Moving Day

This blog has served me well... I've loved every minute of writing in it, and it was such an amazing, character building experience, but a new season=a new blog! Sooooo to continue reading more of my random musings and anything and everything else I decide to post go to my NEW blog: www.sarahoknudsen.wordpress.com . Thanks for reading this blog! It's meant more than words can express! Ciao! :)

Blessing or no blessing

The past few days God has brought something to my mind that I think is incredibly essential to life... even if He never blesses me again... even if I never see His hand or feel His presence, He is still God... He is still good... and I will still love Him. I do not love God for what He can give me or do for me, I love Him because He is God... I trust Him because He is good and faithful... I follow Him because there is no other person worth following... He is it. Think about this for a second... if you had a friend or family member who only loved you for the gifts you gave them or the things you did for them, would that make a very good relationship? I submit, it would not! It's the same with God. Don't you think it hurts Him when our love for Him is conditional upon the amount of blessings we have or the happiness we feel? I'm not saying in the moments where God feels far away that it isn't hard... that it doesn't hurt... cause it does. But even in those moments, in the times when nothing seems to make sense, we MUST still love Him, obey Him, and serve Him. Think about the story of Job for second. God allowed Satan to basically take everything from him except for his life. Job lost his family, his home, his belongings, and even his health, but he never stopped loving and worshipping God. That's not to say that he didn't question God, or wrestle with Him, but he never stopped loving Him. Job got it... he understood that our love for God doesn't get to be conditional upon our circumstances. If you truly love God you must love Him in the good, the bad, and the ugly. I love that God enjoys blessing His children... I love that He is the giver of good gifts... but that isn't the only, or even the main reason I love Him. I love Him because He first loved me... and I love Him because He is God.

My Identity

Recently it became abundantly clear to me that I do not find my identity in Christ... this is a gigantic problem, because I seek to find my identity in other things, in things that don't and can't fulfill, satisfy, or define me. I put more pressure on my relationships because I am expecting them to give me worth, I expect more from my job, and even ministry because I am trying to find my worth in it, instead of in the Lord. This my friends, is a recipe for disaster. I'm coming to the conclusion that the ministries that I'm a part of will be more effective when I treat it as an opportunity to serve and share the love of God, instead of an opportunity for me to be affirmed. My job will feel less pointless when I view it as the place God has me right now, and a practical way to make money instead of a source of meaning in my life. My relationships will be more free and filled with love when I look to Jesus to give me identity instead of the way my friends and loved ones feel about me. Overall life will just be better when my identity is not dependent on people... but instead dependent on the one who never changes. The one who made me with a plan and purpose in mind. The one who overwhelms me with love and grace. The one who convicts me in gentleness, but never condemns me. I am a daughter of the creator of the world, and He loves me the same yesterday, today and tomorrow... and really nothing else needs to matter.

