fire?

This week has been interesting, emotional, encouraging, thought provoking and uplifting.

How I got the idea the that being molded and changed for Jesus was going to be a painless process, boggles my brain.  Change is not easy or pain free.  It isn't a one time thing where, I go, "ok Jesus here's my life, fix me" and bam your life is fixed and your walking through a meadow with the LORD.  Instead its Jesus taking you by the hand and helping you through His refining process.  In other words, He drops you in a patch of rose bushes, where it can be a beautiful thing, but when you are in the middle of all those roses, you are constantly being pricked by the thorns.  (my intentions for this post was to talk about God's refining fire and i'm talking about flowers; ha i'm such a farmers daughter)

Change though is good and should always be occurring.  and yes those words just came from tricia thacker, hater of change.  However, Jesus is teaching me that change can be good, even if isn't the most pleasant thing in the world.  That we need to invite the Holy Spirit into our lives and allow Him to change us, while allowing His power to flow through us and impact the world.

thief.

Today at church, Jesus slapped me upside the head (again) with the whole comfortability thing.

The sermon was from Malachi where God is telling the Israelites that they have robbed Him.  That God gives all of us everything we need to show His glory to the world, but we take what He gives us and use it for our own selfish wants and desires to make us comfortable. BAM! We take stuff of Gods and keep if for ourselves to be happy.  I, tricia thacker, take Gods wonderful gift of love and mercy and store it up for my own safe keeping.  I steal from God.  I am a dirty little heathen. Yet God still wants us to return to Him.  This thought is so incredible to me.  That we abuse the gifts God gives us and He still has a desire for us to be with Him. Crazy.  Also that its not about the act that we personally do, but that the act of giving to the LORD whether through money or time, is us having bonding time with our creator.  That is what truly matters, using the tools he has given us and using them with Him.

As I was setting in church, I thought to myself how much of a thief I really am.  So many times I ask for God to help with this or that, yet He has already given me enough tools to help the world.  I have just taken His tools and used them for selfish reasons to help my life and not others.  So Jesus was telling me, tricia I have given you enough strength and love to give the world, so get up and do it and we will have a great time doing it together.

Also today I talked to Margery an elder lady that works in the SIL office about her life and work with Wycliffe.  It was amazing how encouraging her story was, that she didn't always know what she was doing, but God always had a plan.  Just the faith and trust she had in Jesus, gave me so much hope.  God has given me all that I need to survive, we may think its not enough, but it is.
Surrendering and all is wonderful, but acts of God's glory have to follow with it.

my first work week

So I have finally been doing what I have been planning and preparing for since December this past week.  I can't lie and say that it has been the best time of my life, but overall it has been a great experience so far.  The work I have to do and the people I work with are wonderful, its just been myself that has gotten in the way of having the "best" experience.  The adjusting to a new life style change and different surrounding just hasn't been my favorite part.  I am doing a lot better thanks to Jesus and everybody's prayers.  I was just at first feeling inadequate and worthless at this job, because I wasn't seeing how this was going to benefit me in anyway, which shouldn't matter cause its not about me.  But these were just negative doubts that were being hurled at me from the lil annoying devil.  And it didn't help that I was homesick, so basically I've been dealing with culture shock this past week. However throughout this week, I've talked to people that work with LEAD and it has given me motivation to continue with my work.  I always do better when I'm busy with something, that way its not just me and my thoughts eating away at my soul.

THE WORK! So basically I just do what my supervisor tells me to do.  He has given me a few projects to do like uploading a gazillion pictures to flickr and formatting curriculum vitae's and then me and Mariah have to both figure out how to organize/set up their library.  So throughout the day we work on these projects while also having meetings that informed us more about LEAD and we also met with different people that worked in our office and other individuals with LEAD.  While also on Tuesday's and Thursday's we attend our online internship classes of leadership training and faith and culture class thing.  This week though we got the privilege to take off work on Wednesday and go to DC so that was fun.  It was a great week over all though.  I still really don't know why I'm here, but I know this is where Jesus wants me, so I will attempt to do His work.

So I've made it to DC!  I'm excited to see what I'll be doing this summer and all the experiences I will have, yet I'm still nervous at all that is going to happen.  I got a tour of the office and some of DC today so that was nice, and I enjoyed it.  The house and people I will be living with our wonderful, Jesus blesses me so much.

Some things I have been learning:
1) I have no control in this world whatsoever --me and Jesus have actually been arguing about this the past few days as I tried to hold on to the last little bitty ounce of control I thought I had, but He won and I gave in giving Him all control of my life, but that doesn't mean I'm going to have to work on giving Him the control
2) that the world isn't about me--that its about our God and all of His glory, tricia can do nothing to save the world, only God can
3) surrender is good--that I shouldn't try to do anything on my own, that I should give it all to Jesus

Orlando.

