So I decided I would post a recent assignment I just did for Lifeteams, talking about the 5 Lifeteams markers of impact I wrote about 3 specifically. What are those you ask? let me tell you! I wrote about the three I believe I grew grew the most in. also forgive me for my spelling and grammar lucky we are being marked for that.PS this isn't the new blog post you have been waiting for the one about my exciting news but thats coming very soon! stay tuned.
Lifeteams 5 Markers of impact
1. A secure understanding of who God is and who I am.
2. A hunger to live with honor
3. A yearning to care for souls.
4. A seamless spirituality
5. A recognition of personal responsibility
It’s hard to think of all the things I learned in the eight and a half months that I was here at lifeteams. When I first came out to Abbotsford from Calgary I had no idea the person I would become, the person God would shape me to be. It was said that when I was going down the drive way at the end of the school year if I had learned nothing else but the Lifeteams markers of impact™ and grew personally in the markers, that the lifeteams instructors would be satisfied. Thankfully that wasn’t the case but God shaped me in ways only the master at the potter’s wheel could, not to say He didn’t fire me in the kilm this year either. This year has been the most challenging of my entire life; but so worth it!
A secure understanding of who God is and who I am is the very first of five makers of impact. Where do I begin? I believe this is the marker that I have most grown in since September. When I came here I the way I saw myself was not of who I was in Christ. I had little confidence in my ability to build relationships with youth; in fact I didn’t even know I wanted to work with youth. I had very low confidence in my ability to keep up and complete all the assignments that I was to do this year. I didn’t believe that I would work well with a team as that had been the case in previous experiences. But though this year I was proven wrong as I met the bar and challenge lifeteams presented to me. I am able to build relationships so well, that I can start to talk with youth about the God that created them and who loves them with an unfathomable love. I can tell them my story and by doing so lead them to Jesus! As for the team the 8 other very unique individuals I live with they are way more then just a team they are my family, my brothers and sisters whom I love!
A secure understanding of who God is… well I’m still working on that one, and I have a feeling I always will! And thats ok! One massively awesome thing that I learned is that I am NOT God’s employee and that He is proud of me no matter what! I am God’s beloved son and I belong to Him! I learned that God is my Father, I always was told this but my belief was not so. God reviled and changed this for me this year! I had learned this during the regional retreat, when during a break I was sitting on my bed after a shower when Dave from Teen Dad’s walked in our room. I said hi to him then he walked into the bathroom. When he had gotten out he proceeds to ask me a question that caught me off guard. “How are things with your family going?” I told him that I grew up in foster care since I was seven, then Dave said ‘that’s weird because when I was in the bathroom had felt like God had said “ask him how his father is” after He told me this out of nowhere, He started to tell me “It doesn’t matter what you dad did to you and family. God is your father now.” I sat there stunned. Then Dave said “I see your going to cry now so I’m going to leave.” and with that he left. Tears started to pour from my face and my eyes burned hot, something clicked in my head that day: God is my father. It was as if Dave wasn’t telling me this at all, but God Himself though him. After all Dave had no idea about my past or the role my father played in my family’s life. I know it may not seem like much, but for me this is huge! I was just in a church service the other day where the pastor was talking about: our orphan heart and how we need to know God as father, and sat there amazed, when the pastor called everyone who wanted to God as their father stood up. People who know God still don’t know this! God choose to reveal this to me, I am His beloved son! God is my father.
I want to talk about two more of the markers of impact where I believe it was most significant in my growth this year. The next is a seamless spirituality. I had learned this one early on in the year though a conversation with Rob I had started bible study at the house and was doing it everyday. I talked to Rob about how there was too much homework for me to work on spiritual things. He replied with a statement that went something like this. “Why do you think they are two different things?” He had asked me why you think that your “spiritual life is any different then your regular one” why couldn’t scrubbing a toilet or doing an assignment be an opportunity to learn from God? I leaned early on to think like this. Every assignment I would open in prayer and ask God to use this as an opportunity to teach me. And when I was doing something like washing dishes I would pray like this “Father accept this work as a humble offering of your servant and may this be done for you and your glory!” doing in this way has change the attitude and mind set in which I proceed to do the tasks give for me to do and boy does it make a difference!
There is one more maker of impact I want to talk about and that is: A Yearning to care for souls. Dictionary.com defines yearing as: deep longing, especially when accompanied by tenderness or sadness; an instance of such longing. I believe though my relationships I have built, I have achieved this. Sometimes youth that I worked with seemed so far from hope, and that would be true apart from Christ. But though God’s grace I am able to speak into these youths lives. I care so much more about them then just another statistic. I care when they aren’t doing as well as they could be, it saddens my heart when I see them go into relationships full of abuse on the bases of a word that is so causally thrown around to them, Love. It saddens my heart when I know when a youth tells me, they don’t know what they will be doing for the weekend, and when I know this is a lie. They are and will be drinking and or getting high to fill a void, a emptiness, to fill something where brokenness is their aftermath. These are just a few examples of youth I work with, youth created in the image of God. Who cling to the toilet of life the world so kindly provides. I want them to know Jesus, to know God and to be in a relationship with True love, to have that void finally filled by Jesus Christ! I pray for these youth all the time that they would know a relationship with the father! I so want to see them with God in the kingdom one day!
In the words of the John “Jesus also did many other things. If they were all written down, I suppose the whole world could not contain the books that would be written. - John 21:25” I believe without a doubt this is true for my year at lifeteams. Jesus has done so many things and I suppose if I were to write them all down, this paper would be a lot longer. There are things that He has done that I have seen and their are some that I have yet to see! I look forward to the continued classroom I am in, and what a teacher we have!
