“Your Kindness Leads Me To Repentance”

Hey Friends! 

WE LEAVE FOR GUATEMALA IN 3 DAYS!!!!! I can’t believe how fast time has flown by! I apologize beforehand for the length of this blog post, as these past few weeks have been absolutely insane and I have a lot to share with you guys. 

So as a general overview, we finished training camp on September 25th! As many of you probably gathered from my last few posts, training camp has been incredibly impactful on my walk with the Lord. I filled an entire journal already with all the ways that I’ve seen Him moving over the last month and all the things that I’ve learned about what it means to walk with Him. It’s been such a sweet time of growth and intimacy with the Lord. I’m going to get more into what I mean by this a little later! After training camp ended, all the girls from my squad and from K squad (another gap year route) drove 4 hours up to Black Mountain, North Carolina. We spent two weeks partnering with Excel College and ministering to the surrounding county. For my team, we spent the majority of our time there doing manual labor work. This included jobs like moving gravel, sanding, staining wood, and cutting down bamboo forests. Even though the work was tiring, it was a really good time of learning to be the hands and feet of God, and what it means to be a part of a larger body of believers.

My purpose behind writing this is to share not only what I’ve been up to, but also what the Lord has been teaching me. Looking back on these past three weeks and all the things that have happened, a common theme emerges: The Truth will set you free. Obviously, this phrase is used a lot in many different contexts, but I wanna touch specifically on how speaking the Truth over my own life has set me free. Many of you are aware of the fact that I am not necessarily the type of person to keep my thoughts to myself. What I mean by this is that if I have a question or need clarification on a certain subject, I’m not shy in asking it. Because of this characteristic, I’ve gotten to have a lot of really deep conversations with teammates and leaders as we try to find an answer to some big faith questions. 

Personally, I’ve always struggled with how God could look at me, an incredibly flawed person with oh-so-many skeletons hiding in the closet, and love me so much that He would send His child to die on a cross –all so that one day we could be close again. In my logically minded brain, the only possible answer to this is that He pities my humanity and therefore has mercy on me. Almost as though I were some type of pet that He only keeps around because He feels bad. This is so incredibly incorrect, and I’m learning that it stems from a root of shame. After telling my leader about all of this and about how I didn’t understand what people meant when they talked about the love of God, she asked me to make a list for her. On this list were all the things that I still carried shame in my heart for, whether that be little things or big things. Later that night, she had me come and sit with a group of my leaders, and she asked me to read the list that i made out loud. My first instinct was “HECK NOOOOOOO”. These are people whom I’ve known for like 3 weeks and I seriously want to like me. Reading them a list of all the ways that I’ve failed in life isn’t going to help my cause here. But my leader asked me to give it a chance, so I did. For the following 2 hours, we went through each of the things on my list and asked the Lord to take the weight of them off me and fill that space with His spirit. 

All of these things that I had been hiding for so long were all of the sudden thrown into the light. Not only that, but they were brought in front of a body of believers who continued to love me, not despite the things I had done, but regardless. Since that day, I’ve gotten to walk in the freedom that comes from being fully known. My image of how the Lord loves me has shifted completely from what it was, as the space that was being filled by that shame is now being filled with the Holy Spirit. I’m learning that my identity is a daughter of Christ who is wholly and dearly loved, regardless of the things I’ve done. There is nothing I could do to be more loved by God. He loved me enough to give His life for me from the moment he met me, long before I knew Him. There is not a day or a moment that He questioned that decision. Because of these we get to walk in freedom, living a life of praise to the Lord for the things that He has done for us. 

I wanna wrap this up with a verse that sums up basically what I’m trying to say in all of this. Romans 2:4 “Your kindness is meant to lead me to repentance”. What an amazing God we get to serve!

As always, I’d love to hear from you all back home, especially as communication overseas will be a lot harder due to connection issues. I’ll be able to text and call over messaging apps such as whats app or groupme or over snap chat or instagram. I miss you guys and I am so thankful that you guys have given me this opportunity. Love you all!

–   KJ