Sooo… Update part two.
I left off kind of on Tuesday.
Which means I have some major, important, not so fun news to share
before I go into what happened on Wednesday. In order for people who are not from Europe to live in
England, we need a Visa. Yes, you
all probably already knew that.
The reason I am saying that, is because different organizations have
licenses to give out Visas to people coming to “work for” them. Which is what YWAM does. (Work for being in parenthesis meaning,
working with the organization. I
do not officially work for YWAM, I am a trainee in the YWAM organization).
Anyway, the UK government is buckling down on
immigration. They decided that the
best way to do this is to start taking away licenses to give out Visas, which
makes sense. Unfortunately, YWAM,
along with many other Christian Charities and organizations, was one of the
organizations that they decided to look into. I do not want to go into too many details because I do not
want to end up spreading information that may not be 100% true. Also, I do not want to say anything
that could be taken as something against the UK government because well, I do
not have anything against them. I
do not understand all of the facts and if I say something wrong, which I could
easily do with not understanding everything, that could just not be good. Feel free to research for yourself more
information, but keep in mind that not everything you find on the internet is
always true. So, basically what
you need to know is that our License is on suspension right now. We have put in for them to take a
second look. But most of them have
been revoked.
With all of that being said, on Wednesday, we took part in
an England and Wales wide day of prayer and fasting. We basically continued our normal schedule just taking out
meal times. And, during all of our
prayer times, we focused on the Visa situation. It ended up being a really powerful day. There was also a team from Denver,
Colorado visiting Cambridge as part of their outreach that was joining us for
two weeks. So, they joined in with
us in the prayer part of the day.
That evening, our team got together and decided to watch some movies to
just relax. It ended up being a
really nice day. Even though we do
not really like what the License being revoked could mean for us as a team and
for the rest of YWAM England and Wales, we were filled with a peace that was
great. We know that God has it all
in His hands. (If the license is
revoked, from the day of them announcing it being revoked, any of us who are
not part of the EU, would have 60 days to get out of the country, which would
be five of us. Fortunately, it
falls close to when we leave for outreach, so we would just leave for outreach
a little early. And for he more
widespread of YWAM England and Wales, that means that 350 staff and families
would have to leave the country as well.
So major uprooting for people.)
However, like I said though, we are trusting God with the
whole situation. There is nothing
that happens in this world that He is not aware of. Nothing that happens in life is a surprise to God. He is able to make all things work out
for His good. It is just up to us
to turn to Him in all situations and He will have our backs. It may not be the way that we want things
to pan out, but we will know that God is with us, which is really all we
need. Which I know is something
that anyone can just say but it never really helps or it feels like it does not
have any weight to it. But really,
that statement has a lot more weight than we think. When we truly give our lives over to God, and are willing to
go where He wants us to go, and do what He wants us to do, it can only lead to
one thing…getting closer to God.
There are many different ways to get closer to God. Not all of them are what we as humans
consider good, but in the end, they really are good. When we get closer to God, it could simply mean that we get
more peace from Him. And receiving
peace from God can really make any situation, no matter how crappy the situation,
one that we are able to be okay with, or even rejoice in. So, if the license does get revoked,
and all of us do have to leave, we can be confident that when we turn to Him
and trust in Him, He will be with us.
It may not lead to the result that we want, but in turning to Him and in
keeping in mind that our purpose here is to Advance the Gospel, God will honor
that and give us peace. It may
take years to get to where, in our minds, we want to get, or we may never get
there, but that peace that God can give us is better than anything we can dream
up or imagine. Therefore, I know
that no matter what happens, and no matter what country I will be living in
next year, as long as I am following the Lord, and working towards the
advancement of His Gospel, I will have Him on my side, giving me peace and joy
along the way.
(Side note about Wednesday. Others felt this peace about the Visa situation at that
point, I was just left confused. I
had some peace about it all, but I was left quite confused, which leads to
Thursday.)
Enough about Wednesday, onto Thursday. Thursday was a typical Thursday for
us. Meaning that in the evening,
we had House of Prayer. At this
point I was reaching one of those how the heck am I continuing to move forward,
I am confused beyond all belief, I feel like I need to run and scream and hit
something repeatedly stages of life.
