked again. Stumped once more I tried to recall what the Lord had told me right before the part about Him loving the man. I was then reminded that I had also planned to ask the man if he needed prayer. “I feel like He wanted me to ask you if there was anything I could pray over you for,” I responded hesitantly but assuredly. Still unsatisfied, the man asked me, “What’s your life verse?” Before I could even find the verse that came to my mind he began to share a bit of his story with me. “I’m actually a Christian — Well, that’s not wrong, but I’ve been questioning everything recently. Every day I get up and question God. I question His love for me, and I question if He’s even really here, among us, looking out for us. I don’t see Him in my everyday life, and I am struggling to believe that He’s really there.” Pausing for a moment both to consider his words and to try to pay attention to what I felt like the Lord was bringing up in my own mind, I pondered before asking, “Do you feel as though you’ve ever had a relationship with the Lord?” “I pray, but I don’t hear anything. I ask the Lord to tell me what to do and I hear nothing. I grew up as a Christian, but I feel like my whole life, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve lost my relationship with the Lord. I’ve read scripture and I’ve tried to pray. I used to be closer to God — I call Him Papí; I don’t know if you can do that, but I do — but as I’ve gotten older it’s gone away. I’ve pulled back. I’ve questioned it more and more. I doubt and question His love for me.” “And that is all perfectly okay,” I replied. “I’ve been through degrees of that, myself, in which I’ve questioned His love for me. I’ve known that He loves me, but I used to really question whether I actually believe that He loves me. And I experienced some of that through my leadership team with InterVarsity. I used to think that I wasn’t contributing to leadership because I wasn’t hearing from the Lord all the same things that others were. Sometimes I wouldn’t hear anything relevant. But I then realized that it wasn’t at all because of the Lord not being present. It was because of me being distant and me caring too much about whether or not I could hear from the Lord. It mattered too much to me and I thought that my worth was dependent on that. Do you think you have an idea of how to hear from the Lord?” “No,” he responded despondently. I immediately attacked his hopelessness. “That’s okay! I didn’t know how to either until I was taught. Most people aren’t taught and they go their whole lives questioning how to hear from the Lord when, in reality, we’ve been hearing from Him our entire lives!” There at Chipotle I ended up teaching him listening prayer. He was incredibly eager to learn and kept asking questions: How do I hear? How long do I wait after I pray aloud and ask Him to show me how He sees me? I reminded him of the tips that Kennedy and Brent have both shared with me:
I also taught him a little bit about what ‘hearing’ from the Lord is like, describing how it can arise in our thoughts as a voice or a song or become present in the form of feelings, smells, memories, images, visions, etc. Too, I reminded him that the Lord has been speaking to us our whole lives in a voice that sounds like our own — our ‘conscience’. We’ve been guided by God for so long that His voice has become regularized and unfamiliar. I asked the man if he wanted to practice listening for himself, and he agreed readily. “Okay, this is what we’re going to do,” I instructed, “I’m going to pray over you and pray over the space and our time right now. When I’ve finished, I want you to ask God aloud to show you the way that He sees you. Whatever you see or hear or feel or smell — that’s God.” “That’s God?,” he asked. Confident and unhesitant I answered, “Yes. And remember that the next part will be you questioning whether it was Him.” He was nervous, and I’d be lying if I said I weren’t nervous in that moment either. This stranger I sat down next to had been questioning God for the last who-knows-how-long. He’s been asking the Lord for answers to prayers and “receiving nothing” according to him. I VERY CONFIDENTLY just told him that the Lord was going to bring something up — what if He doesn’t? What if this is the thing that makes this man lose complete faith in the Lord? Despite the lies of the enemy running through my mind, I laid my hand on my new friend’s shoulder and prayed. After I finished I gave him an nudge, indicating that it was his turn to ask the Lord to show him how He saw him and to ask the Lord to bring it up in that moment. I then waited for what seemed like forever. In reality, it was most likely for 30 seconds that I waited. And then I asked, “Well, did anything come up?” He looked up, emotionless. “No,” he said. Disappointed, I was scrambling to find the words to say. His watering eyes told a different story though, and I was encouraged in my spirit that something had actually been brought up. “It was something that has come up in the past,” he said. “The Lord told me that He sees me like Peter.” I grinned, for surely this would’ve been a good thing, an honor. “As I read scriptures, Peter always seems so stupid. He always asks Jesus for proof, for more miracles. That’s what I feel like. I feel like I need proof, I need God to prove