You Can Do It

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and he will make your path straight. Proverbs 3:5-6

I arrived here just a week ago and it seems like it has been much, much, much longer. The richness of God and his amazing love has just steeped my Compassion DTS group in such a wonderful atmosphere of the Spirit of the Lord. Each day is SO FULL - not of things to do and facts to memorize - but of encounters with God that have changed our lives. Every single day our classes lead us deeper and deeper into the reality of who God is and I am realizing that I still have so much to discover about His love and goodness. I am so glad to be here to just soak up the love of God and be solely focused on learning how to grow in my relationship with Him. What a blessing it is to be here.

For the past few days, our classes (which are actually more like amazing encounters with God) have been focused on His love. Today, we moved to the theme of hearing God. Do you know that hearing from the Lord doesn't have to be hard or weird or awkward? He just loves us so much that he is has tons of stuff to tell us, not to make us feel bad or point a finger of accusation, but to encourage and uplift us and the people around us. Do you know that even you can hear God? My whole Compassion DTS group experienced it, I can do it, and you can do it too!

We did an exercise with the whole group, which consists of almost 50 students and 11 staff. Everyone in the group randomly picked a piece of paper with the name of a student or staff member. But here's the catch: the name of the person was written at the top of the page, folded over and taped so you could not see the name of the person you chose. We then spent the next 15 minutes praying and writing on that paper what we felt God wanted to share with the mystery person written at the top of the page. We came back together as a class and unsealed the tape on our pieces of paper, revealing the name of the person who would receive the word from the Lord. It was so cool...all it takes is to believe and to be obedient when hearing God. And as for the piece of paper with my name on the top - it was right on.

The verse at the top of this blog posting was one of the things written on the piece of paper I received with my name written at the top. This verse is the one that God has given me throughout my walk with him since the first time I asked him to be my Savior at the age of eight in second grade. Out of all of the thousands upon thousands of verses in the whole entirety of the Bible, the person who was getting a word from the Lord for me (without even knowing it was for me because my name was covered on the paper) heard from God that this is exactly what I needed to read on that little slip of paper. It was a great and gentle reminder of how wonderful it is to know such a loving, kind, all-knowing God and how I cannot rely on my own limited understanding to forge my way in life. I'm still on the journey of knowing him more and trusting Him more...oh, it is good to walk life with Him.

Current reading: Is That Really You, God? by Loren Cunningham. Its good.