New Season

I love to write... it's a fact. I just truly enjoy attempting to write my emotions, goals, knowledge, and passions down on paper... or in this case online. There is something so freeing about writing stuff out, I find it to be carthartic. That being said, I've been slacking. I'm not sure why, maybe because I haven't felt inspired, or there has been some writers block... maybe because I got lazy and bogged down by the craziness of life... but probably it's a combination of all of that, and all of those "excuses" are definitely lame. Maybe now is the best time for me to start writing again cause it seems to be the beginning of a new season in my life and in my relationship with God. My current season... the one that seems to be on it's way out, was awesome. I mean I loved almost every minute of it. Last semester was incredibly busy, but incredibly fun. I met new people, started and co-led a life group at my church, went to Africa, moved, and volunteered at a few places around Lynchburg. My relationship with God had been brought to a whole new level, and growth seemed to be a daily part of my life... but... I was exhausted... all the time. I got so caught up in the busyness of all these new things in my life, that I just kept adding things, and adding things, and I got real overwhelmed, real quick. Well this semester started, and life did not seem to be slowing down, in fact if anything it seemed to be speeding up! Exhaustion started to set in, and God made it pretty obvious to me that it was time to cut some stuff out of my life. Let me tell you, this had me shaking in my boots. I loved everything in my life, I loved the people I hung out with, the people I worked with, the organizations I worked for... but I think what I also loved was the affirmation all of these things gave me. They made me feel like I was good for something... in other words I was beginning to find my identity in those things instead of in my God. The things I was a part of were becoming idols in my life and needless to say this was quite disconcerting to me. So it was time for me to start cutting stuff out, which was perhaps one of the hardest things I have ever had to do. Which brings me to my new season... the season I can feel I'm about to enter into... it's a season of slowing down, a season of learning how to say a two letter word that I hate (no), it's a season of learning to please my savior and not my friends, it's a season of learning how to abide in the presence of my Lord. I guess really all of that means that it's about to be a season of rest, and this is a season I so desperately need, but it's also a place I feel so completely uncomfortable in... which kind of makes me know that it's right. There are some things that I know are right in my life, like life group, and a ladies bible study I'm in, and the ministry that I'm involved in at church, and volunteering at the Daily Bread. All of those things encourage me, renew me, and most importantly bring glory to God. But I also decided it was time I rearranged my priorities. So I guess that's where this new season begins, with rearranged priorities and renewed perspective... with rest and the desire to learn to abide... with a new joy and a new peace... with self discipline and dying to the desires of my flesh... with Jesus.

Freedom

The creator of the world loves YOU. I just thought I needed to say that. I don't know who needs that reminder, or what crazy curveballs life has thrown your way during this season, but I do know that God loves you... and He loves you so much that He sent His one and only Son to die on a wooden cross so that you would be made clean and could spend eternity in heaven with the lover of your soul. I'm sure you've heard it before... but I'm also sure that you can't hear it enough. You might even be reading this and thinking... "I've heard all this before, but I don't think you understand, I've messed up ALOT... there is no way that God still loves me after all I've done." or "I'm not who people think I am, and God knows that... there is no way He could possibly love the real me." But guess what my friends, all of those things are lies straight from the pits of hell. I've thought those very things before... self condemnation is something I struggle with, but God is freeing me from that and it's amazing. Every time I messed up I would add an invisible line to the invisible scoreboard in my head... "Sin- 1032453452345. Sarah- 0" But God started showing me that He doesn't see my sin... He sent Jesus to take care of that for me. I was reading Romans 8 tonight, and verses 37-39 really hit home with me... "But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." Snap. There is no way around it... once you trust in Christ, and accept that He is your savior, then you have been made clean. You are loved... you are precious... you are righteous... you are loved, and nothing (and I mean NOTHING) can separate you from the love of God. So take that Satan and your lies... I've been made new, and you have no power here.