Himself to be in order for me to believe.” He was holding back tears, but I gave him a comforting, reassuring smile and nod, encouraging him to let himself cry. He then began to cry right there in Chipotle, unbothered by the surrounding bustle of customers and strangers. “I think it’s really cool what you saw, especially if it’s something you’ve seen before. The Lord wants to remind you that He loves you and that He sees you as Peter. Peter was Jesus’ friend, His disciple! It’s not a bad thing to be like Peter. It’s not a bad thing to ask the Lord to prove Himself to you. I’ve done it several times. I’m actually on a full ride here at UNC Charlotte, and unfortunately that’s caused me to hold my academics as an idol in my life. When the Lord asked me to surrender them to Him, I couldn’t fully trust that He would be faithful over it. So I asked Him to prove it in a very specific way. And when He did it, that’s when I knew that He actually is really trustworthy over that thing. It’s okay to ask Him to prove Himself to us — we just have to be obedient after He does it.” “You make a good point. That makes sense,” he enthusiastically and earnestly responded. As we continued to talk, new questions arose on his behalf about listening prayer and what he could do next. I encouraged the man to daily practice listening prayer for himself and for others, including his friend whose wife has just left him. I also encouraged him to be obedient about what he heard from the Lord and to share it with those for whom he listened. “If the Lord brings something up,” I reassured, “You should be obedient and share with someone if it’s about them. The Lord is perfectly capable of getting to us without our help. The Lord didn’t need to use me to reach you — He would’ve reached you some other way if I hadn’t come over here. But He asked me to do it so that I would have the opportunity to grow closer to Him and see His glory through it.” “I have a different perspective on it now,” he told me. “I feel like my prayers will actually mean something now that I know what to look for in a response.” I was overwhelmed with joy. Throughout our entire conversation the man continued to remind me how impressed and shocked he was at my attunation and obedience to the Lord. “I kept waiting for my friend to walk around the corner and joke with me or for a camera to be pushed in my face like on a tv show prank or for you to ask me for money. I wasn’t sure what to think at first. I didn’t believe it, and it’s still hard to believe that you came over here because of God. You’ve been a Christian your whole life, right?” “Yes,” I replied, smiling. “I’ve been a Christian my whole life, but my relationship with Jesus has become increasingly more intensified in the last year or so. Ever since last August I’ve really been on fire for Jesus!” “Do you think that’ll ever go away?,” he asked curiously. I smiled and confidently responded, “No. I know it won’t. So long as I continue pursuing Him, the fire will remain.” He smiled and just looked at me. “You’re an amazing woman, you know. I saw you when you walked in, but it was just an observation. I also saw you and your friend (Brent) look over here, and I wondered what was going on, but I didn’t think much of it. For you to be that obedient — that’s brave. And I thank you for that. You’ve helped me so much today. And the cool thing is this: not once did you tell me how wrong I was or how I shouldn’t be thinking the things I’ve been thinking or how I should be changing and doing things right instead of wrong. No, you’ve encouraged me. You’ve openly related to the things I’m going through, and not once did you put me down or tell me I was wrong. You’ve helped me understand what I can do instead, what I can do in order to grow closer to the Lord. But you’ve done it all in love and in kindness. You’re very special. Your spirit is special — you’ve allowed me to feel comfortable enough here at lunch in Chipotle that I wasn’t even paying attention to the people around me or what was happening around me. You created an environment in which I, a 40 year-old man, was comfortable enough to cry in public in front of all these people. I don’t even care. It wasn’t important. I didn’t even care what they thought because your spirit allowed me to be comforted and focused. That’s really cool. I just can’t thank you enough.” Flattered and grateful that the Lord chose me to do that work, I bid my friend goodbye only after praying for him once more before we parted ways. In my prayer, I asked God for another encounter with the man. I confidently declared that we would meet again and that when we did, I wouldn’t recognize the man that I met in Chipotle because of how far he was running into the presence of the Lord. We left, our hearts both overflowing for different reasons and our spirits both refreshed and reassured. I share this story to try to remind you that sometimes the Lord does ask us to take risks, to put our needs aside and die a tiny bit to ourselves, going out of our way to show people who Jesus is and what He means to us. The Lord allowed me to be a part of this man’s story, maybe even serving as proof that He is here and among us. I just pray daily that the man pursue the Lord, believing that a relationship with the Lord is just as accessible to him as it is to me.