Me and Mariah made it to Orlando in one piece! We have about four days here and then we will fly out to DC June 11 for our internship to start.  I can't believe I'm actually here, it seems like yesterday I received the call that I was accepted.  Anyways, its all going good so far. While we are here in Orlando, we're staying in a really nice house with the other interns. Speaking of the interns they are all wonderful and its great getting to know them a little bit before we head out to DC.  Not too much has happened, we are just doing orientation and preparing for our 8 1/2 work weeks we have coming up.  Today they just gave us a ton of information about Wycliffe and linguistics and such in order for us to have background with our jobs. So yup, more information to come as this adventure continues.

Let me eat my words

So the other day I was talking to a friend about getting out of our comfort zone and how we need to surrender our selves, all of our selves to Jesus and that all will be ok.  That we don't need to worry about disappointing people as long as we are following God's heart.   To be brutally honest, I was just thinking about the comfort stuff for my own life, thinking that going to Wycliffe and Thailand was enough for me to surrender.  Ha.

So I started reading crazy love the other day and what do you know I come to the chapter where it talks in order to love God you need to surrender all of yourself.  Huh? I have always known this, yet at the same time didn't.  I knew I needed to surrender, but I would just give Jesus bits and pieces.  The book also talked about how Jesus said to the man that said he needed to say bye to his family before he left and followed Jesus, that he shouldn't follow Him because he couldn't drop everything.  This story has always bothered me, because I want to drop and follow Jesus, after I say bye to everybody.  However, that is me putting my relationships before Jesus, not fully surrendering my life to Him.  This is one huge pill for me to swallow.

Another point the book has made is about loving God before you can love others.  That we actually need God's help to love others, that it is pointless to just say to God I want to love people more.  So we need run to God and seek his refuge and ask for his help to love, because loving the world and Him is something us puny little humans can't do.

Surrender is what I have been hearing.  That I need to just give it all to Jesus, going across the world is not me surrendering my life to Jesus.  I need to drop everything and run to Him, even though a part of me wants to hold on to this earthly stuff.  Who knows why, because it is getting me no where.

So I pray as I head out to DC tomorrow that I am able to surrender everything with a joyful attitude and that I am able to seek God's help in order to love.  I don't want to ask this, because Jesus will blow my mind away, but I know this is what needs to happen.  So here I am Lord.  (and her comes the uncomfortability)
It's not about me.

I'm not called to be comfortable

As I was setting on my deck, watching the sunset, I realized how immersed in comfort I am here.  These past two weeks that I have been home, I’ve basically done whatever I want and have been a lazy bum.  And I enjoy that, way too much.  I have always said that once I get my chance to leave and get a job I would, but now that I have a chance to leave Illinois for seven months I realize that a tiny part of me wants to stay.  Not because of my deep love I have for southern Illinois, but because I’m comfortable and don’t want to be uncomfortable.  However, I have pushed those thoughts to the curb and continue to get ready for my great adventure that starts in basically 2 days.  I know there is nothing to fear because Jesus has my back.  Now all I have to do is follow his word, which is a little harder to do, but this is a learning experience and I will try my best to do all the learning I can.  I will fail at times, because believe it or not I’m not as perfect as you all think I am.  I’ve just got to keep my big girl pants up and take one step at a time.  I’m not going to be comfortable everyday and I might want to dig a dying whole, but I’m ok with it, because Jesus will be holding me the whole entire time.

Jesus is my Comedian

So yesterday I went to get my blood drawn to be tested if I have had chicken pox in the past.  Which I have, because I had 2 in my mouth and it was awful.  Anyways, for those of you that don’t know it, I have this wonderful trait of being able to pass out when my body feels inner pain, like shots and things of the sort.   I had never given blood because of this reason and wasn’t too thrilled about doing so.  So I go get my blood drawn hoping and praying I don’t pass out.  As the nurse is taking my blood, I start to feel light headed and think oh no to myself.  After it was all done the nurse told me that I had did such a marvelous job, better than most men. However I feel that I’m starting to go and what do you know I pass out.  All I remember is the nurse and my mother calling out my name and then them telling me to smell the smelling salt.  Then I stayed in their office until I fully recuperated.  Yup, that’s my story.  Let me remind you that this was the next day after I wrote my blog on about being weak.  Jesus is such a funny, funny man.  So as I walked out of the health department I couldn’t help but giggle to myself at how Jesus likes to show me how he’s got everything under control.  Granted almost dying on the health departments floor wasn’t fun, but I realized how awesome Jesus is and that He’s got my back.