This past weekend I had the amazing opportunity to participate in a training weekend with my team mate Rose. The weekend was filled with team building, laughs, and most importunately strengthening our relationship with God.
Throughout the weekend we learned about creating nutrient rich soil for our roots to grow in. Our speaker Chris started off our weekend with a get to know you time line. (or flow chart in my situation) There we had to write four positive times in our life and four negative times. As we listened to each others story's of how they got to this current point in their lives, you could really see how God took even the difficult situations and used them for something positive.
One of my negatives was when my parents felt called to go into full time camp missions, and how during that time I struggled with anger, and lack of self worth. Through this first exercise I saw how my experience wasn't that different from everyone else. Often during that period in my life I thought that "no one understood how I felt" but in reality everyone faces difficult periods in life, and though we can't compared who has a "worse" period, we can all identify with how they must have felt in that moment. I found this opening activity very encouraging, even though the reality of life is everyone faces hardships, to have someone openly be vulnerable with what they have faced in life helps you to create a deeper connection with how they got here.
As the weekend continued we studied the parable of the sower (Matthew 13:36-43) and how the seeds were planted in four types of soil hard-walked on soil, thorny soil, rocky soil and healthy soil. As we read Chris got us to identify the bad soils in our life. All the things holding us back from having rich, nutritious soil to grow our roots in, whether that was; fear, guilt, emotions we thought we have "rights" to and more. I personally had never seen the parable in this way, I had always seen it as making sure you weren't one of the "bad" soils, not that we could have bad soil holding us bad from having good soil. As we identified these bad soils in our life, and listened for God's still small voice, I could almost feel the weight of things I thought were in the past be lifted off of me. I am always still amazed how gracious God is, and how if we really take time to bask in Him, He'll meet you were you are.
Overall this weekend was an amazing opportunity to get to know each other as a team, finding out each others likes and dislikes in order to strengthen our relationship. Not only did this strengthen my relationship with Rose, but with God. I was able to be released from things holding me back from a better relationship with Him, I learned more about how to effectively share the love of God, and most importantly learned how I could strengthen my own relationship with Him.
As the weekend continued we studied the parable of the sower (Matthew 13:36-43) and how the seeds were planted in four types of soil hard-walked on soil, thorny soil, rocky soil and healthy soil. As we read Chris got us to identify the bad soils in our life. All the things holding us back from having rich, nutritious soil to grow our roots in, whether that was; fear, guilt, emotions we thought we have "rights" to and more. I personally had never seen the parable in this way, I had always seen it as making sure you weren't one of the "bad" soils, not that we could have bad soil holding us bad from having good soil. As we identified these bad soils in our life, and listened for God's still small voice, I could almost feel the weight of things I thought were in the past be lifted off of me. I am always still amazed how gracious God is, and how if we really take time to bask in Him, He'll meet you were you are.
Overall this weekend was an amazing opportunity to get to know each other as a team, finding out each others likes and dislikes in order to strengthen our relationship. Not only did this strengthen my relationship with Rose, but with God. I was able to be released from things holding me back from a better relationship with Him, I learned more about how to effectively share the love of God, and most importantly learned how I could strengthen my own relationship with Him.
Wishing everyone a very Merry Christmas!
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| Team building game! We could only step on the "lily pads" |
