School of Ministry Development Begins

My first week of School of Ministry Development has been amazing! We have a journal assignment for the next few months and my blog will serve as my journal to be ‘turned in’ each week. I’ll be answering the following four questions every week:

What has God revealed to you about himself this week?

What has God shown you about yourself?

What challenges have you faced this week?

How have you experienced God’s grace?

God has already revealed so much to me about himself and it’s only week one! We learned about passions this week and I would say the greatest revelation I had about God is that his biggest passion is worship. Missions exists because worship does not. Basically, God desires that every nation and every tongue and every individual worship him. Because that is not happening it is necessary for people to evangelize the world. That’s missions. That’s why. God is passionate about worship so that’s why I do what I do. Cool!

This week God has shown me quite a bit about myself already. I’m not sure where to begin or even what to share. I think the biggest thing is that I have been convicted about how I function relationally. God has shown me that I need to be more intentional in building relationships with people. My personality type, among other things, makes it very easy for me to not pursue a lot of friendships but Jesus did not model that type of behavior. He was so approachable. That’s how I need to be. Not only that but I need to approach others as well. I need to pursue others and let them know that I am interested in them as a person. It’s not something I’m doing out of duty but truly out of desire and I am so excited to see how God helps me grow in this area!

My biggest challenge so far has been the fact that I’m the ‘new kid’. All of the students in my class did their DTS here in Louisville and already knew people here so it’s been quite an adjustment for me. I’d say the hardest part was that they already were comfortable and had friends here and…well…I didn’t. But it has been great and everyone is wonderful and I’m already building friendships!

God’s grace….does it ever run out? I’ve experienced it in so many ways lately. I guess I’ll say His provision for me getting to this school was one of the best things in the past week-ish. I needed over $1500 for my tuition and I received the final dollars the day before I left to come to Kentucky. I was a little nervous about the money coming in and completely depending on God to make it happen. It’s just like Him to make things happen right on time!