So, while everyone was worshiping, I snuck away with my journal and my
Bible and decided to journal. For
those of you who do not journal, or even for those of you who journal but
journal different than me, by journal, I mean I write in my journal as if I am
talking to God. So basically, I
write letters to God. I journaled
for the entire evening. I was so
frustrated with God at this point.
Now, this is the point where in part one I said sorry if I
offend anyone with the post, but this is real life and I am going to be
real. God is real, so we are real
too. He does not expect us to fake
it through life and always act as if we are happy with life. Read the Psalms. David was quite real with God and was
loved dearly by God. He is a great
example of how to have a genuine relationship with the Lord.
Anyway, yes I am in a discipleship training school, so those
who have never been on one may think that it is a time where it is Jesus all
the time, and things are happy and amazing. Well you are half right in that. Yes, it is Jesus all the time. Which is amazing, but also well honestly can be quite
difficult at times. Being
surrounded by people so in love with the Lord all the time is great, but
sometimes you just feel like you are the only one who is struggling to feel God
there at times. Which is never
true. It is just the devil trying
to deceive us into believing that we do not belong or fit in with Jesus loving
people. The truth is everyone goes
through times like this where they feel alone and separated from God. And if you talk to someone who says
otherwise, well, they are just lying.
And if they are not lying, well then they just really have it quite
together and I would love to meet them and get their secrets.
Well, I was struggling soo much to know that God was there
with me, and to know that He loved me.
What I did know was that God called me to leave my comforts of home back
in the States. He called me to
leave a career that I finally was able to begin, that I wanted to work in my
entire life, to jump in a plane and move across the ocean to a foreign country
to live in community where I have crazy rules where you at times honestly feel
like you are being treated like a five year old, just so that I could get to
know Him better. (Well that is
quite the sentence. I am just
going to leave it. I never said
this blog was going to be grammatically correct.) I was calling out to God that night. Why God? Why did you tell me we were going to get closer, and I was
going to learn more about you, but yet it seems to me like you are further away
than ever before? God, why did you
make me fall so in love with Cambridge, that I want to move back here next
year, then pull that away from me?
And my big question. God..
why the hell do you tell me you want me to have You as the focus of my life,
and when I try so damn hard to have You as the focus, all I get is more
distractions?! God, I always
thought that when I pray for You to help me focus on You, You would want that
right? So You would help me to do
that? No? I feel like I just
dumped my dream career for nothing.
So, I’m guessing you’re getting the picture of how I was feeling
by now. That is obviously just a
little clip of what was going through my mind at that time. I ended up asking the Lord to please
show me if there was anything in my life that I needed to surrender more to Him
that could potentially be blocking me from getting closer to Him. He revealed something to me in that
time, but I still was not too sure of how to do that. So, I left that evening still feeling kind of sucky but a
little encouraged by the fact that I was able to get my thoughts down on paper. (Don’t worry, the next week, God gave
me some awesome revelations of stuff and is continuing to give me revelations
of some amazing things that I will soon share, so it is not a terrible thing,
no worries, I did not lose my faith or walk away from the Lord or
anything. I was just having a real
moment with Him)
My point for sharing all of this is to say that it is
completely okay to have times when you are confused or lost or feeling
alone. God still loves you through
that. What matters is that you turn
to Him during those times, no matter how hard it is to turn to Him. He would, in my opinion, much rather
you turn to Him and have a huge tantrum at Him, telling Him exactly how you
feel, than have you turn away from Him and go to something or someone
else. He does listen! He listens to everything you say to
Him. It breaks His heart to see
you upset, and will honor you coming to Him. It may not be right away, but every single time I have
gotten to this point, He has given me a peace to a certain extent about things
in that time. I still may be
confused or lost, but I get a feeling inside me, knowing that God is there, and
He cares. (Even though it can still feel like He is distant, I still have that small peace within me. It’s hard to explain.)
Okay, so I wrote way too much again. I am getting closer to caught up now
though, which is good! I have now been sitting in the coffee shop for a bit too
long and should probably start to head home. So I will stop there again. Later all!
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