CTI- Lessons Learned

After taking a week in reflection of the CTI experience, I took away three important things.

1) God is faithful and he will always provide.
2) God has a plan for me and I can rest assured that wherever he takes me, is where he wants me and where I need to be for his ministry.
3) My whole life, everything I do, is ministry for Christ.

I have changed so much in these last few weeks and will continue to change as I enter into college and then the real world. My hope and prayer request is that through it all, Christ will continue to mold me and change me for his ministry and for his glory. In my experiences, I have seen God work and provide in all circumstances. I have seen the impact that the hope of the Gospel has on desperate and broken people like me. I have also seen the conviction that so many of my brothers and sisters in Christ have, to serve and give up their lives for the Gospel message. I want my life to be a reflection of Christ in everything I do. In other words, I want everything that I do to be glorifying to God.

You see, after CTI, I realized how desperate I am and how I will continue to fail in the things that I do. I also realized that beyond my brokenness is the power and grace of God. His blood on the cross is the reason why I can be more than just broken and worthless. His grace is why I am still alive and able to delight in his blessings. His love is why I don't have to worry about all the superficial things in life because he had made the ultimate sacrifice so that we can have salvation.

So in everything I do, I want to bring praise and glory to the one who gave himself up to save such a broken person like me. It is truly humbling that He found me and wanted me to be his servant- a person who deserves death but instead by grace, has been given life. It is so beyond my understanding but that is okay. He saw me- broken and all, loved me- sent His son to die for my sake, and gave me life- a hope and second chance that I don't deserve. So this is my response: Servant first and everything else second. To give up everything to serve Him because He deserves all the glory and praise.

It is a simple task but a difficult one as well. So I want to encourage you, in everything you do, to glorify the one who saved you. For those who don't believe (as I realized this post is very much centered on my faith and belief), I challenge you to not disregard what I have shared as irrelevant but instead go and seek it out for yourself. Ask questions and get involved and just learn about it. There is no harm in being curious and learning new things. I will end this post with a verse that I love and I challenged myself to live by. It takes all that complicated stuff in between and boils it down to a simple sentence.

1 Corinthians 10:31
"So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God." 

- Charlie