Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Where has the summer gone?

It is incredibly hard to believe that I sit here now reflecting on 5 incredible, tiring, and rewarding weeks of camp.  It is interesting that everytime I have decided to blog since I last had at the end of June, I was detoured by other committments or necessary priorities.  Now, however, I sit here with some time to spare before I head to bed.  As I reflect on the summer I cannot believe what God has allowed me to experience thus far.  Because each experience itself could be its own blog (and indeed I originally intended it to be), I will do a quick overview of a few themes that have come out so far.

God's sovereignty
One lesson I have been learning is about the fact that God already has everything planned out and under control.  He knows when a camper is going to name Lake Ellen Camp as the "place that changed their life" when Christ is fully understood and accepted as a personal Savior; he knows when I am going to be stressed and feel completely overwhelmed; and he knows everything that will happen in the future as well.  Nothing takes God by surprise, which is only one of the many reasons that we do not need to worry while he is in control. Praise the Lord!

Prayer
No matter how hard I try, I cannot describe in words what an incredible blessing and honor it is to surrender everything to the Lord in prayer (Phil. 4:6).  Praying truly is an experience as it allows an opportunity to bow before the One and Only great, awesome, powerful, and Holy Lord of Creation.  He is so mighty he created the universe by speaking and yet he chooses to listen to us.  There are specifically two lessons that I find and have been learning thus far though:
1- Bond of unity.  I can honestly say that Mindy (my partner) and I would not have been successful as a team without prayer.  We are two totally different people with different ideas, etc. Yet, through God's power and our submission in prayer, we were united to accomplish God's purpose and plan for the program. Yeah!

2- Answered Prayer
Mindy and I were so inspired by the ways we saw God working that we couldn't help but praise the Lord.  We placed posterboard on the wall and named it our "answered prayer wall" where we wrote and encouraged others to write down evidences of God working through prayers that were noticably answered.  The wall is nearing its limit and we are left praising the Lord.

I suppose that is enough for now.  I still need to work on writing concisely (help me Mindy!).  I have so much more to say and in God's perfect timing it may get recorded.  As Brindy (Mindy and Britta) say, "God's will not my schedule."

"Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen." ~Ephesians 3:20-21

Amen.  Praise the LORD!

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