If you guys have read my past blog posts, God is really teaching me about friendship, love, trust, commitments and what it is to allow people to invest in you.
Honestly, I am absolutely broken right now.
I am being taught what it is to allow people to invest in you as a person, as a friend. It is one of the hardest times in my life right now. To understand what it is to balance time, love and life with relationships. How to be open to pour into others, but to be open for others to truly pour into me.
I am so used to the mindset that “people will leave me in 6 months or a year, so why should I allow them to pour into me, I just want to pour into them.”
I have caused myself great damage, great hurt and pain from thinking like that the past year of my life. Living in YWAM it makes it difficult for you to allow friendships to grow intimately and deeply knowing that you might see them for only 3 months, 6 months or even 2 weeks.
I remember back when I was a kid how I was always let down by people in my life. How I always felt I never had a best friend to play dinosaurs with, to watch ninja movies or even when I was older to simply talk to someone and someone understands. It is such a lonely, painful feeling. Growing up in that area, I have now allowed it to overlap in this time of my life and I’m ready for change.
I don’t want to run away from what God has for me in my life.
I don’t know what that is right now, but I know that He is working in me with going deep and intimate, allowing others to speak into my life, giving respect to others, letting others love me.
Let’s be honest, I am really good at developing friendships. I am really comfortable in getting to know someone in 5 mins and sharing anything and everything if it needs to happen. I am SO FASCINATED by people. With those truths, I love getting to know someone quick and fast and being open to share whenever.
God is not telling me to stop, but He is telling me to allow for others to do that with me. How I don’t always have to be the one who pours into someone, but I need someone to pour into me. Not only one person, but multiple people.
Today I had a skype date with 2 people, and I wasn’t able to make it. It was totally my fault in that area and I had let them down. It wasn’t even me to set up this date, but it was on their behalf to want to communicate. I was so pumped to talk to these 2 awesome men in my life but when I realized that I was irresponsible and careless with my time, I lost it. It was hard to forgive myself and to not feel shameful for doing that. I have never felt like that before, but since what God is teaching me, THESE MOMENTS ARE SO CRUCIAL FOR ME. To build upon the relationships I have now and to allow them to invest in me.
God is really making me so much more sensitive to relationships. What it means to keep your word, how every little thing counts. It either turns you a little away from them, or a little closer to them. And with what I’m going through, I felt it was a step away from them.
Time is something you cannot take back, ever. Showing someone true love is giving them your time. Why? Because you can’t take that single aspect back from your life, their life, or anyone’s life.
I haven’t been this emotional in my life these past few weeks, and it’s intense. But it’s so worth the pain, suffering and tears that I go through.
I want to be able to be comfortable in allowing people dig deeper into me. I want to be comfortable in having best friends in Herrnhut Germany. I want to be comfortable in pouring into someone and never seeing them again in my entire life.
I’m so tired of always having short term friendships, but that’s life. You meet people for a season and then they are off to do something to complete their life. It’s totally normal. But I want to be ok with that happening and me not being afraid of how they will impact me and how I will impact them.
I really don’t know what else to say right now. But I don’t want to have fear to live life to the fullest and what God has for me.
God, I am so open for you to work in me. I know it’s going to be painful, it’s going to hurt, but I know You are so worth anything and everything I could ever go through. I want to learn the lesson of friendships. Knowing that I will never be perfect in it, but I want to be disciplined and challenged so much in my character to become a better man.
It’s gonna be worth it, it’s gonna be worth it all.
Hey Friends,
I have decided to do the 30 Day challenge, and I’m on day 3 right now.
If you don’t know what the 30 Day challenge is, please read below or go to
www.pickapocket.showitsite.com
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Not paying for your own food but relying on others, and to talk to people about what we are doing it for: to stop extreme poverty. We cant raise enough awareness without people who are willing to rise to the challenge and tell others to do the same. With the money that you would have spent on food in the 30 day period, you send to us. We will then use it for funding the different projects that will help our cause to end extreme poverty.
30 Days allows people to not only sympathize, but also empathize, with the poor and feel how they feel. The premise is that for 30 days, you do not pay for your own food, but rather depend on others to support you for your meals. In this time you are not only giving the money that you would use on yourself and putting it into someone else’s individual pocket, but you are also experiencing what it means to feel hungry and depend on other people for food.
During this 30 Days time period, we are pulling out our pockets symbolizing the challenge we are taking a part of. On there pockets the text; 30 Days will be printed on it. While doing this people are actually advertising the movement and allowing the people who come in contact with them to be aware of the challenge they are doing. We hope that one day pockets out will no longer be a sign for poverty but a sign for the 30 Day challenge.
Most people will get to the end of the first week and realize how difficult this is. This is our point; this lifestyle is way too hard. We do not want to just pull out a dollar and give, but to also experience a taste of how the people live. We want people to realize that it is not poverty that we are fighting against, but its people we are fighting for.
We are a group of young artists who also relay on others to support us in what we are doing and can identify occasionally with not knowing where our next meal will come from. All the profits we make off of our photos, art or music goes right back into this project because we believe in it and we want to see extreme poverty come to an end.
As I arrived in Herrnhut, Germany I felt an uncomfortable tension unpacking my bags. This place once felt like home, once was comfortable, once was familiar. I sensed God had something to teach me even the first day as I arrived in Herrnhut. Throughout the first week, a lot was happening with me emotionally. I didn’t feel that I fit in so well anymore, people have moved on, friends have left, and what once felt like family faded away too quickly.
