Trying to Grasp a Perfect Love - John 15:9

John 15:9 says,
“As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love.”

I never actually realized it until this week, but when I think of God, I project a human image onto Him that isn't biblical. I picture someone who rolls their eyes and sighs when I confess that I have sinned, yet again. “Okay, MaKayla, I forgive you again but this is really getting old...” I picture Him getting tired of my mistakes. I think that humanly, this is an image that I can understand. Most people can only forgive so much before they just get sick of the other person's mess ups. But, oh how wrong it is for me to think that is how my Savior responds to me.

I don't have the right picture of who God is because I don't fully understand His love for me. Jesus says, “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you.” The Father loves the Son with a perfect love. We are loved with that same perfect love. That blows my mind. It is so hard for me to grasp a perfect love and to understand that that is what I receive. I am broken and messy and, at times, I have fallen so far away from God. There's no way that I deserve a perfect love. But that's the point. That's grace. I don't deserve this love but He pours it out on me anyway. I can't earn it and I can't mess up so badly that I would no longer be able to receive it. This love is too much for our human minds to even comprehend.

 Since last weekend, I have been overwhelmed with the reminder and realization of how loved I am. I haven't disappointed Him. I could never be too far that His love can't reach me.

I serve a Wonderful God that doesn't get sick of me.

Finding Where I'm Meant to Be - Jeremiah 13:11

Jeremiah 13:11 says, 

"For as the sash clings to the waist of a man, so I have caused the whole house of Israel and the whole house of Judah to cling to Me,’ says the Lord, ‘that they may become My people, for renown, for praise, and for glory; but they would not hear.’"

I have spent most of my life searching for my place. Where do I belong? Where do I fit? This journey to find my place has gotten me into a lot of trouble at times. And even when I felt the Lord telling me where I belong, which is close to Him, I ignored it because that wasn't where I wanted to be. That wouldn't give me popularity or tons of friends. So I ran away. I ran fast and hard from where I knew I was supposed to be.

In this passage, God is talking to Jeremiah and He has him do a little experiment as a visual for a lesson He was trying to teach Israel. God tells Jeremiah to put a sash around his waist and then later He tells him to put the sash in a rock by the water. When Jeremiah picks up the sash again, he sees that it is ruined and worthless, profitable for nothing.

This hit me so hard. All my life I have been wanting to know where I belong and here it is. I have been designed to cling to my Lord and Savior. When I stay where I belong, I have a purpose and place. But when I run from Him, I end up where I wasn't designed to be. I end up in the muck and become ruined, losing my purpose. God has called us to be His people. He has designed us to cling to Him but when we choose to stop listening to Him, we end up where we don't belong. 

I am so thankful that I have finally found my place. After years of running and searching, I have realized that apart from God, I can do nothing(John 15:5). My desire is to never leave this place again. Something that encourages me is that God wants me to cling to Him. That's the purpose that He has given me. 

We are called to cling. 

God is Good. I am a Witness... Update on Month 6 and Re-entry

Hello all!

So it's been 2 months since I posted an update but there's a valid reason. So September was our last month serving on the field. It consisted of testing, grading and lots of goodbyes. It was hard yet an amazing month. And then came re-entry. Our class reunited in Montana and stayed in an amazing cabin up on a mountain. We had discussions about some great books and about our time on the field. It was really great seeing how the Lord has worked in all of our lives and changed our hearts in the past 6 months. We unpacked things that we were feeling like fear, excitement, sadness. We talked about these feelings and walked through culture shock together. We soaked all of our fears and worries in prayer, sorted through what God did in all of our lives during field time and then got sent back out to share these experiences with those back at our home churches. It was amazing to see my class again. So even more, it was brutal saying goodbye to them last Saturday when re-entry ended. I'm so thankful for the people God gave me to go through these last 10 months with. I am especially grateful for the 4 of my classmates that made up my incredible family for the past 7 months. They are wonderful and I can't imagine what field time would have been like without them. The Lord showed us what true unity looks like when we learned how to die to ourselves and love each other no matter what. The Lord is the only way to explain how our team became so close. When we started 7 months ago, we were all opposites that didn't really get a long and had no idea how we were ever going to be a team and work together. But man, oh man, when I said goodbye to them on two days ago, it felt like severing my limbs and sending them all over the country. It was so hard to say goodbye but I am so thankful for how much it hurt because it shows me the amazing work that the Lord did in us.

So if you have not heard, I am staying in Whitefish, Montana to serve with Potter's Field for my last two months of IGNITE and after visiting family and friends for Christmas, I will return to Montana until God moves me elsewhere. I don't know what's next. I don't even know what tomorrow looks like but I do know that the Lord led me here and He has been with me through the last year and He isn't going to leave me. He is so good and so faithful and I could never earn His grace.

