My Grace is Sufficient for you...

Okay first off I want to apologize to everyone who I promised I would keep you updated on my trip through this blog. I am busy non-stop here and really hardly ever have time to actually sit down and put enough time into letting you guys in on all the awesome stuff going on here.. I figured it was time I updated you! So wow! I have now been in New Jersey for nearly five weeks... time is literally flyinggg by and God is working so greatly in everyone of our lives. It is so incredible to see Him at work.

First off, I have four wonderful roomies: Connie, Kali, and Katherine and our wonderful leader Natalie :) you will definitely hear a lot about them over the course of this blog! So two or three weeks into project the devil was on the prowl, and when I say on the prowl I mean he was attacking like crazy.. he hit 3 out of the 4 of us in our room all within a couple of days and it was truly the first time I realized how much power the enemy really has. He tried and tried his best to get us down, he had me pretty upset... at one point my exact words were "I am ready to go brawl with the devil" I was so angry and seriously just wanted to punch him in the face. He was hitting me with different aspects of my life that he alwaysss uses to get me down and I was not going to have it. I know the devil is cruel and hates me and will do anything in his power to get me to turn against God but there was no way I was going to do that. 1 Peter 5:7 says "Give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares for you." and in Matthew 11:28-30 Jesus says; "Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light." What sweet words from an awesome Savior. I had a rough couple of days but I leaned on scripture, prayer, and my roommates and leaders, and the Lord lifted me right back up. Its so incredible how you can get so low, so low to the point where you feel like you have hit rock bottom and Jesus scoops down and just lifts you up.. it simply just leaves me lost for words. How deep the Father's love is for us... man it is crazy.

Since I have been here I have been asking the Lord to point out the areas in my life that I am struggling with and to show me where I am not surrendering to Him. The two biggest things he has reallyy been working on in my life is bitterness and forgiveness. It is so awesome to me how God begins pointing these areas out in your life and then speaks to you in so many different ways on them. I have read two different books since I have been here and they both talked about bitterness and forgiveness, my first church service here was on forgiveness, it was literally like everywhere I turned around the Lord was teaching me about forgiveness and it was incredible. We have "Night of Reflection" (NOR) every week and it is a time where we go somewhere by ourselves and quiet and just let the Lord speak to us and reflect on what he has been teaching us. My first NOR the Lord was once again speaking to me on forgiveness. He really broke me and brought to a point where I felt like he was literally speaking to me and saying "Chelsea, you mess up daily, actually multiple times a day and I forgive you every single time you mess up, I don't hold it over your head... I cast your sin as far as the east is from the west and remember it no more but yet you cant forgive people when they hurt you?" Man, that began to hit me like a ton of bricks and really just made me think, "wow, how true is that." The truth of the matter is I am a screw-up... I mess up alllll the time but God neverrr everrr gives up on me and loves me no less because of it. This is something I am just now beginning to really and truly realize and it is leading me to being able to forgive so much more freely. Some quotes that I would like to share with you all that really stood out to me in the book I was reading on my night of reflection are "I am NOT the great "I AM," but by the grace of God, I am what I am." how true and humbling is that? and then another was "God's definition of forgiveness is a total, complete cancellation of the debt against us. He does not remind us of it anymore. It is never brought to His or our attention again by Him. It is finished and forgotten. It is a dead and buried issue." To me, hearing that was so relieving and freeing. I was finally beginning to understand God's grace and mercy. I am learning that it is only by the grace that God has lavished on me that I am able to move forward each and everyday and by His grace that I can forgive and be FREE. 2 Corinthians 12:9-10 says; " My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness..."

I have sooo many stories that I want to share with you all so I really hope you don't get tired of reading this :) I promise I will get to what the Lord is doing in the community here at Wildwood but I am convinced that He is doing all of these incredible things in my life for a reason also and that by not sharing them with you, I may be keeping something to myself that could really help someone else out..

The Lord is teaching me so many things and keeps pointing out things in my life that I haven't surrendered to Him. I am so thankful that the Lord loves me enough to make me aware of these things though... so thankful.

Another thing the Lord has been showing me that I struggle with is pride and humility. Most of you are probably going to laugh when I tell you how the Lord has pointed this out to me but it is sooo cool how he uses the things you would never expect to teach us. Soo here goes... some guys decided that after our Monday night meeting that whoever was interested would go to McDonalds and take the "50 McNugget Challenge." So yeah... for those of you who know me.. you know I am extremely competitive and really don't like to turn down a challenge so I entered the contest. There were like 7 guys and 3 girls in the contest. So the goal is to eat 50 McNuggets in 15 minutes... crazzyyyy. So we started out and I was talking junk saying I could do it and all that good stuff... we start eating and I went through my first box of 25 nuggets in 6 minutes... yeahhh I was like dude I have this... in the meantime.. the next 25 nuggets were not going to go down so easily. I threw up 4 times in my mouth and just swallowed it back down before I really threw up after chicken nugget number 42. After I threw up I was still determined I was going to finish the 50, time was up at this point but a bunch of us were still going just trying to do it in thirty minutes. I was determined and not ready to swallow my pride and give up yet so I ate 5 more chicken nuggets before I barfed again.. that time I threw in the towel and threw my last 3 nuggets in the trash. I threw up everywhere... all in front of the door at McDonalds, a little on one of my roommates, and allll over my feet.. nasty I know. Sorry for all the nastiness but I had to give you some background.. now it is time to tell you how great God is once again. People were stepping up and cleaning up my throw up without thinking twice, one guy even bent down and cleaned my feet and shoes... wow... I began to realize what a true servant of Christ was and it was the people who were humbling themselves before me and cleaning me up without one hesitation. If you guys are reading this I just want you to know how much it truly meant to me to see how you humbled yourselves and was truly a pivotal point for me as crazy as it may seem. At this point God was showing me how prideful I am in all different ways and how as a daughter of Christ, I am suppose to humble myself before others, Philippians 2:3 says, "Don't be selfish, don't try to impress others. Be humble, thinking of others as better than yourselves." So yeah, that is how God taught me how prideful I was and legitimately humbled me pretty much instantly in that situation.

Okay, now to what the Lord is doing in the community here in Wildwood through this team... we have had quite a bit of outreaches many successful and many unsuccessful in our eyes. It is through the "unsuccessful" outreaches that the Lord always teaches us not to be discouraged that he has great plans for this community. We are all building amazing relationships with our coworkers and really just trying to pour into them, listen to them, and share the great love of Christ with them. I am actually going to hop off of here for the night and get some rest because I don't have too many more hours before I have to get up for church but I will try my best to get back on here tomorrow and tell you the stories of the way the Lord is working in the community.