God's Holiness

Wow. What an insane summer it was. The Lord stretched me and grew me in so many ways that I wasn't even expecting.

I'm not even sure where to start...I guess I can start with when staff left our summer project halfway through. What a scary time that was. At that point, having been in VA Beach for five weeks, I was still asking the Lord why I was there. I was so ready to go home. I missed my friends and family and honestly didn't understand why the Lord was putting me through so much homesickness. One of my best friends on project Grace told me that it was just a slump, and a lot of people went through that about halfway through. She told me that the second half of project will be so much better. She was completely right, and I am so thankful for her and Hannah sticking with me (even though I was being a complete baby).

The second half of project opened my eyes to so many things. Our theme for the second half was "Set Free" which was such a blessing. It was based off of Galatians 5:1: "It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery."

This theme was so perfect for everyone. I know that it impacted my life in a huge way. The three components of this theme were God's Holiness, Embracing Brokenness, and Experiencing Grace.

God's Holiness was a week that definitely showed me aspects of God's character that I never really thought about. We learned about how God is so holy that even his angels can't behold his light. I saw that God's thoughts are so, so different from mine. When I am thinking that things aren't going well, or getting down on myself about something, God is still sovereign, and he knows exactly what's going to happen. He sees me in a completely different way than I see myself. Even though there are things about myself that I want to change, God still loves me as much now as he will when I do make those changes. He could never love me more or less. What a hard truth for me to hear. The Lord totally rocked my world with that one. Through this he also showed me that I've been relying on my own strength for so long, which is completely exhausting. Knowing that God is so huge made me want to take advantage of his strength way more.

I'm so glad that week could change my perspective on God. It was definitely good to take God out of the box I had put him in and realize he deserves so much more space than that.

I am definitely going to continue processing through all of the things I learned this summer, so there will be more posts to come!