HELLO!!!!

Here are my sweet friends Grace and Lilly<3

We just got off a 13 hour flight and are currently seated in Abu Dhabi Airport, waiting for our next flight. Prior to now, I have been in Gainesville, Georgia for launch week! Launch week was filled highs, lows and EVERYTHING in between and I’ve been eager to share the details of it with you all so here we go!!!

Let me show you what our set up looked like this week…

Launch week was a 10 day “training camp” that we took on before leaving for South Africa. It was a window of time where we got to grow close and learn alongside the people who we would soon be serving with daily. Our days were filled with devotionals, teaching, worship, cleaning projects, reflection time and many more things. It was a time of STRETCHING. Stretching compared to the environment we are used to, the relationships we typically surround ourselves with, and the amount of food we happily indulge ourselves in. In the midst of this, I slept in a ten person tent with the 9 girls in my group (not including our sweet friend Levi), had many long stretches without showers and used strictly portable potties. To put it plainly, this experience was humbling. Not only externally, above all else, the Lord showed me the deep roots of PRIDE that were in my heart.

From the second I walked into training camp until the moment I left, the feeling of discomfort followed me every step of the way, which I can now say, I am SO GRATEFUL for. And with the Lord, I believe there is actually quite a lot of comfort in the midst of being uncomfortable. But these feelings of discomfort began an unraveling process, the breaking down of a wall I have had up for a long time. I was exposed to the ways I exalt my pride and want for control in order to feel more secure in my circumstances. Rather than recognize the discomfort, submit myself at His feet and hold fast His Word, no matter the circumstances, I instead focused on the temptation to take control of everything and everyone around me. This manifested into a harsh judgment of others. Completely missing grace. It was a lie, a false sense of freedom. With everything in me, I couldn’t reveal my discomfort to the Lord or to others. So I tried to craft myself into a version of myself I could never become: perfect and someone who could carry the weight of the world on their shoulders. I tried to become my own god. By the end of each day I felt DRAINED to say the least. I began to notice a pattern that I had typically carried in my daily life, now bleeding into my time at training camp. But this time, I felt a great resistance, a pushback.

To Get Undignified

One morning, in His calm, gentle voice, the Lord spoke to me. He said “Get undignified for me”.

It wrecked me. To become a fool for Him. It offended my pride, my desire to “hold to together”. The thought to securely take the seat of dishonor so that He may be exalted above all. But I was reminded of the broken people the Christ drew near to and called into His Kingdom. 1 Corinthians 1:27-29 describes it best:

“But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God”. 

I felt His invitation. An invitation to lay. To lay down my pride. To lay down my want for control. To lay down everything. The thought of this is something I typically run from. I walk around it. But this time, the fear of that thought disappeared and that invitation sounded freeing, welcoming. It felt so natural, like it rolled off the tongue. Why would I give Him my all? Why would I lay it all at His feet? Because He is worthy.

Just as the myriads of angels sang…

“Saying with a loud voice, “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!”(Revelation 5:12 ESV)

My quiet times became filled with beautiful scripture that sunk deeper than they ever had before. His worthiness began to consume my heart.

“For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain.”(Philippians 1:21 ESV)

“Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer; you shall cry, and he will say, ‘Here I am’. If you take away the yoke from your midst, the pointing of the finger and speaking wickedness, if you pour yourself out for the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then shall your light rise in the darkness and your gloom be as the noonday. And the Lord will guide you continually and satisfy your desire in the scorched places and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters do not fail.”(Isaiah 58:9-11)

“Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were brought with a price. So glorify God in your body.”(1 Corinthians 6:19-20)

“‘The Lord is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in him.'”(Lamentations 3:24)

“Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you not look only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in the human form, he humbled by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”(Philippians 2:3-7)

So if I got anything out of this week, it is that HE IS WORTHY! HE IS SO SO WORHTY OF OUR ALL! I want to scream it at the top of my lungs. I want to share it with everyone. I want to dive deeper into it every day I have left on this earth.

Worthy is the Lamb.

With much love and much more to come, Kaitlyn