In the past two weeks since project started, I've begun to recognize my own brokenness more and more. As I begin to see and recognize the weight of my own sin, my picture of Jesus also expands to see more of his grace, righteousness, and power as they impact my life and my walk with the Lord. Recognition of our sin leaves us with a deep and troubling question that must be answered. Once we are broken where do we turn? Once we begin to recognize our own flesh and filth, how do we find hope in our seemingly hopeless situation? Textbook church answer: Jesus. As simplistic as this answer may seem, it is one concept that I've really been struggling to grasp and apply practically in my life. How do we take the gospel concept of grace and put it into terms that we can understand and relate to? How do we take the almighty God and contain Him into a definition that we are able to understand. In all honesty we can't. All we can do is take what we do know of Him from scripture and through our own personal revelations from the Holy Spirit, and trust that he is all-powerful, all-knowing and absolutely in love with us. In bible study this week we studied the concept of passive righteousness. Though typically taken with a bad connotation, the word passive simply means that no action was involved on our part. This is the beauty of the gospel: while we were still sinners, and with no action or expectation on our own part, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8). The weight if this recognition is huge! This takes so much pressure off of all of us and allows us to freely accept the God's grace as a free gift which we could never do enough to earn or deserve (Ephesians 2:8-9). This means that I don't have to pretend to have all of my junk together and I also don't have to perform to the best of god's expectations. I can do nothing more than passively accept the hand of grace that was extended to me by the Father. I am free to come before him, broken and needy, and to give all of my junk over to him. What a beautiful truth. One song that has been running through my head all week is "Brokenness Aside" by All Sons and Daughters (they are just a great band in general so if you've never heard any of their stuff go and check it out)! The lyrics are posted below. Will your grace run out
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Sorry it’s been a while y’all. Things are cra-zy down here in the Chuck-town. We are now entering our third week of project, which is super hard to believe. Though the messiness of our room proves otherwise, it does not seem like we’ve already gone through 1/4th of our time here. Last week brought all sorts of new challenges. We’ve officially started at McDonald’s and it is officially kicking our tails. For those of you who have never had the opportunity to work at a fast food restaurant, I can guarantee you that the work is a lot harder than what you would necessarily expect. In my first week at the ol’ Mickey D’s I was trained on the grill, line, drive through, and front counter. If you were to come in and order something (hopefully not something too complicated) then I would most likely be able to take your order, make your food, and deliver your bag to you out the drive through window. Right now, Morgan and I are working the 8 to 4 shift, which has been both exhausting and exhilarating at different times. **Funny stories from McDonald’s: Our first experiences in making dipped cones. You wouldn’t think it would be that hard. FALSE. It is so hard. Morgan and I both had several duds before we convinced our manager to show us how to do it at the end of one of our shifts, and then convinced him to let us take home our practice cones. They were both delicious and terribly messy (make sure you hold onto that upholstery cleaner that I bought at the beginning of the summer, Mom! I will be needing it again.) As far as “on the project” goes, things are really really great. I am beginning to really love my roommates in a deeper way than what I had originally expected. Each day I am blown away to see them demonstrate the gospel to me, and to see them show me so much grace by putting up with all my junk (both emotionally, and the huge pile of things I have going in my corner of the room). It has been so cool to see how God handpicked each of us to be in this room together, to see how our stories intertwine, and to see the ways in which we are able to encourage each other because of that. I also am genuinely beginning to know and love the other people on project. This is an answered prayer, because coming into this summer I was really worried about the size of the community, and the pressure I felt to get to know and love everyone within the first week here. God has been gracious to allow me to recognize that one of the beautiful things about project is that I have time. I don’t have to have major FOMO (fear of missing out) because I have time to get to know all of my fellow projecteers throughout our nine weeks here. As our community event this week, we had game night, which was thrilling, terrifying, and hilarious all at the same time. One of the things that we’ve been talking about over the past few weeks is placing a red dot on “where we’re at” coming into project. Like the mall maps that show you in bright red exactly where you are, our director has been challenging us to figure out where our spiritual red dot is at this point in time. I am not generally super in touch with my emotions or thoughts, so this process has been really hard for me. I want to be able to know what’s going on, but this is an area where I am going to have to just rest and let God reveal himself in time. Prayer requests for this upcoming week:
That’s all for now. I promise to try to be better about posting here on a more every-other-daily basis. I am sure that as our work week continues I will have more embarrassing and funny stories to share from the world of Mickey D’s. That’s all for now, folks. Enjoy these pictures for further explanation of my life as a temporary Charlestonian. |
Sarah Hoehnlover of life's finer things Archives
April 2016
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