Sitting, Resting, and Obeying

Another week has flown by and we’ve now been in Guatemala for three weeks which is crazy to think about! In some ways it feels like we just got here and in other ways it feels like we’ve been here for months! Honestly this last week has been super busy and tiring but there’s been so many good moments! Last blog I talked a lot about my ministry and what our day to day looks like which I love but this week I want to focus more on what the Lord has been teaching me since being here!

First off the Lord has been teaching me to continue to find my rest in him. This seems so easy but I’ve found myself struggling with it a lot especially over the last week. I found myself getting tired earlier and earlier every day until I finally was just starting my day tired and not getting very far. By the time we hit Thursday morning (which is our ask the Lord day) I started my day exhausted and just discouraged by so many things around me but the Lord had other plans. We had worship that morning and the first words we sang were “Praise the Lord oh my soul” I started that time by pretty much telling my soul to praise the Lord no matter how I felt but within just a few minutes I found myself on the floor crying and just asking the Lord to meet me where I was and to fill me back up. God is so much better than that! He didn’t just meet me where I was but He drew me into the secret place with Him. I sat there face down for the rest of worship just sitting with the Lord. Giving him my exhaustion, my discouragement, literally everything I was feeling He took and He just let me rest with Him! It doesn’t even matter what I was feeling, honestly I wasn’t even sure what I was feeling I still don’t but the Lord still met me there and He took it all from me. He wanted to fill me up again and all He asked was that I sit at His feet and give my troubles to Him because He’s more than worthy of them. The Lord my God is my rest!

Another big thing that the Lord’s been teaching me is trust and obedience! There’s so many layers to obedience; it’s kind of like an onion in a way, you peel back layer after layer getting closer and closer to the Father’s heart. This is also something I started learning big time on Thursday. After worship we had a lesson on loving and obeying the Word of God and it absolutely slapped me and so many others in the face! The Word of God is so powerful, its holy, and its so much deeper then we take it sometimes. I’ve read the Bible since I was little, I know all the stories and things but there’s still so much more for me to get from it and that’s something I definitely miss a lot. In our lesson we learned that Gods highest calling and all He really wants from us is our obedience to Him. To minister to His heart above everything else and follow Him in complete obedience. He wants our willingness to follow Him and trust Him with all we have. One of the best example of this in the Bible is when God called Abraham and told him to sacrifice his one and only son Isaac. I don’t think I’ve ever realized the full extent of that request before. God literally told Abraham to sacrifice his son, the one that was promised to him, the one he waited years and years for. God asked him for all he had and Abrahams immediate response was complete obedience. I can’t even imagine what that was like or how truly hard that was for him but his love and obedience to the Lord was so much greater than anything else! This hit me in a way that it never has before and showed me just how important it is to have complete obedience to the Lord! Abraham literally put everything he had on the altar for the Lord and the Lord blessed him so much in that! I’d never understood that so deeply because I’ve never been asked to put something so close to my heart on the altar before, until recently!

We didn’t just talk about obedience and sacrifice but we also took some time to put that into practice in our own lives! We spent a good amount of time reflecting on the morning and asking what the Lord wanted us to put on the altar for him. Not only did we pray and ask the Lord but we followed that up with some action steps. First we took time to hand that to the Lord, write it down on a piece of paper, and then put it on a table to symbolize putting it on the altar. After laying our things on the altar we paired up with someone and shared with them about what the Lord had been showing us. Honestly I sat there in reflection for quite a bit of time, I genuinely couldn’t think of anything that the Lord was really calling me to lay on the altar. By the end of my reflection time I realized that the Lord was calling me to lay so much more before Him then I could’ve imagined.

A lot of the discouragement from my week was coming from me focusing too much on the future and what it looked like. I’ve always held very loosely to what the future looks like and since I knew I was coming on the race l’ve held on even looser and been more open to wherever the Lord leads. What I didn’t realize with that was how much I was still holding on to and how deeply I was desiring some things. For some reason the last few weeks l’ve been putting an intense pressure on myself to figure out what life looks like when I get back especially as I watch things change both at home and also within me. I’ve never felt my heart more divided between two things than I have this week and it was breaking me! The reality is that none of this is even in my hands I was just pretending that it was. I found myself getting frustrated because I felt like the Lord wasn’t giving me any clear answers but the truth is that I’m still committed to the next seven months and there’s no need for me to be pushing to figure it all out right now. After lots of prayer I realized that the Lord was asking me to lay that on the altar. I was wrestling between things in my heart when the reality is that God has a plan and He’s the one that will lead me. I don’t have to decide what’s right because He already knows. The Fathers heart is not for me to be torn and divided between things because He does have so much good planned for my life! I trust that’s He’s gonna work in ways I don’t even know or see to lead me where I need to be! Even though I want control of the outcome so badly, the Lord is asking me to lay it down so in complete obedience I’m laying that on the altar. I’m choosing to obey what the Lord is asking like Abraham. No matter the outcome it’s in the Lords hands now! I don’t want to pretend like this was or still is easy, it literally caused knots in my stomach to even think of surrendering that but it’s what the Lord asked and it’s only through His strength that l’m able to even do anything! All the Lord wants from us is our obedience nothing more nothing less! More than that He’s so patient to walk us so slowly and intentionally through the hard and the struggle! What a good God!

These are just a few of the things the Lord has really been revealing and teaching me lately! I know this was long and different then normal but hopefully you got something out of it! Thank you for reading this and for your support! Leave a comment or message me with any thoughts!

Love,

Emilee