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“Take delight in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart.” Psalm 37:4 Today I experienced a relapse into my old self, as happens now and then in my personal walk with Christ. Falling into old habits, I again return to the regularity of what my old self would do or say rather than responding the way I should in Christ. I am getting better in a lot of areas, sometimes shocked at my changed responses, but this situation today hit me in the heart. I’ll share the story: I was scrolling through Facebook in an attempt to rid the app of the little red notification when I came across a set of photos that sent my heart into my stomach. Gator Country — the alligator rescue I planned to intern at this summer — had posted a gorgeous set of graduation photos one of their interns took at the park. Picture this: a beautiful girl thigh-deep in a swampy pond wearing her graduation cap and gown, face-to-face with a massive modern-day dinosaur lurking in the water. The pictures were absolutely gorgeous, but my heart broke. Shattered because it wasn’t I who got the opportunity to feed and work with alligators this summer, saddened at this passed experience, I put my phone down and exited the app, my heart heavy and my mind temporarily filled with doubt. I was at work, and I told my fellow guard briefly what had happened. He shared a few words in an attempt to cheer me up, for which I was grateful, but a panging sense of jealousy still lingered over in mind and in my spirit. The choice I made next, however, was decisive in determining how the rest of my day was going to proceed. In the midst of the provoked, but not justified, jealousy — in the midst of losing sight about my purpose here in Huntersville, North Carolina — I let God invade my heart and spirit. Rather than shutting Him out, choosing to be miserable and, ultimately, choosing to let the enemy have a victory, I let Him in, ears open to what He wanted to tell me. Suddenly I felt a sense of calm and contentment overwhelm me, and my spirit was filled with this word from the Lord: “You’ve been obedient and you’ve been patient. That could’ve been you, but you chose to be faithful over what I called you to do rather than satisfy the desires of your flesh. When you do get the opportunity to do this — to work with animals — it will be so incredibly much more rewarding than if you had done this on your own terms. You will appreciate it more, as you have sacrificed your dream for the sake of obedience to Me.” Instantly I felt seen, known, and held in the Father’s loving arms. For Him to reassure me of my decision to stay and of my future was an incredibly joyful experience that rested my mind and spirit. It was because of my willingness to conform to the image of Christ instead of a desire to return to my former mold that I was able to hear the Lord and His promise to me.
Almost as to reassure me of His love for me, a major storm appeared out of nowhere, the eye of the cell passing right overtop of us. I absolutely love thunderstorms, and I crave the summer torrents that plague Florida. Having grown up with those storms, I began to miss them soon after my move to North Carolina. This storm, however, was worthy of comparison to a Floridian summer storm. Thunder shook our building and lighting split the darkened sky. Now, I’m not saying by any means that the Lord sent that entire storm just for me, but I sure was thanking Him for it! It was a humble reminder that we are minutely nothing compared to the overwhelming power God has granted nature, yet we are everything to Him. I’m incredibly happy for every intern that got to experience Gator Country in such a unique way this summer, and I’m particularly happy for that young woman who got to document her experience with those modern-day dinosaurs in such a meaningful way. No tinge of jealousy stirs in my heart at this point, as I know that my opportunity will one day come in God’s timing. I urge everyone who may read this to make the daily decision to conform to Christ rather than the world or your former self. How? Choose not to reach in the way that you usually would. What would Christ do? What would the Bible say? When you begin thinking with the heart of Christ on the forefront of your mind, you simultaneously begin thinking about the ways that you have the potential to become more like Him. I feel myself falling back into the same cycle. How would Christ react differently? Seeing the two options that face you — reacting in your normal way or putting-on Christ's heart and reacting in that way —, it is the decision that determines how everything else will ensue. Choose the self and the cycle continues; choose Christ and you will be met with inexplicable peace. I believe that strongly. It is there in the lowly surrender of self that the Lord will gently lift you up off of your feet, proving to you that He sees and cares for you. Hear the reassuring whisper of His voice in the silence of your mind. I am one who has had a tendency to worry a lot about everything: my relationship, my academics, my career (these have been a common theme in the past few blog posts…see a trend?). Proud and delighted to say that I worry significantly less about things now than I used to, I can credit my lack of worry now only to an increased trust in God. As I’ve mentioned before, the Lord has made me completely new, and I see a stark difference between the old and new me’s. As far as worrying is concerned, the old me worried herself to death about all kinds of things, failing to ever look to God for peace. Now — living as a new creation in Christ — I trust that the Lord will make clear the paths He has set out very specifically for me. I can tell, however, that when I stray from Christ and spend less time with Him, the things that characterized my old self begin to take root in my life once again, including worry.
