My beautiful action group!!

Mary, Kelsey, Sara Kelly (our discipler), me and Steph

In keeping with the theme of community, there were a bunch of events this past week that encouraged us to develop Christ-centered community with each other.

Monday we had a women's conference (where the above picture was taken). All the project girls got to get dressed up and the staff women decorated the gym at the church and served us dinner. Then a couple of the staff women gave talks that were really convicting. What stuck out to me most was when one of the staff women described the way we turn to something else over God as us "cheating" on God. As Christians, we always describe our connection to the Lord as a relationship, but putting in that context just really resonated with me. I am so quick to turn to my own abilities or earthly relationships before turning to God.

In God's awesome timing, the conference set the tone for my week, which was questioning what my relationship with God really looks like and finding areas where I have been complacent. In talking with my action group, doing Bible study and reading Francis Chan's Crazy Love, I've been seeing how much I let myself and my pride get in the way of living my life for Christ. Even in my job hunt, I found myself demanding that God give me a job because I wanted and needed and deserved one, instead of really and truly asking God to provide and trusting in His perfect will and timing. By Wednesday, I was feeling much less frazzled and stressed about job hunting, and more calm in knowledge that my fate rests in the hands of an all-powerful, loving God, who has control over the whole world, including my need for a job. In essence, I continually finding myself needing to re-trust God and surrender control of my life to Him, because it's not mine anyways.

Randy Newmann's talk on Sunday night was also really interesting. He talked a lot about how to respond to questions about spirituality with questions in order to open a dialog about beliefs rather than arguing, which is something I've never really thought about before. His approach is definitely all about being open and relational and meeting people where they're at, rather than shoving the gospel on them, which is definitely how I like to share. He's giving another talk Wednesday, which should be good as well.

All in all, God gave me a lot of time this week to reflect on how I'm doing in my relationship with Him, which was funny, because the theme of the week was really about community and the body of believers. But I did get to talk with my roommates and process through a lot of stuff with them, which definitely helps. So now that I think about it, I worked on my internal and external relationships this week. I'm learning that it really is vital for my relationship with God to be so solid and for me to know I am rooted in his love, so that I can love others out of that love, not out of a need for affection and affirmation.

Tonight we have a meeting, then Date Night with Jesus, so I'm excited to have some more time to process through what I've been learning and have some quality prayer time, since I get easily distracted here at the Ambassador. Wednesday I'll hopefully be hearing from the CVS in Ocean City to know that I for sure have a job, when I'm training and when I'm starting, which is such a blessing!! Thursday I'll have D-TIME (discipleship one-on-one time), where I'll get to go sharing (which I haven't gotten to do in a while) and then Bible study later that night.