You Make Me New, You Are Making Me New

There are probably a hundred things I could write to you about today, friends. God is so good. And faithful. I can't get over Him.

Ya know, if you haven't read Psalm 51 before, I'm going to encourage you to do it. Right now. It's a beautiful prayer for restoration. My Bible tells me that this is a psalm of David, written when Nathan came to him after the adultery committed with Bathsheba.

David is an inspiring person. I am inspired by him all the time. I think he and I understand each other; like our brains work the same. His story (read 1 Samuel 16 - 2 Samuel 24) and his psalms never cease to teach me something, touch my life, and open my eyes to who I am and what I need. So I love this psalm. Last summer when I was on summer-long staff at Camp Lebanon, Psalm 51 was something we all had to memorize.

Reading it this summer..."Create a clean heart for me and renew a steadfast spirit within me" takes on a whole new meaning after what has gone on in my life in the past year.

I want to talk about restoration. It's a beautiful thing I've recently been learning about. :)

David wrote Psalm 51 begging God to restore him; to restore the relationship he had with his Creator before he went through such sin and rebellion. And that has become my prayer in the past couple of months. As I continue to pursue the woman God created me to be (with the help of Psalm 37:3-7 and some amazing friends), I've been noticing that I need to keep asking God to restore me or put me back together. I've given up so many huge parts of me and parts of my heart in the past year that, at times, I've lost hope in what God can do with me. What could God possibly do with me now? I'm not whole anymore. I'm broken and used. I forced myself into a pit that God can't even get me out of. As I would say those things to myself, I could feel a check in my spirit saying "You know that's not true. You know God can restore you. Don't limit Him. Just ask."

So I did. I asked. And I think I asked at the perfect time...God's timing is so beautiful...because right after I asked Him to restore my brokenness, I packed up to go be a camp counselor for a week at Lebanon.

Words won't do much justice for what I experienced last week at Camp. It was so incredible! I saw God move in beautiful ways: through me, through the 11 girls in my cabin (go Sweden!), and through the staff I worked alongside. Senior High week is the most anticipated week of the summer for Lebanon staff. We get to change up the schedule, plan surprises, film silly videos, and have the deepest of conversations with campers close to our age. It's a fun, stressful, crazy, moving, changing week for all.
Through all the crazy, I experienced the most rest and peace last week than I have in the past year. God gave me the most amazing girls to counsel. He gave me joy and contentment. He answered prayer. SO MUCH prayer. God is so good.

The Spirit moved. And I love the phrase, "where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom." I experienced freedom last week; freedom from my fears, my failures, my doubt, my rebellion, my sin, and myself. And it feels so incredible! All I want to do is be on my knees all the time and thank Him for being so faithful and gracious. In His faithfulness and love, He has shown me what it means to be restored.

Can I get an AMEN?! Woohoo!

I feel ready to move forward now. Like truly ready. I know I've spoken a lot about "moving forward" in my previous blog posts, but all of that was talk within my own strength. I don't operate that way anymore. My strength comes from my Creator now. And it's so crazy good. Seriously: the joy of the Lord is my strength. It's a real thing. So now I feel ready, as I continue to trust in the Lord and do good; to dwell in the land and live securely; to take delight in the Lord and commit my way to Him; to make my righteousness shine like the dawn and be silent before the Lord; and to wait expectantly for him (Psalm 37-3-7), I feel more and more equipped to hop on a plane and go to Texas.

That's right, friends. I have sent in my application to YWAM in Tyler, Texas. I haven't gotten the official acceptance, but I did receive a positive phone call from them a couple of days ago. I'm beaming just thinking about it! I'll provide more details in the future, but if it's truly God's will for me to go, I will be arriving for my YWAM DTS on September 25. :)

Could you pray for me as I move in this direction? I love you all, very much. And I'm so thankful...God has made beautiful things.

Peace.