Onboarding Week 2: Hearing From God

I find it interesting that I had doubts about the usefulness of onboarding because looking back, I remember when I was considering coming back for 10 months, God put this thought in my head: Hey why don’t you commit to two years, that way you can do onboarding? And I was like, yeah that sounds awesome! But of course, after that, the lies and doubts start to creep in. But God is so good, He always knows what we need, even if we don’t know. Especially when we don’t know. He knew I needed this. He has so much He wants to show me and teach me before I get back to the ship. This week, I grew so much in my personal relationship with God. He showed up in the most amazing ways. The focus of the week was on learning more about the God we serve – His characteristics, His unchanging purpose and how to communicate with Him.

Beth captured this beautiful moment for us:
Praying for unity as a communications team.

I think the area I needed the most work on (out of those three), was communicating with God. I do decently well at talking to God (big surprise eh?), but I’m not so good at listening. I miss out on hearing all the things He wants to share with me because I’m too busy DOING. One of our teachers had us do an exercise where we split into groups of three and spent some time asking God for a word for each other. She had just finished sharing some of her walk with God and I remember thinking, I want that. I want a life of experience from walking with God, I want to be able to share the fruits of my faith journey to encourage others. So when she told us the exercise, in my head I was thinking, yeah okay, sure but God doesn’t talk to me like that. She had said that at first, she could only tell when God was shouting at her, but she eventually learned to hear His whisper. I’m definitely still at that shouting stage.

I think God accepted my challenge. For both of the girls, God gave me something to share with them. Often, I have trouble discerning God’s voice from my own, but when you are asking for a word for someone else you know it’s from God because it means almost nothing to you, but a lot to them. And it’s so interesting because I am very much a verbal person, yet God chose to show me a picture. I think that was Him giving me another confirmation that it was Him and not me. I have never felt as personally close to God as I did in that moment. Our teacher talked about knowing Jesus as a friend. I think that was my first experience with that.

Another big moment came during our silent retreat. On Saturday, we went to Tyler state park and spent a few hours in silence with God. Beforehand, everyone was talking about swimming, hiking, renting kayaks, etc. so I said, God how do you want me to spend this time with you? And he showed me a very clear picture of me at the foot of His throne, sitting in contentment, just being with Him. So that’s what I did. I found a quiet part of the forest and just sat with Him. Two big things happened. The first is the He filled me back up with peace and joy and love and grace. I had been feeling pretty emotionally drained from the whole week and He knew what I needed.

Our lovely small group, with our leader Erin (in pink).

The second thing is one of the most amazing things I have ever experienced. It requires a little back story though. On the ship, the chaplains had been talking about grace and truth and how we have to have equal measures of both. I knew I had lots of truth, but I could definitely use more grace (which I’ve noticed is usually the opposite for people who grew up in the church). On Wednesday, my small group leader (a very wise and amazing lady), asked me to have lunch with her. During our conversation, things came up that I hadn’t talked about in a long time. She told me that it’s impossible to give something we don’t have. Wow! That hit me so much. I wasn’t able to give more grace because I hadn’t accepted it for myself. I’ve been able to accept God’s truth – that He is the creator, that we are sinful, that we need a saviour – but I have trouble accepting His grace. That I am deserving and worthy of that. We were praying after one of the sessions and someone came and stuck a sticky note in front of me. All it said was: Renee, I felt like God was telling me to tell you that He is proud of you. Those words had quite the impact on me. It’s something I have a hard time believing. So when I was in my quiet time with God, I asked Him to reveal His grace to me in a new way since I clearly wasn’t getting it. And He did. Once again, He painted me the most amazing picture:

It starts with a little boy and his father. The little boy goes out to play and comes back covered in dirt from head to toe. The dad doesn’t get angry or frustrated, but gently reminds the boy to try and keep clean. The boy is very sorry and promises to do better. The dad starts to lovingly clean him off (which takes a while because he is so dirty) and in that time the boy realizes how much his dad loves him. But he is eager to go back and play. So as soon as he is clean, he goes back out. The boy comes back, but this time he is less dirty than last time. Again the dad gently reminds him why he needs to stay clean, the boy is repentant and the dad lovingly cleans him off. Then the boy goes back out. This continues over and over until eventually the boy comes back one time and he is completely clean. The dad smiles proudly and says, well done son.

God was showing me that this is how His grace works. He sends us into the world and we fall down and sin and get dirty. We come back to Him, truly repentant and saying we won’t do it again. He doesn’t ever get angry or frustrated with us. He washes us clean of our sin, spends time teaching us and loving us and then sends us back out. Each time, we are strengthened and we resist sin a bit more, we say no to the lies, no to the world. The goal is that one day we will come before Him clean (thanks to His help), and He will say, well done my good and faithful servant. The beauty of it was that God revealed to me how the boy felt emotionally throughout, but also how the father felt. What a good God we serve, one who speaks to us in ways that we understand and who knows us intimately! As one Bethel song puts it, You don’t have to come but you always do. You show up in a splendor and change the whole room.

[I don't know how theologically accurate this whole picture is, I just know God was using it to get me to finally understand His grace].

Some other things that stuck out to me this week:

We acted out the parable of the prodigal son...Stef was the
fattened cow that gets killed to celebrate his return.

- God is often talking to us, sometimes we just need to turn down the static/outside noise to be able to hear Him.

- How I view God is how I reflect God.

- Looking at the characteristics of God (from Exodus 34:6-7), two things stuck out to me. We looked up the Hebrew word for lovingkindness, as we tried to figure out what exactly the concept was. It is trying to convey the idea of covenant love/loyal love/persistent love. I thought that was so beautiful. The other one was an interesting definition of just: being faithful to the original. This idea that God is setting things right, back to how they should be, that is justice.

- Being here at onboarding has taught me to trust that others (especially the Mercy Ships leadership) are also praying and listening to God. I may not agree with every decision, but I can find peace in the fact that they are truly seeking God and His guidance.

- When we are asking God for guidance, are we really at peace with anything He chooses or are we leaning towards one thing/option more? The visual was, are you lifting both hands up to God, or is one handed lifted above the other, hoping God picks that option. This can lead to us confusing God’s voice with our voice. One person shared that God has given her a lot of her desires and none of those things brought her contentment. A lot of times we have no idea what is best for us. We need to seek His will in all things.

I apologize if my thoughts are all over the place. It's hard to put into words (and organize) the things He has shown and revealed to me this week. I know that most of it is for my growth alone, but I pray that some of it would encourage you as well. In summary: God is good - all glory to Him alone!

 “I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me— just as the Father knows me and I know the Father—and I lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd. - John 10:14-16

We went out for a dinner as the communications team - these are the amazing people that I will be working with all year.
Kat, myself, Tiffany, Windsor and Miguel.