Week 10

This is it, my summer testimony.


Coming into project, I was told, “Katie, you are going to need a week to process all the things God will do in your life, I mean it, He will bring up things that you need to deal with that you didn’t even know were problems. He is going to do big things.”
So, taking that into consideration, I knew God was going to do big things in my life, I knew He was going to use this project to change my life, so I was ready.
Psych. There is no way I could’ve been even remotely ready for what God had in store for me.
Within the first two weeks on project, I was overwhelmingly convicted about my desire to please other people before I wanted to please God. I felt like I had fallen into the depths of a sin I couldn’t get out of. Everyone wants to be liked, everyone wants to be popular and valued and treated well by others. The problem comes in when we want to please others and when we want to be valued by others more than we want to please and see our value in God. I was putting my value and worth into my roommates and other people on project and I was being let down. Then, in a moment of pure love, my roommate spoke a truth to me that I will never forget. They were telling me that I am not defined by my sin and that my identity lies in Christ. “Katie, don’t you dare think we are mad at you right now, don’t you dare think that because it is not true. We love you and God loves you, we were put into each others’ lives for a reason.” I was overwhelmed. In that moment, it was made clear to me that no matter what I did or have done, I was loved, not only by God, but by those around me, by my brothers and sisters in Christ.
As weeks progressed more and more sin had been revealed; pride, lust, selfishness, jealousy, apathy, resentment, anger and so on. All this sin led me into a period of doubt and questioning. How could God love me? Why did He choose me? Did He choose me? Was there even a God? Why is this happening? Why do I feel this way? I was knee-deep in a period of doubt and confusion, not knowing which way was up or how to get out of it… then it hit me. I have been focusing on the fruit of my sin, when the real problem was the root. I was focusing on each individual sin instead of the root cause. The reason I needed to please people and felt the need to be liked by them, the reason I was putting my worth in people instead of in Christ and the reason I was envious of others’ relationships and others’ lives, testimonies and journeys was because I wasn’t fully trusting God. I wasn’t trusting His plan for my life, and I was wanting what others had. This was leading to all these sins because I was focusing on what others’ had instead of focusing on God. That was the root of my sin, TRUST. I didn’t fully trust God. And that thought was terrifying. How could I claim to follow a God I didn’t trust?
This new truth threw me even deeper into level of doubt; I felt so lost, so confused and full of all kinds of doubt, my once knee-deep doubt was now surrounding me like a flood. I didn’t know what to do, where to turn, how to respond, I was stuck, so stuck.
At the beginning of the summer, knowing I had a control problem I asked the Lord to take away my control and He was doing just that, He was taking away my control and making me trust Him.
If these thoughts of doubt weren’t enough to fog my thinking, another curve ball came my way. The movement on the campus I was assigned to, the movement on the campus I was leading, the movement on the campus that was thriving with spiritual conversations and outreaches, the movement towards a bible study and English club on that campus was stopped dead in its tracks. We received an email from campus administration reminding us that unless we were accompanied by a student we were not allowed in buildings and we were not allowed to solicit students, which means pamphlets, fliers and other things were not allowed to go out and students were not allowed to be approached inside campus buildings. I was absolutely floored. What? How could this be? Things were going so well, why God why? I was so angry, I was so confused, I didn’t understand. I came to Chicago for two reasons: grow in my faith with the Lord and serve Him by sharing His Gospel, and I felt as if both were ripped away from me. Why did I come here? I certainly didn’t feel like I was growing, I was in the middle of the worst doubt I had ever experienced and now the ministry I was apart of, the one that was thriving was now stunted. I felt so defeated, so hurt, so angry, I didn’t see any reason for this to happen, I felt useless. And then I was hit again. While walking back from a Sunday night hangout my co-leader said to me, “You know when you are playing a game and the guys playing only think about 2 or 3 steps ahead, but the girls think like 10 steps ahead? Well, right now you are only thinking 2 or 3 steps ahead, God is thinking 10 steps ahead, He knows what is going to happen, its in His hands, He’s got this, you just need to trust Him.”
TRUST. There is was again, it felt like a slap in the face. I had no clue how deep this sin went and the Lord was slowing showing me how deeply rooted this sin was in my heart. I didn’t trust Him.
The cool thing about God is that once He reveals sin, He reveals Himself and therefore the solution to the sin. When God reveals sin in our lives, it is to pull us closer to Him, to refine us like precious gold that is tested in fire and purified by the flames, He does it because he loves us and wants us to be purified. That is exactly what was happening, I was being tested in fire and refined. I asked God to take away my control, He was. He was making me trust Him because once my control and power was taken away I had nothing left to fall back on; my own strength was gone and the things I put value in were ripped away from me. If I wanted to get out of this stage of doubt and press forward with the Lord I needed to trust Him, so I opened my very clenched fists and gave up, I cried out to the Lord, “OK, Lord I have no clue what you have in store for me, but I open my hands to you, I throw out my plans and I TRUST what you have for me.”
God puts us through trials to teach us something, and while we are screaming and crying out God to help us and fix things He is softly saying, “I need you to trust me, I need you to trust me, trust me, trust me.”
Once I opened my hands and allowed God in… Things began to change. I started to really see who my God is and I started to see a God I could trust. Things started to change.
Things on campus started to become centered on God. We started focusing whole heartily on intentionally praying for the campus and praying for God to move and use us. After the email we were confined to sharing only outside and the heat was rising to unbearable heights. More and more conversations started to happen despite the heat, people still came to our outreaches even though no fliers or signs were posted. God was moving on campus and showing me that even though we faced a roadblock, He is bigger than anything anyone could lay in front of us and He would get us over the roadblock as long as we focused whole-heartily on Him. That’s the catch, God rewards our faithfulness and when we trust in Him fully and focus only on Him, He can move mountains. He is faithful.
God started to show me things in my own life as well.

