February 2019
I vividly remember the moment I was talking with my coworker in 2015 and he was explaining the story of God parting the Red Sea for Moses and the Israelites. He went on to tell how soon after God parted the Red Sea for the Israelites how quickly they started to doubt and question if God would provide for them when they found themselves wandering and lost. Out of my mouth I said “How in the world could the Israelites doubt God after He parted the Red Sea for them?” Before I could even finish the sentence, I heard in my spirit, “God has parted ‘Red Seas’ for you time and time again and you have times of doubt.” Sigh. Do you ever find yourself in that situation too? While waiting on God, things in the natural don’t appear to be going how we want or plan and we start to doubt. We start to believe the lies of ‘never’ and ‘forever'... This situation will ‘never’ change or it will be like this ‘forever.’ There are times I pray (or you could call it beg and plead, LOL) for a sign. PLEASE GIVE ME SOMETHING JESUS. LET ME KNOW YOU ARE LISTENING AND WORKING BEHIND THE SCENES! Even if I get a sign that I clearly know is a direct answer to a prayer and I feel peace and strength for a day or two, if Jesus is quiet again, I fall into doubting like the Israelites did. WILL JESUS COME THROUGH AGAIN AND HOW AND WHEN!? Lately, I have been holding onto the last thing that Jesus showed me, trusting that and meditating on His promises. I have found that even though there are moments that I still physically or mentally hurt, I have an underlying peace. A deep-down peace knowing that the future is in the hands of the creator of the world. Philippines 4:7 “And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” As I’ve grown spiritually, I have learned a few things I wanted to share: 1. I don’t need constant reminders or signs, that’s what ALL the promises in the Bible are for. 2. Getting angry and blaming God doesn’t change things, but praise does. When life gets so hard you don’t even want to face the day, I turn on worship music (loud!) and I guarantee you will feel some of the burden lift and a small amount of hope break through. --- I had written the Red Sea blog while I was going through a period of time when I had to gear up for each day because life was ‘sucking’ to say the least. There was about a three week period when I spent many moments in the bathroom on my knees crying and the only thing I could force myself to say was, “Lord, I trust you in this storm.” In my personal life, I was hurting. In bobsled world, my progress was going backwards. I wanted to run home and be with my family and run away from this hurt but in my spirit, I felt Jesus say, “Hold on, you need to finish.” Even though I was hurting I had an underlying peace. I was able to laugh and find joy in the days but it didn’t take away the physical and emotional pain at times. I also remembered that some of my greatest ‘revelations’ in life happened when I was in the deepest of storms and when I needed plugged into Jesus 24/7. I was confident that the worldly pain I was going through was because the devil saw something big coming. Fast forward three weeks to Sun, Feb 24, 2019. I had a one-on-one meeting with the USA bobsled head coach and he said, “You have been selected to the 2019 World Championship Team, and will be racing with Nicole Vogt.” Only 3 brakemen get selected to be part of this. (See the reveal video here). I also got to compete in National Championships, the final race of the season. Just to recap my season… My (partial) funding was taken away after the first half of the season and I got moved from the World Cup Team down to the North American Team. I had lost every single race off of the season except for the very last one. I had not raced in a single World Cup race until the last race. It looked absolutely impossible for me to race in Worlds that I actually was planning to just go home and reset for the next season because I would have to fund myself. But God had different plans. I learned another big lesson: we may count ourselves out, and we might fail over and over, but when God says ‘it’s time,’ He makes a way. Finishing top 10 in the world (9th) was an incredible feeling, but honestly, the lasting joy that will come from that will be looking back and seeing how Jesus continually works through our lives. I realize there is way more to life than bobsled, but whatever storm you may be facing, Jesus already has the healing plan and the answer, keep trusting Him! It’s been an incredible two seasons of bobsled. Now, I’m transitioning to off-season training and preparing for season three, the 2019-2020 bobsled season in November. Can’t wait to see what God has in store! Thanks for your support!
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