Without getting into specific details, I will share that in recent days I humored a recurring worry that the Lord has freed me from, one that I habitually fall back into when I am far from Him. I began working through it and, very gradually, I raised it closer and closer to the Lord, eventually placing it in His hands once again. ***Side note: it is continually mind-blowing to me how God can take something that’s been consuming every portion of our minds for so long and immediately wipe the worry from our minds. It’s quite literally inexplicable, and when an explanation is attempted it sounds trivial. However, I know that it would not — could not — happen outside of God.*** Two nights ago, following my surrender of this particular worry, I asked the Lord to reveal something to me through a dream. It’s a habit I’ve practiced ever since I attended Leadership Retreat with UNC Charlotte’s InterVarsity Chapter where campus pastor Brent Campbell explained it quite simply: “The Lord did not create sleep so that we could be apart from Him. Invite Him into your dreams; ask Him to meet you there.” Sometimes the dreams have meaning that is very obvious, sometimes it is necessary that we ask the Lord for interpretation, sometimes the dreams have no meaning, and sometimes we don’t even have dreams. We just trust that the Lord knows what we’ve asked and that there is a reason for whatever He gives us. Back to my story. I had a dream that night: Alex (my boyfriend) and I were rowing down a little, slowly-paced river in Florida. We sat face-to-face, my back facing downstream, the four oars divided between the two of us. As we rowed I took in the beautiful surrounding scenery, gazing this way and that, turning to and fro. When I turned to look over my right shoulder, I saw an alligator that reached maybe four feet in length floating in the water (I find this next part to slightly ironic; I think God is just laughing at me at this point. Feel free to laugh along). When my eyes landed on the small alligator and my brain processed what it was, I freaked out. Functioning in a blur of fear and insanity at the mere sight of this slight creature, I somehow began rocking the dingy back and forth, stirring up the previously calm water and, I’m sure, all of its inhabitants. I ended up flailing around so much that I fell out of the boat and into the water in which the disinterested alligator lurked. Soaking wet and still losing my mind, I attempted to clamber up the side of the tiny vessel, soaking Alex in the process. For some reason, though, I never managed to get back in the boat. We both agreed to reconvene on the bank, assessing the situation from there. I swam for my life from the center of the narrow river to the bank, pressing the boat along the same route. Everything that happened after that is irrelevant to this message. It was this part for which I asked interpretation of the Lord, and boy did He give it. If you’re done laughing at the thought of me being terrified of an alligator, I’d like to share how the Lord spoke to me through that, even though I still don’t understand why He felt it necessary to send the message that way… God shared some pretty cool relationship advice through it, but more impactful to me was His message about worrying. He told me, “Kerrington, when you worry about ‘what-if’s’ and hypothetical things that may or may not happen in the future — things that pose immediate no threat, like the small alligator minding its own business — you are literally THROWING yourself into the water in which that worry swims.” That’s applicable to every single one of us. When we give attention to the things that grip us with worry — if you’re reading this and something has come to the forefront of your mind, that is what the Lord is trying to bring up for you — we are literally flinging ourselves from the safety of the boat into the place where that worry lives. If left alone, if our trust is completely in God, then we will be safe aboard the boat. It is when we see the alligator — the worry — and all of the things an alligator has the potential to do that we become so caught up in the potential that we no longer recognize the reality that we are safe in the Lord’s arms. I will be the first to say that it seems a lot harder than it sounds. Just giving something I’ve been worrying about to the Lord? How is that even done? It takes a lot. Sometimes we feel comfortable in the worry because it’s familiar. Shoot, I’m still trying to figure out what it means to live as a new creation in Christ, too! I carried the former qualities with me for so long that it really is a complete change that I’ve been adjusting to. But when the Lord does free you from this struggle, it will be incredibly rewarding and quite literally freeing. I just want to encourage whoever is reading this to not give up; ask the Lord to free you from this worry. Give it to Him. I know that’s vague, but here are some ways that I have “given _____ to the Lord” in the past, just to make it a little more clear:
