The weekend was focus around what it looks like
to have “unity in community.” We pressed into God and allow the Holy Spirit to
minister to our hearts as we took time to worship, pray, meditate over
scripture and listen to a speaker talk on the importance of mentoring groups to
foster unity in a community.
This weekend God pressed onto my heart to
mediate and think about what it means to say and allow God to: “create
in me a clean heart, O God”. This is a little bit of verse from a song we
sang during one of worship times. It struck me hard. There is a lot that my
heart feels these days… happy, joy, anger, jealousy, sadness, selfishness, tiredness
overwhelmness and confused. As you can see there are more downer words then
happy words- not that life has been awful. Overall
I love where God has me, but there are little things that are picking at my
heart. There are little things that are bringing me down. There are little
things that I am allowing to steal my joy. They are making my heart fogged
over. They are crowding it and this weekend came at the perfect time to begin the
process of cleaning it out; cleaning out the little things that are stealing me
from experiencing all that God has for me in this life. My week after retreat has been wrecked because
of it. Wrecked in beautiful messy way- a way that has made me really press into
my Savior; a week where I have had to say over and over again “I cannot do this
without you God. I need you!!” I need you to show me how much you LOVE me. I
need you to show me that I am YOURS. I need you to COMFORT me. I need you to
FORGIVE me and help me to live in your TRUTH.
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| Soaking this in brings me peace! |
This weekend as a whole group we mediate on 1John
4:7-21. We were asked to underline a word or phrase that really stood out to us
as we spent an hour meditating on these verses. First, I underlined the word
love and it appeared twenty-six times!!! This just spoke to my heart and
reminded me again how much God love us. How important loving is to Him! Then
verse 12 and 18 caught me “God lives in us and his love is made complete in us”;
“There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear.” These verses
wrapped themselves around my heart and tug at it. Because God lives in me and
His love is made complete in me. I can feel complete in Him because He lives in
me and He loves me. Nothing else matters, but this. Why do I then care so much
about what this world and people think of me? Why do I allow what other say and
do affect me and bring me down? Why do I get caught up in the things of this
world? Because I forget I forget how my worth is in my Savior. I forget that my
life is all for Christ. I have ask Him to use me and I have declared that I
want to be His. I want to be complete in Him. Which leads me to I don’t have to
afraid of what others think of me if I want to experience this perfect love of
His which I completely 100% do! I need to not be afraid that God will never
love me even when I feel selfish and guilty which I have felt a lot lately! L Instead I rest on the promise that
I am His one true love. He loves me. He is calling me to abide in Him and to
cling to Jesus daily. He has called me
His daughter and He wants me to walk in the truth that He has placed in my
life.
This season of life God has so clearly called me
to the word of joy. Joy is my middle
name so I have always loved this word, but for some reason this time around it
has a new meaning me in my life. I am not entirely sure what it looks like yet,
but I do know it is what God is calling me to walk in this year. Joy. He has
confirmed in multiple times throughout this past week. Joy. Joy. Joy. I just want
to be overflowing with JOY! Joy that comes from the only one who can give me
the true joy, my Savior; He is my source of Joy! As God continues to work
through my heart and create it clean again I would love prayer. I have felt so
exhausted these past weeks and very overwhelmed. I love everything that I am
doing, but I have no energy. I am losing patience as I teach and I am feeling
that I am not able to fully pour into others effectively right now. As my
roommate summed up what she got from the weekend she said “To know God spills
over into love for others…” There is so much truth in this. We need to know God
first. We need to take the time to spend with Him so that we can be used to
love others.
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| His Truth! |
Thank you so much for reading about what God has
been doing in my life. I would love to hear from you and what God
is doing in your life. I would love to pray for anything that is on
your heart. Please send me an email or facebook message!
Love, Daniella
P.S The place where our retreat was reminded me
so much of “home”, Montana. I felt so at peace all weekend soaking in the
amazing creation that God has created. (Psalm 148 sums up how creation praises
God- it’s amazing!!) And this is what was talked about in church today- so
GOOD!!
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| Korea's Montana! :) |
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