call

Many times I find myself reading a friend's blog and that blog initiating thoughts in my mind that I then feel like I need to blog about. So I found myself doing this today, and some of the thoughts in this post are a product of this friend's blog. So this friend was saying that she has been good lately because she is becoming less and less confused. At the beginning of the semester she just saw alot of things as pointless and was confused as to why she had to do them, but is now understanding more and more why God has placed her where she is. When I read this I was jealous. I long for the understanding that she has, I long to not be confused. Granted we are going through completely different situations, but still, I was jealous. lol.

From practically the beginning of the semester things have happened that have just completely confused, and I had no clue why they were happening. Then about 2 1/2 weeks ago things got worse and I was really getting tired of everything. But then for a week things went really well, and it looked like things were looking up for the most part, I was beginning to understand some things about my situation, and why they were happening. Then God threw me for a loop again this past week.

Some things have happened over the past week that have caused me to rethink alot of things about my life, and my future. This past week was missions conference. Now, if you know me at all, you know that for the past 4 years I have believed that God has called me into the foreign mission field after I graduate, specifically doing sports ministry, that is why I decided to major in sports ministry. So usually during missions conference you hear about God confirming the call on people's lives to go to the mission field, it seems quite unusual that God would cause someone to question that call. But now that I think about it, maybe it is not so unusual, because this has been some of what God has been doing to me. And I think it is a good thing, it is just hard. It is just hard to go from "almost full assurance of a call" to "rethinking that call completely." It is scary to not know what God wants for my life. I think one thing I realized this week is how hard it is actually going to be on the mission field. It is not going to be some walk in the park. And I think for a while I thought of it as that. Over the past couple years foreign missions has become more and more real to me. Through observing and watching my youth pastor and family pick up everything and go to Ireland, then also seeing my youth small group leader and mentor do the same thing, sometimes it is not all it is cracked up to be. I think sometimes we get this perception of missions and it is full of glitz and glam, but it is not. It is just life. It is life in a completely different culture than what we are used to here in North America.

Some of this confusion in my mind is caused by the fact that sometimes I don't know which gifts God wants to use more. I have a gift of sports and also technology/computers. And I love to use both of these for God's glory, but sometimes I don't know which one I should pursue the most. I attended two seminar sessions at missions conference that had to do with using your passion for making videos and filming on the mission field. So it really just got me thinking about that. Also considering there were no specific sports ministry agencies here this year at missions conference (honestly I think it is because Moody doesn't consider it a priority, but thats just my opinion, and the opinion of almost every sports ministry prof. here at Moody, lol) so there were no seminar sessions to attend pertaining specifically to sports ministry. So this is one dilemma that I have run into this week. The other dilemmas I think have to do with fear, as I mentioned earlier.

So these are some of the things I've been thinking about. I've been thinking about other things as well, but my mind can only focus on one thing at a time, so we'll save those for another time. Basically it all comes down to spending time with God, and seeking His will always, and always remembering that He is my Savior. The cross of Jesus Christ, thank you Lord.

And as I was rereading this post I was thinking that the way I started out in the first paragraph about reading a friend's blog...well I felt bad calling this person my friend because I've never even met her, a bunch of my friends were friends with her on facebook, so we ended up becoming "friends" on facebook and I found her xanga and started reading it. So just wanted to clarify that. I know, sounds kinda stalkerish, but hopefully me clarifying that cancels out the stalker factor.

ok clarification made.