moments in time

Moments change people. 

One day you might wake up to find out that a loved one has passed away or that some sort of attack has happened around the world. 
It could come in a different form- moments that are outward but affect us and changed us inward. Moments of self-actualization, realization, whatever you want to call it. 


Our lives are made up of moments in time. Moment by moment, our stories are created. 
I asked a few of my friends to share moments that shaped them and made them who they are today. 

"Junior year was the hardest year of my life, full of hardships and disappointment. However since then i've seen that God was shaping me into who he wants me to be.  He was pulling me out of a life of selfishness and conceit and showing me his majesty, grace and peace. I remember the words "I'll never know how much it costs to see my sin upon that cross"-replaying in my mind, and realizing I am on this earth to give God glory, without him and his gift, I am nothing. "

"I was shaped the most when I was brought to my knees by my sin. Others saw my sin and I was completely exposed to the world and how unworthy I was to be in presence of the Lord. It wasn't until then I saw how much I needed Jesus, and not just to save me, but to completely take over my life and lead me towards righteousness."

"One moment that I think really shaped me was when my grandparents house burned down, I realized how in the world I was and how much more my heart wanted to be. I think this shaped me because it made me really realize how much better Jesus is than the things the world gives me."

"The time the volcano erupted in Costa Rica changed my life. My team was stuck there for another week, which meant God had more for us there. My faith was tested more in that week, and I had never seen God work more in my life. I came out of that extra week in Costa Rica changed, because God knew we needed to be there longer."

"I was trying to do it all on my own, fix all my problems and live the way I wanted to live without God's help - thinking I had it all together.  I woke up one morning completely broken over it and a mentor showed me the verse Philippians 4:6 and it hit me- why am I so worried about fixing everything by myself whenever God has everything under control? "

I pray that these few testimonies ring true with someone reading this. There are moments that test us and usually bring us to our knees because that is all we can think to do. 

Without going into details, the moment for me that has changed my life and shaped me forever is the moment i saw the depth of my sin and selfishness. I had hurt people close to me and I had constantly been justifying it- and all i know is one day when I was in Oregon at the coast, looking out at the Pacific Ocean it hit me. 

My complete inadequacy. My complete brokenness. It wasn't beautiful in any way, it wasn't fun. In the moment our sin never seems that bad and it usually seems like it'll turn out okay. But no, this was ugly and it hurt my Creator to the core. The One of died for me and loves me more than i can imagine- that's who I am sinning against in the name of my own "desires". 

I saw how I had been acting and I was blown away. I was broken up about it talking to a friend of mine and she said, "It's crazy isn't it? You never think you are capable of hurting someone so deeply. You never think you're capable of what you did and then you do it. And it tears you apart to think about how you are doing the very thing you never thought you would do." 

That's exactly how I felt. As you can see from a few of those stories and from mine, I think a lot of people have had moments where they look back and are shocked by what they are capable of. Shocked by how they've acted. Shocked by their sin and flesh. I was. 

However, I was reading in Romans recently and in chapter 7 this stood out to me: "For i know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. So if find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand" (Romans 7:18-21)

As we see through those verses, our flesh is evil. We want to do good but our simple desires turn to sin and sin when fully released comes to death (James 1). So although it hurts to see our sin and it hurts to see our selfishness, i believe that it is so merciful of the Lord to bring conviction into our lives. Without this conviction, we would just be living in our sin without even thinking that we should turn away from it and that wouldn't be loving of the Lord. Loving someone means that you see them and you do not leave them where they are but you help them and show them their wrong so they can turn and taste and see that the Lord is good. See that the Lord is better. He's better than the fleeting desires of our flesh. He's better than that sin we just can't, or don't want to get rid of. He is overflowing with grace and mercy and wants to welcome us in as sons and daughters. 

You see, for months and months I let this sin hold me back. I let my mind just sit in everything i'd done wrong and i lead myself to believe that i deserve it. - Don't get me wrong, we all deserve hell and eternal separation from God. But praise be to God that we have been freed from that. If you have accepted Christ as your savior and you believe in his work on the cross- you can stop trying. 

You can stop letting your past sin rule your life. 

The guilt, shame, anger, and the destructive nature that comes with it. Release that. 

"It was for freedom that Christ set us free; therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery."- Galatians 5:1


y'all, this is THE GREATEST NEWS. we have been set free from our past desires and sins and we do not have to any longer be held back by it. We can live in freedom knowing that once and for all our SINS ARE FORGIVEN AND OUR DEBT IS PAID. Christ did not die on the cross for us to continue to be held back by our sin. So often i say to myself "well i know Christ forgives me but i just can't get over it yet" - like what is that?? IT IS DONE. our sins and mistakes- they have been paid with the price of a man's life and there is no use in trying to pay it ourself. 

STOP TRYING TO MEASURE UP. you won't. you will get disappointed in yourself. you will try to make up for it. you will never attain that "perfection" on your own. Christ has already done it for us on the cross. What good news! 

"Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God." Hebrews 12:1-2. 

