just a glance.

Sometimes, I'm good at blogging.

Sometimes, I'm not.

Lately, this has been a not.

I had a lot of stuff going on this summer, which I will hopefully get to share at some point, but right now there's something bigger to talk about. Something that is going to take much more than one blog to talk about all the people I met and lessons I learned and ways that I fell on my face and ways that my life was changed but... you've gotta start somewhere.

So basically...

I spent 5 weeks overseas in the middle east. And it was the most

amazing

hard

eye-opening

infuriating

tear-jerking

life-changing

experience of my life.

It's amazing how when you pray a prayer of desperation, for God to just make himself 100% and you nothing, how serious He takes it. How He breaks you down a little more each day, until you finally reach rock bottom after weeks and realize that now, there is nothing seperating you. You can just look up through the pit and see Him. Feel Him. Know Him.

It's amazing how you can have the Holy Spirit fill you like in Acts, how it comes upon them so suddenly. How you realize that is Jesus telling you exactly what to do, and if you just listen, He can change your entire day in a way that would have been completely inconceivable, and even impossible, for you to do on your own.

It's amazing how hard the concept of obedience over activity is. How you can be doing something that's "right", maybe even "really right", like reading your Bible or going to church, but that might not be the exact thing Father is calling you to do at that moment. I'm not reasoning out excuses to not go to church or not read your Bible because that's wrong. And I'm not giving reasons to do this for selfish reasons like "I just need some time to relax and be with family/friends." No. I'm saying that Jesus never sinned, and yet He healed peoples crippled hands (in Mark) on the Sabbath. He was the ultimate example of obedience over activity. How you have to be in tune with God every single day, every single moment to even have this work.

It's amazing to me that we could be set to prayer walk for 3 hours a day, and how it changes your mindset to where at the end of the 3 hours you're not bored or tired of praying, you just keep praying throughout every day, every time you see something that you wouldn't have noticed before but God now breaks your heart for.

It's amazing to me how God could change plans I had made. Completely obliverate these ideas that were going to be amazing, and replace them with something that will real.

I've learned so much, but there's a previous of the billions of thoughts going on in my head. I encourage you to take a moment to just think on one of them throughout your day, and see if maybe God shows you something out of it.

God is, has been, and forever will be working, loving, and faithful.