This semester, I have been so blessed to be able to lead a small group of some really awesome girls, and they have taught me so much. We've been going over the book Crazy Love by Francis Chan. We have been talking about some pretty radical goals that we have concerning our walk and relationships with God. The question that keeps coming up, pretty much every week is, "That sounds so good, and I want to be like that, but how do I get from where I am to where I want to be?"
I would love to be able to say that we have found that it takes a one time, radical life change where you realize what needs to be done, do it, and it becomes easy from there on out. But that is definitely not what we've come to. The biggest thing that we have realized is that it starts with the heart. We can make a commitment to work on all of the things that we want to see in our lives (kindness, servanthood, unconditional love, forgiveness, sacrifice, consistency, and many more...) but we are going to either consistently fail, get overwhelmed, or forget why we are trying so hard to become something that is so unnatural to us. But, if we have our heart in the right place (seeking to please God and be intimate with Him) then all of those other things are so much easier and can even start to become natural to us. The next thing that we realized is that it takes every day to get to where we desire to be with God. On Monday nights, at small group, we can all get our hearts right with God and confess our desire for Him and know that we only want to serve Him... but on Thursday, it's reallly obvious that the commitment we made on Monday definitely does not last us forever. We have to come to God every day and have fellowship with Him so that we can be familiar with His ways and refreshed by His spirit.
I know that this is basic stuff, but I know that it is something that I forget all of the time. God wants to be with us, and He wants us to take His word seriously. We have focused so much on realising that God means what He says and He desires for us to live like we believe it.
I can't believe that small group ends so soon. I feel so blessed to get to be a part of the lives of these girls, and I feel like our discussions get better every week. I am so encouraged that they really want to do some outreach stuff this summer, and they are being proactive in their planning and getting ideas together for what is on their OWN hearts, which is exactly what I've prayed for! We've had awesome ideas already from all of the girls... For example, so far, we are planning on going and holding terminally ill babies, having nights to come together and bring money and just go out as a group to minister to others. My girls are so awesome!