Go into this next semester, laying aside the weight and sin of your past and look to Jesus, the one who died for your sins. It is finished. Go and tell that good news to those on your campus, at work, your neighbors. Make this next semester one that is focused on those around you and not yourself. We all need more hope in this dark world, and if you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and his work on the cross it is your job to go out and share it. I pray this blessed you if you're reading this! 

Ending of the Beginning

Wow. Today was our last day of class at Link Year and I am so sad yet deeply appreciative of this time that I’ve had this year. This being the last day of class and nearing the end of our time here I just wanted to reflect and share a little about what God has been doing in my life these past 8 months.

When I came to Link I was callous, my heart was hardened to the gospel, and I was completely enveloped in a world of self-righteousness. Before I came to Link I assumed that when I got here I would be gaining biblical knowledge and perhaps growing in my relationship with the Lord in that, and I was excited for it. How did that affect me before I came to Link? I didn’t read my bible on my own, I never prayed or really made any efforts to have a relationship with the Lord. I didn’t feel conviction over my sin because none of my sin seemed “that bad”. (Hint, pride comes before the fall). So coming into Link I really didn’t think I needed it here, I just knew that I didn’t know what I was supposed to do and that this is a good option to meet cool people and learn more about the Bible.

Oh my goodness did the Lord humble me. When I first came here I honestly took in all of the information and yet meditated on none of it and took none of it to heart. However a couple of months in I started to daily get into the word and begin to pray for the first time in my life. Months go by, around Christmas-time I saw the Lord begin to transform my heart. Daily I would ask for the Lord to soften my heart and give me one that desired him and desired to love his people. Praying Ezekiel 36:26, “And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.” and Psalm 51 was huge in my life and it was seriously insane to see how God has taken my hard heart and changed me. Where I used to ignore meeting new people because I didn’t really care about them, now I love to make new relationships and hear how God is moving in others lives. Where I was formerly enslaved to living an apathetic life of mediocre Christian religion, I can now run towards the cross as a follower of Christ. Not being held back by the ways of the world but being armed with a greater knowledge of my faith, biblical community to support and challenge me in every way, and a desire to serve and follow the Lord for the rest of my life.

Link Year has been the most amazing experience and I can’t ever describe fully how much the people here mean to me or how much of an impact they have had on me this year, but I know that the friendships made here have truly been sharpening and uplifting in every way and wow am I so thankful for it. Looking back, I know there are so many things that I could have done differently but I have no regret for it because I know that the Lord has been working in my life in so many ways and it all has led to the person I am today and will continue to grow to be. I’m so thankful for every person who has contributed to helping me grow this year and everyone who has supported me being here at Link. Y’all are amazing and I can’t ever say thank you enough.

all things eleuthera

This post is going to be entirely about the Bahamas and how awesome God is, just preparing y'all. Soooooo if you couldn't tell by the crazy amount of pictures i posted, I and 30 of my fellow Link classmates traveled to Eleuthera, Bahamas for pretty much the entire month of February. Now Eleuthera is an island that is about 110 miles long and about a mile thin, with around 10,000 people there. We as a class had the amazing opportunity to be able to travel to the Bahamas and work with Caribbean Ministry Association and stay at their facility in Eleuthera for a month. I just want to quickly outline for y'all what we did as a group, what I learned throughout the month, and how y'all can be praying for the Eleuthera Bible Training Center. 

So while we were in Eleuthera during the weekdays we would do some sort of a work project and in the afternoon we had the option to go to a beach. For the first week while we were there we worked on taking the shingles and felt off of the building that we were staying at which was a super awesome experience and also cool to me because you can physically see a difference that you made on the building. (A group of professionals came and actually re-roofed so no worries, the finished project looked legit). The rest of the time while we were there we worked on 1) cleaning out the volleyball court by EBTC and 2) making a 4 foot perimeter around the EBTC basketball court and mixing sand, rocks, water, and cement to make concrete. I'll just talk a little about the basketball court and the heart behind fixing it up. I know going in to the trip I was expecting to meet a bunch of locals, tell them about Jesus, and possibly change lives (big aspirations, i know), but little did i know that God was going to use us in ways that might be less noticeable than i thought. We were working with the CMA missionary Bill Landers, whom is one of the coolest guys out there, and he was basically the one giving us all the instructions for the month. So Bill decides that while we were there we could begin to fix up the basketball court in an attempt to broaden EBTC's outreach. On the island of Eleuthera, there is lots of basketball going on and theres so much potential in the players there, but little to no good courts around. EBTC has one of the best courts as far as quality and it is located in a fairly central location on the island. So Bill's reasoning for redoing the court is that if there are stands, lights, nice goals, and a decent place to be at, maybe lots of games could be played there at EBTC, which is a HUGE ministry opportunity for Bill and his wife Teresa. 