1 Timothy 4:4
“Everything that God has created is good; nothing is to be rejected, but everything is to be received with a prayer of thanks.”
Hebrews 10:23
“Let us hold on firmly to the hope we profess, because we can TRUST God to keep His promises.”
2 Corinthians 12:9-10
“But His answer was: My grace is all you need, for my power is greatest when you are weak. I am most happy, then, to be proud of my weaknesses in order to feel the protection of Christ’s power over me. I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions and difficulties for Christ’s sake. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”
He was showing me why I could trust Him and He was softening my heart to conquer the fear of trusting Him.
I am by no means at the end of my journey. I have by no means got to the point where I can blindly trust the Lord in every situation. I still doubt, I still question, I still have my stubborn moments of faithlessness and self-will, but as long as I keep my hands open to the Lord’s plan and trust what He has in store, I am taking a step in the right direction.
I can honestly say, it is worth it, this God is worth trusting because He is faithful and He rewards faith and trust in Him. When I stopped living by my agenda, controlling my life to look like how I wanted it to look and opened my heart to what God had in store for me, He moved. He used me, as broken as I am for His purpose, to further His kingdom and to glorify Him. When we stop living with clenched fists, protective of our plans and ready to fight for what we want and think we deserve and open our hands letting go of our desires to accept what God has planned and willingly trusting what He has in store for us, whatever that means, He rewards us with a life that is good and glorifying to Him, which is our purpose in this life.
I didn’t see it at first, I didn’t why I had to whole heartily trust this God, why I had to be completely focused on Him, why I had to have my eyes fixed on Him. I know now that it is because He wants to pour His blessings down on us, He wants to give us that good life, that plan He has for us and He can only give that to us when we are completely devoted to Him.
Coming on project was a big decision, a huge sacrifice and extremely difficult at times, but on project my life was changed. My life was flipped upside down and shaken, but because I serve an unshakeable God who wants to be close to me, I can trust in whatever He has in store for me, why? Because my God is greater, stronger, better than anything I could ever hope, wish, plan or want for myself and my life. He is bigger than any issue, hardship problem or pain, I can trust Him.