Don’t give up praying and asking the Lord to show up in your life because He absolutely will. And I can attest firsthand to the fact that He can and will inexplicably, immediately free you from that which weighs you down most. After He does, it’s your turn to demonstrate your faithfulness to Him by trusting Him over it. Please don’t hesitate to contact me with any questions about what any of this means or about how this may apply to your own life. “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: the old has gone, the new is here!” 2 Corinthians 5:17 I ran across this verse a couple years ago. After reading it, the first thing I thought was, “Wow. It’s really cool that people get to experience that radical change when they come to Christ.” In my mind, that verse became characterized by this set of thoughts. I knew that people change upon receiving Christ, but I never felt it applicable to my own life, partly because I have always been a Christian. Never did I go through a rebellious stage, nor did I have a prodigal son experience that would require me to be changed — made new — by Christ.
Recently, however, my attitude has been changed and this verse is now something I’ve experienced for myself. Anyone who has known me for any amount of time has, I’m sure, quickly picked-up on my deep love of animals. I’ve had it all my life, and it has driven me to the point I’m at today. Up until about February of this year I knew I was going to go into wildlife conservation. It only made sense — in this field I could nurture my love of animals while satisfying my desires to work with and protect them. The best part of it all? Limited human contact! You see, as big as my heart was for people, it was exponentially greater for animals. I often told myself, and sometimes other people, “There are enough people out there trying to cure cancer and end world hunger. I need to help save the animals.” I really felt that the call upon my life was to help preserve God’s gift of nature and its inhabitants, educating people and working with animals. As I mentioned in my previous post, during my spring semester of college the Lord asked many things of me. One of the things He asked me to surrender to Him was the plan I had for my future, the one that included graduate school and working with animals. Surrendering this extremely important part of my life to Him meant that I was 1. putting Him above my greatest desire, and 2. trusting that He was in control of my career and my future, which is very scary for me. Like Abraham did with Isaac in Genesis, I took that which I cherished most up to the mountain as a sacrifice, unsure of whether I would get to carry it back down with me. That was in February/March. It’s July and ’m still waiting atop the mountain, unsure of whether I’m going into wildlife conservation or not. BUT, God has not been absent. The thing is, God has radically changed my heart. My heart, which was previously bent towards animals, has been reoriented. Without my asking Him to — like it really would’ve mattered — Jesus began remolding and reshaping my heart in every area of my life (family, academics, relationship, future, etc.). One of the biggest changes I’ve noticed, though, is that I care a WHOLE lot more about people now than I ever have before. Not that I didn’t care about people before…I just cared more about animals. That’s different, now. The following words came out of my mouth just a few months ago: “The earth is going to die. It’s not going to live forever. The animals are going to die with it. Instead of being worried about that which is going to die anyway, I should focus on helping to save those who have the opportunity to live in eternal life with the Father.” Woah. Anyone who knows what I’m now calling the old me knows that never ever would I have spoken those words. And it’s not to my credit, either. That word came from the heart of the Father for me. The new me — who I am in Christ — is radically different from the old me in so many ways, but this has to be the major difference. God has literally shown me what it is like to be made NEW in Christ! And my, how refreshing it is. What the Bible says about God — about US — is undeniably true. Whether I turn out to be a missionary to Africa or the next Steve Irwin is irrelevant to me. I’m incredibly content with knowing that my heart has been realigned, though I didn’t see the adjustment necessary before. What I now have the pleasure of knowing is that I have been made new in Christ, and that He does, just like the Bible says, make new creations out of us. I’ve been putting off writing this post for quite some time now, partially because my brain completely shut-down with the end of school! I just wanted to take the opportunity to use this post to share a really cool thing that the Lord has done in my life, so here we go!