Besides working we would hang out around EBTC, go explore the island as far as you could walk, and go swim and hang out at beaches. So needless to say, although we worked hard in the morning we definitely had plenty of time to rest and relax with good friends and with God. Eleuthera is freaking legit because one side of the island is the Caribbean and the other side is the atlantic and we got to enjoy both of them. The entire trip was filled with good friends, beautiful scenery, and a really really good God. It was not easy to say the least: I was sick within a week of arriving which wasn't fun, the work was difficult and when you try and rely on your own strength it was just impossible to be uplifting and encouraging to the people around you when you aren't fully relying on God. Another difficult thing was the entire trip i was waiting to hear back about college admissions and about summer plans, and for a while i really let the stress and worry about that get the best of me. I was worried and anxious a lot and not knowing what it meant to actually trust and lean on God in all circumstances. However, God is so faithful and continuously showed me that he loves me and cares for me which was awesome. That being said, i just want to talk about a couple things i learned while i was in Eleuthera: 

1) Mission trips do not always mean you need to go in thinking you are going to "change people's lives". One of our main focuses that we went into the trip with was to serve and not be served, and i hope and pray that even through a group of 30 people just redoing a roof and fixing up a basketball court the gospel would be made known to people through the lives of Bill and Teresa. Sometimes all you need to do is aid the people who have been called to full time ministry. 

2) Trusting God is hard. Trusting in a plan that you can't see a rhyme or reason to is hard. But in Hebrews it talks about how without faith it is impossible to please God, and throughout these past couple of months i have realized that just having faith that God will provide and take care of you is what you need to do, not sit and worry about everything that you can't control. The God who created the human heart holds my heart and he knows what is best for me and what is destructive. I have learned the importance and the magnitude of the common prayer we have heard since we were young, "not my will, but yours be done". CS Lewis says in Screwtape Letters, "Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy's will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys." I'd encourage anyone who's going through a situation that they don't understand or feel like the Lord has abandoned them in to remember that the Lord requires faith of us and we need to trust him and pray that our hearts would be aligned with his will and our hearts desires would line up with His. 

I could seriously talk about the Bahamas and what the Lord showed me for days, but no one wants to read that much and i would be surprised if you're even reading now- so if you are THANK YOU for being awesome and listening to whats been going on in my life these past couple on months! I love y'all and I'm so thankful for everyone who has been praying and encouraging me along the way. 

healing

Hello friends!! Time for weekly review! This has most definitely been an excellent week and I am delighted to be back at Link Year and getting in the grind of things again. This week we had the awesome privilege to hear Jefferson Bethke (with guest appearance of his wife) speak to us. Jeff gave us an insane amount of things to think and to pray about and I most definitely felt convicted by what the Lord said through him.  I feel like every week I say this, but I could just write pages about what we learned about so I’ll just narrow it down to one of the subjects we learned about. In his last session of the week, Jeff talked to us about healing. While here at Link Year we have our “7 Pillars” and one of the most pivotal pillars is heart transformation. Heart transformation is a slow and painful process that sort of rests on the fact that we need to rely on Christ to transform our lives and that includes dealing with a lot of deep rooted sin issues that have become embedded in us as Christians. The concept that Jeff brought to us about healing sort of talks about the healing power of the gospel and how Christ can take our wounds and cleanse them, but this process doesn’t work if we hide from our sin and try to cover it up. He gave us the most practical example; a real wound. Whenever you are wounded you put a bandage over it, and you instinctively withdraw when someone gets close to it, you are sensitive to it. But once the wound is healed and turns into a scar, it’s a wonderful story that you can tell people. Scars don’t hurt, and you are stronger at that spot than you ever were. We are the same way, we draw away when we have a wound and try to cover it up, but when we clean a wound and deal with it immediately, it heals much faster and doesn’t cause problems for a long time. I felt very convicted by this message but encouraged to really dig in to issues that have been pulling on my heart and see how God can use my brokenness and my faults and make something beautiful. Thanks for reading y’all!

a step away from apathy

Hey friends! Wow, seriously the weeks fly by and I cant believe its already almost Friday! This week has been incredible. We had the privilege to hear Seth Higgins, our Men’s Director here at Link, teach us about the historical accuracy of the Bible this past week. There’s no way I would be able to talk about all of the information that he gave us, but I would love to talk to anyone individually about all that we learned from a historical view on the Bible and Jesus himself. All of the facts aside though, what really stood out to me was something that Seth said: “You as a Christian can no longer claim ignorance. There are too many resources, smarter people than you, that hold to Biblical understanding to the Christian faith for you to not challenge or make an effort to know what you believe and why you believe it, is lazy. In a world in which we live in, your faith will be rocked and it will be shaken unless you strive to figure these things out.” This statement kind of rocked my world. For years I have kind of just gone along with everything I have been told, and if it didn’t make sense I would say “well I’ll just have faith and the rest will work itself out”. For a long time I didn’t see the flaw in this thinking, up until recently when I’ve been really digging in to my faith and seeing why I believe what I believe. We as Christians live in a world that wants us to fall down, wants to shake our faith and make us sin and give into the temptations that everyone else is giving in to, and we need to equip ourselves with information to defend our faith and lead others to Christ. I challenge everyone to no longer just accept what you are told, whether that be on a college campus in class, online, or even in a church. Challenge what you have heard and are being taught, Jesus died in order that we may live and live to the fullest- live to the fullest for his glory. I have a ton of facts and historical information about the Bible and Christianity in general and if anyone would like my notes regarding that, or just to talk with me about it, I would love to walk through it with y’all! Love y’all, thanks for reading :)