So, I am about to go jump in the car with my suitemate, and go to the airport to pick up 4 Korean girls, two of which are our roommates. Words cannot even begin to describe the emotions going on right now! Really, they aren’t doing my fluttering, anxious heart any justice. I’m excited, but also slightly nervous. I would really appreciate prayers about this new journey I’m taking this year.
As you journeyed with me this summer, you know that I spent it living with girls and intentionally modelling the gospel to them. Nothing changes now that I’m sitting here in my dorm room versus my cottage. Yes, the faces change. I now will live with a Korean student. Wow. I never saw this coming. I banked on having the same roommate for 4 years. But oh how God directs our steps! And how we must learn to trust & follow.
That is what I am hearing Him speak to me right now. Trust me. I know that He taught me a lot this summer to prepare me for this place, here and now. To live intentionally. To love unhindered. And that is what I so long to do. I long to bring Him glory, wherever He places me and whatever He has me doing. Classes, work, lunch dates. Everything is for Him. My life is no longer mine.
At BSU Lead Team Retreat this morning we did an exercise in meditation. We just listened to Ben read from Mark 8 over and over again, focusing down eventually to one verse, then one word in that verse that God was just impressing in us. My verses were 35-36; my word was “profit.”
“For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?”
And I just kept hearing the words “nothing is profit” whispered into my head. And it is so true. I’ve seen it in family member’s lives. Where a job and or money can somewhat or even fully take over everything else. I thought of Paul, when he spoke in Galatians 3:7-11, that he had it made in the Jewish world. But he counted it as loss. Nothing is profit. Except to know Christ and to live for Him, to pick up that cross, even death itself, and say to live is Christ, and to die is gain. The same passage in Luke 9:23 suggests that this whole process–picking up the cross, dying to self, living for Christ, saying that nothing is profit, counting all as loss–is a daily one. I’m slowly learning that. Nothing matters but Christ and His Kingdom. Does my life reflect that? As I go, am I making disciples. Lord, make this so in my life. Show me where I’m not counting things as loss, but considering “profit.” Make me willing to no longer boast in anything but you, to use all the things the world counts as gain as only HIS gain and glory, and to do EVERYTHING, in word or deed, classes and work and grades, for HIM and HIM ALONE. Yes Lord. Teach us. Mold us. Use us.
Oh how the word can speak so much into my soul. And even the hard lessons fill me with such peace, knowing that He is in control and is teaching me and using me already, and that will only continue for His grace is sufficient for me, for His power is made perfect in my weakness.
