What I’ve Been Up To and What’s Coming Up
Hello Everybody!
For those of you who know (and for those of you who don’t) my family and I are still in Oklahoma City and starting Tuesday I will be teaching character in OKC’s public schools once more.
For the past week, this semesters’ Character Coaches and I have been on a retreat where we were receiving training on how to teach character and minister to kids. We were way out in the “boone docks” of Tulsa, so I wasn’t able to blog because there was no internet connection. (sniff…actually, to tell you all the truth, I did miss having internet, but it was nice to just be away from the world and focus on what God wanted to teach us. And He taught us all so much!)
The two main things that God taught me while I was out there were…
1) I need to be ready to answer His call to “build a wall and stand in the gap.” I need to be ready to build up the wall of God’s truth. I need to be ready to stand in the gap of society and dare to be different for Him. It’s hard to do that and I had to ask God multiple times while I was out there to take away my fear of what other people would think, fear of being “inadequate” in the world’s eyes, fear that my pride would be crushed, fear that I would never get to go to college or have a family or live in a house again. I had to ask Him to take away my fear of the heights He could take me to if I answered the call and told Him “Here am I, send me.” (Isaiah 6:8)
and 2) God doesn’t “mess up”. Everything that happens to us is not an impromptu part of a sporadic plan, but a small, well-thought out piece of the bigger picture. God will do amazing things through you and me if only we would let Him have complete control. Chad, our main director, challenged all of us one morning, during a Bible study, to sign a contract with Christ. He gave each of us a piece of paper that was basically blank except for a place for us to sign our names on the bottom of the page. He told us, (I’m paraphrasing ok) “God doesn’t give us all the specifics of our life. He doesn’t give us the “to-do-in-this-lifetime” list for us to look over and approve of, because we probably wouldn’t approve of everything on there. I want you to go for a walk and talk with God and then if you trust Him to be in charge of your life I want you to consider signing your piece of paper, symbolizing that you want to do what God wants you to do instead of what you want to do.”
And that was only a fraction of the things I learned, the rest I probably couldn’t even start to describe. Oh, and there’s one more thing I wanted to share with you. While I was out there God led me to write a poem…I call it, “New Heart”.
A cool morning, a cool breeze,
a feeling of awe sweeping over me.
We walked down a path beneath a clear blue sky,
I gasped and I told Him I couldn’t believe,
He had just opened a new world for me.
As I looked around I had no words to say,
He lovingly told me, “Just start to pray.”
I fell to me knees and started to say,
“Dear God, I’m sorry I’ve been away.”
I had fallen from truth and now I was back,
words poured from my heart, I held nothing back.
“You are Creator and Lord and Love of my life,
Salvation, Redeemer, Restorer of Sight.
God please forgive me I’ve done nothing but wrong,
give me a pure heart so I may sing a new song.”
As I finished my prayer I looked all around,
I then saw His eyes as He knelt on the ground.
He said, “Oh, how I’ve longed for this day to come,
I couldn’t wait ‘til you found me and accepted my love.
I now want to give you what your heart desires,
a clean and pure heart that rejoices all hours.”
I accepted His hand and was pulled to my feet,
then as the breeze danced around us He disappeared so complete.
I had thought He was gone then I heard His voice say,
“Do not fret, dear one, for I am with you alway.
We are closer than ever for I am now in your heart,
O child of the King, I will never depart.”