I have had many friendships over
the years. I love making new
friends. I have also been hurt by many
friends and new relationships. Some of
the times when I have been hurt have been nothing more than my feelings being
bruised. There have been other times in
relationships where I have been wounded very deeply. The pain I have experienced in relationships over the years has
caused me to have a wall-building defense response when I enter into new
relationships.
I seem to have
developed a reaction to people who want to go into deeper relationship. I desire to go deeper, but I place walls and
try to keep things on the surface. I
know that I do this to protect my heart.
I understand that in all relationships there needs to be a time of
building trust in order to go to the place of deeper community. I have come to realize that to get to a
place of deeper community it always requires me to take steps of risk. I have to put myself out there a bit and
trust people.
You may wonder
why I am sharing all of this. I think that these team blogs are a place where
each of you, along with your team leaders, can begin to build trust. Our desire as leaders at AIM is that your
teams would begin to build community through these team blogs.
I will be honest
with you, I have seen great words of encouragement, some prayer requests, and
some very active members on each team.
On the other side of things I don’t think that I have seen great
involvement from everyone. Maybe it is
that most of you don’t know what to say.
Or maybe it is that we are not ready to put ourselves out there for
everyone to read about. I am not sure
what it is, but I do know that before the end of this summer you are going to
be living 24/7 with the people on your team.
You will be facing many challenges together. You are going to have days when you are going to desperately
need the people on your team.
When you come to training camp we will put your team
through team building, team time, and a bunch of other things to make sure that
you become the team that God wants you to be.
We will not let you keep everything at a surface level. So if you know that is where your team is
going to end up, why not start working towards it now? I want to challenge you to begin sharing
your hopes, fears, prayer requests, and the ways that God is working in your
life with the members of your team. I
know that God is working in each of you individually and corporately as
well. My prayer is that you will begin
going beyond surface relationships. I
pray that you will take the risk and trust one another, so that when you arrive
here in Georgia for training camp your team will have a depth of love and
relationship with each other that will speak the Gospel to the nations that you
are going to.
Great Job ladies. I can see you taking the risk and begining to engage. Your team will be stronger because of it.
I completely agree…I know that I have been holding back and I havent put my guards down…so I will start. Dont know if we just want to start writing here or not…but here it goes…The biggest prayer request I have in my life is seeking acceptance and love from God, and only God. I have always had and still have many insecurities about myself, mainly when it comes to guys. I seek attention from guys more than I do from God. I have an older sister who is absolutely gorgeous and I have always felt inferior to her. So growing up and especially in Middle School I always felt insecure about myself. I know this is a little deep for the first message, but this is my prayer request. If you could please keep my prayer in your hearts I would greatly appreciate it!
Charlotte, thank you for your boldness to “go first” 🙂 you have my respect already. It’s funny that you should mention seeking acceptance and love from God because that is exactly what God has been really working in me this past year. As most girls struggle with being insecure on some level, I think I did two times that especially when it came to God adoring me or singing over me (Zeph 3:17). With lots and lots of prayer, God has opened my eyes to see His love is truly better than life, better than boys, better than comparing to really cute siblings (been there). I’ll definitely be praying for you.
Thank you so much for your encouraging words and prayer! It means so much to me to know someone has been in the same situation as me and is praying for me!
I think it’s so awesome that the team hasn’t even met yet and we’re already encouraging and praying for one another! It’s exciting to see God at work in each one of our lives throughout this mission processes. Let’s see…my biggest struggle right now is handing this over to God. I struggle with patience throughout all of this and I get so nervous everytime I look at my “Support Status”. I need prayer to put this into God’s hands, esp. since He’s the one who’s been orchastrating all of this. Also, that I would praise God in everything that comes my way, good times and times of struggle. Discouragement is a huge fault of mine.
Charlotte I admire you already for being able to be that open. Seriously I respect you so much more because of it. I would say that I struggle with the same thing. I know how you feel so i will definitely be prating for you.
Megan, thanks so much for your encouraging words and prayer! and Anna, I know what you are going through, it is really hard for me to give everything to God and to realize that He is in control! Whenever it gets tough, I try to remind myself that if I give it all to God I know that He will absolutely blow my mind. And that I am not even able to imagine what He has in store for us. I will be preying for you! God’s will, WILL prevail!