As I was having meetings with the art group I am a part of, Pick A Pocket, I began to realize a lot about how I felt with this group and these people. How I didn’t want to be a part of this group anymore, I’d rather do something else than heal others through art (which is such a crazy thought for me).
In the past few days God has been working on me so much about my fear of commitments. If I do not see how a situation is going to end, I do not want to be a part of it. I once could not stand to be in Pick A Pocket, because it is a dedication to a cause and a ministry til death, or til God decides you are finished serving them. Without seeing the result in our works as Pick A Pocket, I needed to leave. I needed to express my frustration, the tension I felt in my spirit and heart. It even led to me not even liking who I once called friends.
I have never been like this in my life… and I was scaring myself, to be honest.
One night a friend of mine spoke truthfully and harshly into my life. I needed to change my thinking. I needed to be challenged with my life and how I perceive things. I needed to come into agreement that it is ok to be stretched and to work on something if you can’t even see the end of it.
How can I live life to the fullest if I do not trust God in guiding me, showing me, and teaching me how to live life.
I’m sure the root of this horrific fear results in how I lived my teenage life. I always moved every 3 years, I began to not expect to be “best friends” with anyone nor anyone to call me theirs. Knowing that I will move soon built a wall between me and others. I desired so bad to be someones best friend and to have one, but in searching for that, I never truly found one. I have learned that “it just has to happen and come on it’s own timing.” You cannot make a friendship that is like that. It has to be from God, and it is only from God.
I have feared that I have missed out on a lot of relationships, intimately and friendship-wise, because I have tried to create something that humans cannot create, or because I have been too scared to trust someone that deep within my heart.
Trust is such a huge thing for me. It is absolutely so hard for me to think of marriage. How can someone trust me that deep?
I have the fear that someone will depend on me too much for their needs, and of course, since I’m human, I’ll always fail them. And that is what is scary about marriage to me. Trusting someone too much to the point where nothing can satisfy you. This is where God comes into the picture… and this is what God is teaching me about trust, fear and commitments.
So, these last 2 weeks have been so hard for me. To make commitments in Pick A Pocket that I cannot see the end of, to be open for God to work on my character about not making friends with everyone, but allow some friendships to go deeper than I’ve experienced.
God, I’m open for you and what you have to do with me. My trust in you is not what it should be, but yet, I want to learn and be challenged. So please, do challenge me. I know you are with me all the way, through challenges and times when no one can satisfy me. With that truth, I am satisfied. For you are always here.
Today I reread Psalm 37. Knowing that this chapter is my “theme” from the 2 months I came home, I wanted to read it again since the end of my 2 months is tomorrow.
I love reflecting. Reflecting on how you have grown, how God has put you certain seasons in a specific time for you to learn something so valuable. In this season being at home alone, was such a tough and complicated season for me. But I am completely, 110% confident that I have gained exactly what God was wanting to teach me.
In this time, He was trying to show me how it is to live with Him alone. How you have to make initiative to worship, pray, give, encourage, love, etc etc. Living in a YWAM community, those things come natural daily. But when you are alone in your own apartment for a period of time, you have to create that atmosphere yourself. Any missionary can relate the feeling what it is to “be a missionary” on the field, then come home and take time off. It is so hard and challenging. But it is so necessary, healthy and character/faith building for us to experience that.
So, as I was rereading Psalm 37, I was simply just looking to see if I feel confident on what God has placed on my heart earlier in this season.
The main verses for me are 3 - 7.
How David writes to commit everything to the Lord, delight in Him, trust in Him and be patient and silent before Him.
That has a whole new meaning now after being in this season.
But, as I kept on reading, this verse popped out vibrantly.
Psalm 37 : 30-31
“The mouth of the righteous man utters wisdom, and his tongue speaks what is just. The law of his God is in his heart; his feet do not slip.”
For some reason, this just hit my heart and soul like a ton of bricks.
I simply sat back in my couch, stretched out my arms, opened my mouth and just felt the presence of God come.
Hearing the worship music in front of me, just in awe of how hard I was hit by these 2 simple verses. The Spirit was really stirring me up and wanted to plant something in me from this.
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If we do not have wisdom in life, why live?
I realize more and more daily that as a Christian, it is prominent for us to have wisdom. We need to desire wisdom, daily. Seek for wisdom, not just search, but seek with everything we are. Without wisdom how could we talk and share with others? How could we have a relationship with others? Solomon writes a whole chapter in the book of Proverbs about wisdom.
Proverbs 2 : 2 & 4
Tune your ears to wisdom and concentrate on understanding.
Search for wisdom and understanding as you would for silver; SEEK THEM like hidden treasures.
It just hit me as I typed that last line… But what did God create first in the entire universe? What was from the beginning before anything else?
Some may say “light”, but that is wrong.
God created wisdom before anything else was created.
Proverbs 3:19
“By wisdom the Lord founded the earth; by understanding he created the heavens.”
He needed wisdom to create the world, science, love, animals, relationships, light, and us.
That was the first and foremost important aspect before He started his 6 day work of creating the universe.
Wisdom is so key to our relationship with God. I desire for God to plant the seed of Wisdom in me daily and help it grow. There is nothing that I can do to make wisdom come to me. I simply have to be open for God to work on it in my life. I cannot gain any wisdom without going to God first. And without going to God first in my life in this 2 month season of being home, I would have never gained the wisdom I have now about gaining wisdom and being with God fully.
Wow, praise God for this revelation and for this wisdom.
Amen.
The Dreaming of Days