Thank you so much for your support over these last 10 months. I am so beyond blessed.

Stay tuned to this blog to see what happens next!

God is good. I am a witness!

By His Grace,

MaKayla

A Beautiful Contrast - Titus 3:1-7

Titus 3:1-7

“Remind them to be subject to rulers and authorities, to obey, to be ready for every good work, to speak evil of no one, to be peaceable, gentle, showing all humility to all men. For we ourselves were also once foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving various lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful and hating one another. But when the kindness and the love of God our Savior toward man appeared, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us, through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior, that having been justified by His grace we should become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.”

This passage is such an exact definition of what my life was a year ago, what the Lord has done in the last 9 months, and now what I am called to do. I was foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving various lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful and hating others. This list is progressive. It started with being foolish because I wasn't grounded in the Lord and His Word. That led to being disobedient. Disobedient to my mom, to my pastor and most importantly to the Lord. Because of these first two, I opened myself up to being deceived. And I was. I was lied to and manipulated. Not only to do the things that I did but I was also deceived by Satan to believe that I was too far gone to be saved. I believed that I was too big of a sinner and that God didn't want me anymore. From there, I fell hard into serving my lusts and pleasures. This led to living in malice and envy of those around me that were involved in the same sin. We were all selfish and angry. This meant being hateful and hating each other. I hated everything. I was so unhappy and I hated my life. I hated those that hurt me. I hated what I was doing. I hated being alive.

But when I joined IGNITE, I experience God's love and kindness. I learned that He loved me no matter what I had done and He had plans for me and wanted me to come to repentance and experience His forgiveness so that He could use me. I wasn't saved by anything that I did. There was no work that I could have done that would have saved me. My salvation was a gift given through His mercy. He washed me and filled me with the Holy Spirit. This wasn't just a once filled type of thing. He poured His Spirit on me abundantly, and this through Jesus. Because of Jesus' sacrifice, I am truly alive and free from the chains of sin that kept me (seemingly) hopelessly captive before. I am now an heir and have the hope of eternal life. What a beautiful contrast! How completely opposite was my life a year ago compared to the life I have now. God is so good and so faithful.

So now with this new life that I have been given, I need to remember to submit to the authorities that God has placed in my life, to be ready for the good works that the Lord has for me to do, to speak evil of no one, to be peaceable, gentle, and humble. This means to be these things with everyone, no matter who they are or how they treat me. I need to remember that I used to be without God just like them. These things are hard but possible with the Lord. This is such a good reminder for me as my serving time in IGNITE comes to an end this week. Just because my time on the foreign mission field is ending does not mean that I don't still need to live my life this way when I go back to the States. My mission field doesn't stop here. My mission field is wherever God places me.

My application this week is to make this passage a bookmark for my Bible as a daily reminder.  

No Condemnation... Romans 8:1

Romans 8:1 says,
“There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.”

So my life was really messed up last year. I made a lot of really stupid decisions and blatantly sinned against the Lord. I lived in a mess of disgusting sin, complete hypocrisy and false holiness. I pretended to have a relationship with Christ while running fast and hard away from Him. At the beginning of this year, God rescued me from myself and showed me that I am not too far from His saving grace. Something that I face on a pretty regular basis is memories and guilt from what I did. I am no longer living in that sin but that doesn't mean that I don't still have consequences from it. So yesterday was one of those days where I had to come face to face with my past and recount the things that I had done. Something though that is so important but often hard to remember is that my past is exactly that, past. It's gone; behind me. I am washed in the Blood of the Lamb and I am in Christ Jesus. Now because I am in Christ Jesus I need to know that there is no condemnation for me. There is conviction from the Holy Spirit when I sin but no condemnation. The devil is constantly trying to drag us down and away from God. One of the ways that he accomplishes this is by throwing condemnation at us. He wants us to believe that we are too bad; too far from grace; not good enough for God to love. But those thoughts are not from God. I am not worthless. I am not too far gone. I have made bad choices. I have hurt people. But I am in Christ Jesus and now I have a future. I am free from the chains of sin and condemnation. Satan can try to throw these things in my face but they no longer have any truth in Christ. I don't have to live in fear of not having a future because of the truth of this next verse:

Romans 8:28 says,
“And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.”

My application for this week is to write “no condemnation” on my right hand.

Where Is Your Faith? Luke 8:22-25

Luke 8:22-25 says,

“Now it happened, on a certain day, that He got into a boat with His disciples. And He said to them, 'Let us cross over to the other side of the lake.'And they launched out. But as they sailed He fell asleep. And a windstorm came down on the lake, and they were filling with water, and were in jeopardy. And they came to Him and awoke Him, saying, 'Master, Master, we are perishing!' Then He arose and rebuked the wind and the raging of the water. And they ceased, and there was a calm. But He said to them, 'Where is your faith?'And they were afraid, and marveled, saying to one another, 'Who can this be? For He commands even the winds and water, and they obey Him!'”

