Camp, Week 1

So, last week I was at camp all week. I seriously love camp, and I love being able to work with middle schoolers and hear their stories. This week of camp was really different though, because it was the first week of camp counseling that I actually allowed God to work in my heart. Instead of being 100% focused on the kids, I kept my focus on the Lord. I let God speak to me throughout the week as I also prayed that He would speak to the kids, and when I prayed for God to break the chains that the kids were bonded by, I also prayed that for me. This was the first week I let God move in me for the sake of growing.

The theme of the week was the Exodus. How God brought his people, the Israelites, out of slavery and out of Egypt into the desert. The Israelites were little babies, like how we act a lot of the time, and they questioned Moses and God’s motives and said that they’d be better off back in slavery than wandering the desert. Even after all of God’s miraculous workings — the plagues, the crossing of the Red Sea, the manna and quail — they still thought they’d be better off back in Egypt as slaves. They thought this because slavery was all they had ever known, afterall, they had been in slavery for over four hundred years! They were so use to the slavery that they were comfortable in it, and wanted nothing more than to be back in the comfortable and back to what they knew. This whole idea of God having a “promised land” freaked them out — they didn’t know what was going to happen! They had to wander about in the desert before they got there! They had to follow a pillar of cloud by day, and a pillar of fire by night! It freaked them out, and they didn’t like it, and all they wanted was what they were comfortable with.

The thing with the Israelites though is that they were only looking at their current situation – the desert. They looked at the wandering in the desert as the final step in everything, like there was no Promised Land or anything. We do that same thing, though, don’t we? We are constantly concerned with our here and now and if something is going wrong here and now, we look back towards how good it was, or how comfortable things were at one point. Sometimes we just completely forget about the good things that God has promised for us. And when God called us out of our enslavement to our sins, sometimes we’re hesitant. We’re hesitant because we know the familiar, and we know the comfortable, and being called out of the comfortable is well, uncomfortable. We don’t like it. We don’t know it, it’s new, it’s scary, and we just don’t like it.

But the fact is, God HAS called us out of our enslavement. He has called us out of our own personal Egypt’s (gossip, lying, adultery, pornography, etc.) and has brought us into the desert so that we may rely on His provision, all the while keeping in mind the good things to come as he has promised them!

What a great God we serve!

yes, the desert is hard. The desert is lonely, scary, difficult, and makes us want to go right back into our sin because we know it, and we’re comfortable in it. But God has a different plan.

So I urge you, brothers and sisters, to keep pressing on towards the goal as if to win the prize. (: It is by Christ that we are set free. If you’re in the desert right now, remember that God is God and that He has his protective hand over you. He will provide if you would just LET him. If you would rely on him, abide in him, and ask him to move and to fight for you… He will. So keep pressing on.

And friend, if you’re in that slavery to a certain sin, I beg you… listen to God. He has called you out of that slavery once and for all, so do not go back to it! Christ died so that we may be free, and we are free indeed! So, get ready to go through the desert to get to the Promised Land that God has for you! Good things are coming if you would just take that leap of faith and throw off all that hinders you!

And for those friends of mine who are in the Promised Land and enjoying it, I ask you to be an encouragement to your brothers and sisters who are in the desert right now, or who are still in their Egypt. Share with them your story. Share with them your love and the Love has been so graciously showered down on you.

We serve a mighty, mighty God. A mighty, mighty savior. (: