It been a long while since I’ve written anything on here but it’s for a good reason. As many of you guys know, I recently moved to the Bay Area for an internship with The Collide. The Collide is a powerful ministry with the goal of introducing Jesus to the youth and for them to find who they are called to be.
It was supposed to be a three month long internship but due to some familial circumstances I had to cut it short after the first month. Although it was just a short 30 days, the internship was an experience that truly pushed me and made me realize how capable the Lord made me. There were so many revelations during this trip that I will probably split them into separate posts but here are 3 things that really marked me while I was up in the bay, many of them were not profound but had a profound effect on me. The first major one was you must be intentional and purposeful with the relationships you cultivate in life. Second, Humility is the key to success. Third, productivity is not the result of busyness but busyness is the result of productivity.
The first thing I learned very quickly as I was up in the bay was the significance of the relationships that I created over the years. My first tasks as an intern with The Collide was to secure funds for two missions trips that I was to go on for the last two months of the internship. The first was for touring California and the second, for touring Korea and Indonesia spreading the gospel. The grand total of these trips was going to be $5,000, and paying out of pocket was not an option. If I didn’t raise this money, I was not going to be able to participate in the last 2 months of my internship. And with this as our first task, my fellow interns and I had to hit the ground running. There was no time to adjust or to ease into it; it was a you’re in or you’re out situation where lukewarmness was not an option.
This situation was really interesting to me because in this moment there was such a parallel but juxtaposing illustration of my Christian walk. When it came to the internship (E.G. something of the worldly nature) I saw the circumstance as a do or die. But for some reason when I first accepted Christ, I thought that I needed to somehow ease into my Christian walk with no blatant cut between my submission to Jesus and my flesh. This is even extensively talked about in Romans and I believe that this is precisely why there is such an emphasis on the death of the flesh and the birth of the New Man.
Going back to my fundraising, I very quickly saw my flesh begin to show as soon as I started going down my list of contacts. I knew that the purpose of this task was to increase my trust in the Lord but it was so much more than that. In this one task my pride, rejection issues, submission problems, and spiritual independence exploded and manifested itself. Welcome to my adventures with The Collide, where who you are and who you are to become begins to war with each other.
