As many of you already know, we just recently got back from a week long training camp outside of Atlanta for the World Race Mission Trip that we were signed up for. Yep, you read that right. Were signed up for. I know this has been as much a roller coaster ride for our friends and families as it has for us. We arrived at training camp Saturday the 16th and were supposed to stay until Sunday the 24th then go to Atlanta for the night to celebrate our 1st anniversary. Well we only made it through Wednesday night and we left camp and headed on for Atlanta. There were a number of reasons why we decided not to go on the World Race, but bottom line, we just did not have peace about going. We have nothing against the organization and don't have any bad words to say about them, it just wasn't for us. It has honestly been a roller coaster for the both of us since we were accepted to go on the World Race last July and we had been telling ourselves "Just make it to training camp, just make it to training camp. Then we'll be fired up, excited, ready to go, etc." But for us, training camp just continued the roller coaster where we had moments like we felt like this was what God wanted us to do followed by times where we just felt like we shouldn't be there. And we were informed on Wednesday that the World Race needed a commitment from everyone that they were for sure gonna go by that night because they would be putting the teams together that we would be with all year. So I guess that is the point where we had to quit 'hanging in there' and make a decision. So we spent some time together in the Word, praying and talking, and just decided that we didn't feel like we could make the commitment. So we didn't. And honestly we left training camp completely broken. We pretty much cried all the way to our hotel room and we spent the next few days keeping ourselves really busy and finding ourselves really upset when we slowed down enough to remember what all had taken place at camp and that we wouldn't be going on the trip come January.
So we stayed in Atlanta until Monday (and celebrated a wonderful first anniversary while we were there) before coming back home. What we struggled with the most was feeling like God had finally given us some direction and insight into what path he wanted us to take (and we fought Him tooth and nail over it) and we were finally getting to the point of really being o.k. with leaving the country and our home and family and friends and lives for an entire year to go serve him and then we end up coming home without a plan or any idea what the heck we were doing. So honestly it was super hard leaving camp. We had become very close to a lot of the other campers and so of course that made our decision that much harder. And to leave camp was kind of to step back into the unknown, specifically referring to our future. We had had all of 2011 planned out since July and had spent the past 4 months preparing ourselves for this journey only to be completely shut down. So we left camp really disappointed, a little hurt, and really confused about what God's will for us was.
But God has really shown himself to us since we left. He has given us complete peace about the decision we made. And he has also shown us that we don't have to beat ourselves to death when we have a decision to make. We tend to see any kind of 'big' decision we make as having a right and wrong choice, the right choice being the path God wants us to take and the wrong choice being well, the wrong choice. And so we approach these decisions as some kind of spiritual life-altering decision where we just absolutely have to figure out exactly what God wants us to do and do just that or else we are gonna like throw God for a loop and completely alter his path for us. Now don't hear us wrong. Some decisions definitely have a right and wrong answer and God definitely has a plan for our lives, but look at this from another angle.
On our anniversary we went to North Point Community Church (Andy Stanley is the pastor) for their morning worship and heard Andy give a message on God's will (surprise surprise). And he told us how if you were to look up verses about the will of God, they will fall into one of three categories: God's providential will, moral will and personal will. His providential will is like the things he is going to do because he is God and there is nothing we can do about it. example: (this is all pretty much straight from his sermon) He promises Abraham to make him into a great nation and there is nothing we can do to stop that. God decided to raise up the nation of Israel and there was nothing anyone could do about it. God is going to create the church and not even the gates of Hell will stand against it. God's moral will is pretty obvious: the do's and don'ts of scripture. And then personal will is the one that we all want to know: What is God's will for my life??
"The personal will of God is always found within the context of the providential and moral will of God. The more familiar you are with the providential and moral will of God, the easier it will be for you to discern the personal will of God" That's straight from the sermon. And it's so true. I mean we all get so wrapped up in what the personal will of God for our lives is that we completely neglect His providential and moral will. The better we understand what God is up to in the world and the more we strive to live inside of the truths of the Bible that we know as His will, the easier it will be to discern his personal will for our lives. When we start looking at God's will for our lives through the lens of his moral and providential will we can quit beating ourselves up over exactly what career God wants us to have and exactly what college God wants us to go to and exactly what car God wants us to drive or exactly who he wants us to marry or where he wants us to live or how much of our money he wants us to give or what brand of shoes he wants us to wear. Seriously, we can really beat ourselves up and second-guess ourselves to death trying to discern exactly what God wants us to do in every situation and in every decision and area of our lives when it so much simpler to just live in what we know the Bible says is God's providential and moral will and trust that His personal will for our lives is just gonna flow from that (though really all the answers to his personal will are right in front of us. example: Exactly how much money should I give away? Matt. 6:19-21, Mark 12:43-44. While this doesn't say: "Chances, give exactly 23% or 14% or 82% of your paycheck to the church, the answers to all these questions we have are right in front of us) .
Truly God is a faithful God and while we are easily frustrated He is not easily shaken. So aren't the answers to all these "huge, life-changing" decisions we have to make everyday so much simpler than we make it out to be?
Micah 6:8 - He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.
We don't have to make exactly the right decisions every single time. Of course it isn't a bad thing to seek God's will, and we really all should seek Him more, but isn't it just more freeing to not sit around and worry if you made exactly the right decision or not that God wanted you to and just love Him and love others and let the rest worry about itself??
That was a long post. Have fun reading all that! Love and Peace
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