Remember, Life is Funny

"For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways,"

declares the Lord.

"As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways

and My thoughts than your thoughts.

As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth

and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater,

so is My word that goes out from My mouth:

It will not return to Me empty,

but will accomplish what I desire

and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.

You will go out in joy and be led forth in peace;"

Isaiah 55:8-12

So I'm living up here at Camp Redwood Glen in the Santa Cruz mountains, coordinating 2 outreaches.  

How crazy is that statement considering I was on the other side of the world just 2 weeks ago?  

Yep, life is funny.

I have been realizing more and more of how much I love my life right now.  I have just come back from an incredible adventure full of amazing new relationships, life changing experiences, learning more about myself and who God is and just so much more.  Now here I am with the opportunity to take all of that, take all that I have learned and all I have become and continue to put it into practice here.  In my wildest dreams, I could have never imagined that my life would be like it is at this very moment.  I love it.

On graduation night of my DTS, we were told how important it was going to be to do just one thing:

REMEMBER

As simple as that one word may be, there's a whole lot to remember from the last 6 months.  At first, I was a bit worried that it would be so easy to forget everything that I have learned and everything I have done and just go back to how my life was before I left.  As I was traveling around Europe (no big deal) I was reminded that God won't let me forget.  That He would be there to help me remember.  And He is indeed doing that.

As I have said, I will be doing a week of training for the people that are going one these 2 outreaches.  So in preparation for that, I have been going through my Jotter Pad full of copious notes from lectures and attempting to condense 3 months worth of notes into just a couple days.  (A bit of a challenge).  In reading through my notes and just thinking and praying, God has continued to remind me of so many of the incredible things He did in me and through me the last 6 months and even before that.  I am remembering the person that I was before DTS and seeing how that has changed and seeing the person that I am now.  And to be able to share these with someone else, well that's just a big bonus.  I would love to go into more detail about everything that I keep being reminded of but that would just take forever.  But one thing I will say is that I love the person that God has made me to be and I want to continue to be that person.

One thing (among others) that I have been challenged with is simply to trust God.  I was recently reading a friend's blog and at the end of one of his posts he said,

"But I trust Him to finish the work He began.  I trust Him with my forever."

That just really got to me and got me thinking a lot about how I just need to trust God with my future and stop stressing myself out and trying to make my own plans.  I'm so impatient when it comes to figuring out life but I have been reminded over and over that God knows the story of my life better than I do because He is the one writing it.  And the stories that He can write are far more creative and more incredible then I could ever write or even think to write.  At the beginning of lecture phase, they gave us a verse for our school:

"For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."

Jeremiah 29:11

God has shown me over and over that He knows what He is doing and His timing is perfect.  

Now is just another time that I really need to put my trust in that.

                   Put my trust in Him.

                                         Trust Him with my forever.

"God has wisely kept us in the dark concerning future events and reserved for himself the knowledge of them, that He may train us up in the dependence upon himself and a continued readiness for every event."

~Matthew Henry