Back in November I had the opportunity to accept an internship with a Texas alligator rescue called Gator Country. I was elated to have been offered this internship, as it seemed that in a short 7 months my lifelong dream of handling and working with alligators would become a reality. Anxiously I waited, allowing the anticipation of my summer to motivate and drive me through the remaining duration of my first semester at UNCC. VERY long story short, my second semester of college did not go the way I anticipated. The things that motivated me and got me through both my senior year of high school and the first semester of college no longer affected me in the same ways. Conservation, animals, and Africa all seemed much less important to me than they did before, and I found myself struggling to foster any type of motivation or drive for school or for the achievement of my dreams. I was scared of what was happening; everything that I had longed for my entire life seemed to be rapidly slipping from my grasp. And then Jesus showed up. After sharing my dilemma with Brent Campbell, campus pastor of UNCC’s InterVarsity Chapter and close friend, he shared with me that these were signs of an idol being torn down. I was initially reluctant to believe that I had done this, that I had created an idol out of my God-given dream. I’ve always known that this gift was from God, I thought, and I’ve always kept the focus on Him. Turns out, however, that I was more in love with the gift than the gift-giver Himself. Between February and May of 2018 I grew a lot in my personal relationship with God. He took so many things away, freeing me from bondages in which I didn’t even realize I was entrapped. He proved to me firsthand that He is trustworthy in every area of my life, including my family, my academics, my preference to be in control of situations, my relationship with Alex, and, most significantly, my future. God asked me to do things that were hard, but the results of the obedience were more rewarding than anything I could’ve done for myself. After a few months of being asked to give up important things for God, I was in the best place with Him that I’d ever been in. And then on Saturday, April 29, 2018, at 12:27 in the morning, I was reading Brendan Manning’s book Abba’s Child. Out of the blue I heard the Lord say, “Don’t go to Texas.” … Excuse me? I couldn’t understand why He was asking this of me. As a matter of fact, He wasn’t even really asking; He TOLD me not to go. Naturally, I asked why. And, as He so often does, the Lord gave me several reasons that I shouldn’t go to the 3-month internship of my dreams:
6. He wants me to be an example of faith and what it’s like for someone to give something up for Him simply because He says so. I sat at the desk in my dorm room, shocked that God had asked this of me. I was arguably more shocked at the readiness with which I was answered. This was no joke. I went to bed, teary-eyed at even the idea that I might be giving this opportunity up. Sunday morning I woke up foggy-headed and hoping that the previous night had been a dream. I convinced myself that it was just a test of faith, that God just wanted to make sure I’d be willing to give it up. Then I could go! Double-checking with my mentor Kennedy, I asked her to listen for me to see if God had anything else to say. She said, “Kerrington, the Lord doesn’t have anything for me. He needs you to trust Him.” I listened again that night as I was spending time with the Lord. “Don’t go to Gator Country,” I heard Him say, this time more specifically. I sighed, knowing that my decision was made. The next morning I made some hard phone calls, the least of which I wanted to make to my Papa. We planned to spend the whole summer together while I was in Texas, and I was very much scared of having to tell him that I wouldn’t be coming. When I finally called him, the first thing he asked, as I knew it would be, was, “When are you getting out here?” After I explained to him that the Lord told me not to go, Papa was silent for a second. Then he told me, “I already knew that. The Lord told me three weeks ago that you weren’t coming. I was just waiting for you to hear from Him about it.” My jaw dropped to the floor and my eyes teared up simultaneously. It was so comforting to have confirmation from the Lord through my Papa’s words. I felt significantly better after we’d had that conversation, and I was even more confident in my decision to be obedient to the Lord. I can’t say that it’s been easy since I gave that internship up; I’ve wrestled with God about it. I was so ready to go on that grand adventure — or at least I thought I was. God knew that I have a lot more areas to grow in before I'm ready to be spiritually independent. The things the Lord has revealed to me since that night have been incredibly eye-opening. One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned in the first six months of 2018 is that God is a jealous God, and when things are put above Him in our hearts He will take those things away to demonstrate that He is truly the ONLY steadfast, unchanging thing in our lives. For so long I put my trust and identity in my future career of wildlife conservation, convinced that I would at least always have animals. God proved me wrong, though, and I couldn’t be more thankful that He did. |
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