This past Saturday, we had a Women’s Bible Study at church and part of what was shared was about God's faithfulness and trustworthiness. At one point, Miss Karol said something about how the Lord has never left us or let us go so why do we fear? Why don't we trust Him? He's brought us this far, why would He leave us now? This was very convicting to me because only a few hours before this, I had mentioned to the girls on my team how fearful I am of the future because it's so unsure. Well I've been reading through Luke in my personal devotions and so Sunday morning, I read the above passage in Luke 8 and I was convicted even more. Let me explain.

So Jesus' disciples had been with Him for a good amount of time by this point. They had seen miracle upon miracle and listened to so many sermons and parables of His. They have been walking right beside the Son of God and then they get on this boat and entered a storm. They should have realized that this storm was so not a big deal for Jesus. In reality they had nothing to fear. They were with Jesus, for goodness sake! Didn't they remember all that He had done so far??? But there they were, only seeing the storm in front of them and freaking out, convinced that they were about to die. So then they wake up Jesus, informing Him of their seemingly imminent death. But for Jesus, He just calms the storm like it's just another day and asks them where their faith is. “Hello, haven't you seen me perform miracles on a regular basis? Don't you remember who I am? Why do you fret? Why can't you trust me?”

So my first thoughts after reading this are that the disciples are ridiculous and foolish for being scared. But then I remember my fear. “Um, Hello Mak, you've experienced God's faithfulness. You've seen the miracle that He has done with your life. You've seen what He can do with messes and wrecks. And yet you are currently fearful for your future. You doubt that the Lord is going to take care of you and provide. You doubt His capability. You doubt His power and sovereignty. Who are you to judge those who doubt?” Okay, point taken. Those things happening one right after the other was clearly the Lord responding to my admitted fear. “Where is your faith, beloved? Remember Who I am. Remember my promises and my faithfulness. I know what I'm doing.” So realizing all of this, I can now look at this passage that Miss Karol shared on Saturday as a reminder instead of not believing that it applies to me.

Proverbs 3:25-26 says,

“Do not be afraid of sudden terror,
Nor of trouble from the wicked when it comes;
For the Lord will be your confidence,
And will keep your foot from being caught.”

God is good. He is faithful. I am so thankful for what hes done in the last 8 months and I am excited to just lean on Him in this new phase of life. Things seem uncertain but I know that this is where He has called me so I am stepping out in faith knowing that He is there and will never leave me.

My application for this week is to give my insecurities and fears to Jesus and take time to journal about what He has done in my life and the reminders of His faithfulness. Also to journal the Scriptures that He has laid on my heart to remind me that He holds my future and that there is nothing to fear.

So Good to Me... Psalm 40:1-3

Psalm 40:1-3 says,

“I waited patiently for the Lord; And He inclined to me,
And heard my cry. He also brought me up out of a horrible pit, Out of the miry clay,
And set my feet upon a rock, And established my steps. He has put a new song in my mouth—
Praise to our God; Many will see it and fear, And will trust in the Lord.”

So we have chapel every Thursday night here in Guatemala. Some of the girls that usually lead worship love this song called, “So Good to Me” and so it gets played often. Well, that song came pretty directly out of this passage in Psalm 40. I love this song but I don't really think about what it says often enough. So when I read this in my morning devotions the other day, I was hit afresh with the deep significance of what David is saying here.

Okay, I have sinned a lot in my life. I sin everyday. But last year, I had dug the most horrible pit of sin for myself. I was living a life of ugly and dirty bold-faced hypocrisy. I got to the point eventually where I was convinced that God didn't want to hear from me. I had a relationship with Him but I chose to walk away from Him, knowing what He had done for me on the cross, so therefore I was sure that He must have hated me. But then for some reason, knowing the cry of my heart, God picked me up out of that mess that I had put myself in. I have been washed in Jesus' blood and made perfect in His sight. This year, He set me upon a rock and has established my steps. To establish means to set up on a firm or permanent basis. This is what He has done! My path was so unsteady and broken and He picked me up and off of that way and made my steps firm and my path permanent. As a result of all of this, He has given me a new song of gratefulness. The only song I had before was of self pity and misery and now I don't feel content without praising the One who has brought me here. I know that this new life that I have wasn't given to me for me to live however I want but to always be able to tell others of what He has done for me.

My application for this week is to remember to be so thankful for what God has done for me. When I get frustrated or tired I need to remember the grace and love that has been given to me and praise Him for it.