Thank you!

BIG thank you shout out to Orange Leaf of Holland for their help in coordinating a fundraiser for me today, and to everyone who came out and ate froyo, donated, hung out with me, or wrote kind words!  This was my first official fundraising event and I'm so excited to finally be under way!  I'll post a grand total when I know it!

You Make Me Brave

There's a song I'm obsessed with right now, called "You Make Me Brave" by Bethel.  This song gets pretty crazy.

You make me brave
You make me brave
You call me out beyond the shore into the waves

You make me brave
You make me brave
No fear can hinder now the Love that made a way

This is the part of the song that starts to build, the music gets louder, the key changes, more hands fly up.  God does make us brave.  As the song says, "God is for us, He is not against us."  This is true.  He gives us boldness to declare the Gospel by the power of the Holy Spirit.  It's so awesome!  I was just now jamming out to this song, thinking about the times when I don't feel brave.  Does saying I'm brave make me brave?  I think that speaking truth aloud is really powerful.  Really, God makes me brave.  

People think I'm brave.  

Because I'm moving halfway around the world or this thing or that thing.

Confession: I'm terrified.  I'm scared that what happened when I studied abroad will happen again, and that this time I won't get to come back to the Hope community to be pulled up again.  I'm scared of living in a place where I don't speak the language and the isolation that this brings.  I'm scared that I will become so hurt and hardened and jaded and angry that I'll lose something important about myself.  I'm scared that I'm not strong enough.  I'm scared that I'm not good enough.

Good enough for God?  The above lies put me in a precarious position.

As if I can impress God.  As if what I do or don't do changes the way that He looks at me or my identity as His daughter.  As if His presence or goodness is conditional upon my circumstances.  As if.

I am not brave, but I know One who is.  He endured more than I could even imagine only to come back with the greatest victory the world has ever seen.

I don't have to be brave of my own accord or my own strength, because ultimately those will fail me.

My hope is in God.  His call to step out is always met with His presence.  The hand reaching out through the waves.  We will fall, and fall hard.  We're still in our earthly lives here.  But it's not about us.  It's about choosing to trust Him, choosing to put His glory above every other single thing that we can chase after, dwelling in His grace, and running faithfully along the path that He has given us.  There's no way I can do this on my own.  Thankfully, the One who can and does do it has adopted me as His daughter.  Thankfully He has set me free from believing the lies that define me by my failure.  He gives me feet for the journey as this passage from Habakkuk says, and He is my strength.  Not even my feet that He gives me are my strength, but He is my strength.

I'm am stirred on by a love and compassion that is greater than my fear.  By the fire in my heart that says that the imprisonment and abuse of my sisters is wrong.  By the fire that says that Jesus is the way and that everyone deserves to know that.  Most of all, by God Himself.  Through pursuing more of who He is and by loving Him.

Because HE has made me brave.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Hi-VMxT6fc