I went to Africa

So I went to Africa... Bulawayo, Zimbabwe to be specific and my life will never be the same again. Dramatic? I say nay... God did a work there that I will not soon forget. I went with a group of 9 other people, but they weren't just random people... they are my family. We share life together. We go to the same church, serve the Lord together, and share in the good, the bad and the ugly. I wouldn't have wanted to go to overseas with anyone else, they are amazing. That being said, we got on a plane on December 30th, headed to Amsterdam and began our four day journey to Bulawayo. Three planes, a ten hour layover in Nairobi, and a fourteen hour bus ride later we arrived at our "home", ready to go wherever God called, and serve however He wanted us to serve. We worked with an organization called Smile4Africa, which was founded by Albert Muvunga. Albert is an awesome man of God, living out the religion that God our father considers pure and faultless. Smile4Africa serves underpriveleged children, most of which are either infected or affected by the HIV virus. During our stay we went to two orphanages, a village, a sports academy, a school, a flea market, Victoria Falls, and fellowshipped with friends every night. The first orphanage was called Mustard Seed. Most of the kids were younger, but there were a few older ones. It was such an amazing place. We mostly just played with the kids and loved on them. They loved our sunglasses, cameras, and my tattoos and we loved to hold them and color with them, and generally just be with them. It was so amazing. I spent a lot of time with this little boy named Tommy. He didn't speak English, but he just kept calling me mama and hugging me and it broke my heart. We joked about having to do bag checks whenever we left somewhere because we all wanted to take each kid home with us. The next day we worked with a sports academy. We did a volleyball clinic and prayed with the kids. We had this awesome opportunity to get to know the kids a little better, and share the love of God with them. There was a little girl there, who was waiting for her big brother, and she followed me everywhere I went, and when she saw me she squealed in delight. I don't think my heart has ever been happier. Next on the agenda was another orphange called Penel. This one was a little smaller, and most of the kids were older than at Mustard Seed. We sang for them, and with them and got to know them better. We played volleyball, and soccer, we made jokes and laughed together... we didn't follow a step by step program of sharing the gospel, we just did life with them, even if it was just for a short while. We also got to go to a church near where we stayed, and hung out with a sunday school class. This was one of my favorites because I got to spend some time a girl named Leticia, and pray with her. I asked her what she wanted to do, and she told me she wants to go to school for mass communications, specifically public relations, which is what I'm going to school for! I got to give her a little advice, and share with her some of what I've learned, and then we prayed together. I loved getting to see her heart, seriously such a blessing. Then we went to a school where one of our friends is the principal. We sang for them, and then broke up into groups and hung out with them for a little while. We learned a little bit about them, and prayed with them. It was a private, Christian school, but after talking with a few of the kids in my group I saw that not all of them knew Jesus, so it was cool to be able to share with them! Then we went to a local flee market and walked around talking to the vendors and praying with them. I really enjoyed this part because it was quite out of my comfort zone and my partner and I really got to see God's faithfulness and love for His children. It was awesome! On our second to last day we went to a village called Mbonqane, where we worked with their school. This one was the most difficult for me because there was a little bit more of a language barrier, but it was still awesome. I got my dance on to some praise songs with a girl named Ana, and discovered that you don't need to speak the same language to have fun together. The fellowship we experienced there was like nothing I've ever seen before. During the day we fellowshipped with the kids, each other, and the Smile4Africa workers. Every night we were there a whole bunch of Albert's friends would come over and we would talk, worship, and pray together. It was amazing... but then, before we knew it our trip was over. We packed up our stuff, got back on a bus for another 14 hour trip, and said goodbye to Bulwayo and all the amazing people we had met there. I will never forget Bulawayo, nor can I forget what God taught me there. He showed me what it looks like to truly have a servants heart... not just go to through the motions, but for ones heart to be transformed into that of a servant. He showed me what true love and joy look like lived out. He showed me that joy is found in sacrifice. But most of all He showed me He is good... He is faithful... He is present.

Serve

I'm not sure how anyone can look at a homeless person, or poor person and see anything other than a hurting human being. I have been volunteering at the local soup kitchen, and whenever I see a person is done eating, I try to help them out by taking their plate and throwing it in the garbage for them. To me I thought of it as just a little more service, a little more kindness, and one more chance at interaction before they go back into the world. Today, I asked one of the women if I could throw her plate away, and she said sure, so I did just that. No sooner had the plate hit the trash can, than one of the staff members reprimanded me for "pampering" the guests. He told me they could throw their own plate away. I didn't even know what to say. I stuttered a few words and went back to my work. But inside my heart was breaking. Had they become so numb to the needs around them? Could they have forgotten why the soup kitchen was even there? Yes it was to meed their physical needs, but aren't their emotional needs just as important? Isn't showing them a little kindness a part of the job description? I mean Jesus didn't come to be served, but to serve... shouldn't we be doing the same? I don't know, maybe I'm not being fair to him, but I look at each of the people that come in and I know that they each must have a story, and a life, and some sort of family. they aren't just someone taking up a seat, they are living and breathing creations of God. I hope that I will never lose sight of that!