Blog 014
It’s hard to believe that it has been a year since I embarked on a life-changing journey to serve, live and grow in friendship with the people of Papua New Guinea!
Today I am back home in Toronto, after another beautiful season at YWAM Ships Kona! This time around, I had the absolute joy of participating in their Discipleship BIBLE School, in which we read the entire Bible in chronological order and studied it with the goal of being able to communicate God’s redemptive plan for humanity from Genesis to Revelation!
What seemed daunting at first ended up being one of the most life-giving seasons! To each of you who encouraged me to take the leap of faith and pursue the Lord and the truth of His Word in this way, I’m endlessly grateful!
It would take a lifetime to unpack everything I learned, but I thought I could encourage you by sharing the most impactful thing the Lord did in my heart.
I entered the season wrestling with God regarding a lie that I often believe; that I was stuck in a cycle of disappointment. And I quickly felt the Lord gently challenge me with these words:
“Would you dare to hope?”
It felt like a call to the purity of simple devotion to Jesus and remembering who He is.
From Genesis to Revelation, I read story after story of a God who is more than worthy of putting our hope in. In His kindness, He proved to me all over again how true all the things He has already told me are - that He really is everything I need to have hope.
From the Garden to the call of our father of faith Abraham, the wilderness, the promised land, the cries of the prophets, exile and return, the arrival of our Saviour Jesus Christ the Messiah, the birth of the Church and the promise that awaits us in the new heavens and new earth as described in Revelation, we find One who is our Hope.
As I wait on the Lord in my season of transition, I find myself being challenged to trust in the God I know on the path I do not. And this is the anchor for my soul: that the God I know is consistent through the ages.
He is always good, His Words are ever true, and His promises never fail.
I’ve always loved the words of the prophet Jeremiah that he said in some dark years of human history:
Yet I still dare to hope
when I remember this:The faithful love of the Lord never ends!
His mercies never cease.
Great is his faithfulness;
his mercies begin afresh each morning.
I say to myself, “The Lord is my inheritance;
therefore, I will hope in him!”- Lamentations 3:21-24
No matter where you find yourselves, I urge you, to dare to hope. ☀️
PS - here’s a fun little video of our reading time - we loved reading the genealogies! 😄