Project Day #5

Welcome back to the blog of Zachary James Holzer and his journey through this summer in Virginia Beach.  I now come to you with yet another post about what God has been doing this summer IN us, THROUGH us, and AROUND us.

This post is all about the fifth project day that we got to experience this summer.

Project day #5 was a very straightforward day.  We met outside of the condos at the grassy area we like to call the grassy knoll.  Our instructions were this: we were going to be going to Newport News park, one of the larger state parks in Virginia, and we were going to do one thing: spend 8 hours in solitude with the Lord.

I know, you would think it sounds easy.  Well...we soon learned that eight hours by yourself in a very large and seemingly strange place can be really hard when you've never really done that.  And for most believers, 8 hours with God is something that not many people have attempted.  So for us, it was going to be a very big learning experience.  What also made this entire day a little harder is because we were asked to fast from 6 PM the previous evening through today.  So essentially, we were not eating for 24 hours.  This was done to truly make ourselves vulnerable and before God with very little, so that we can look to him for the sustenance that he is able to provide.

Since I did this last summer, I kind of had an idea of what the day was going to look like, mainly because I had gone to that same place for the exact same reason as before, but I was in a completely different place.  And I have to tell you, even though I had experience with something like this, it was DRASTICALLY different.  God spoke out in ways to me last year that were so different from the things that God communicated to me this year.  And now, I will explain what exactly this day looked like.

Newport News is about 40 minutes from where we are staying in Virginia Beach.  So for this trip, we decided to travel there in our life groups.  While we were on the way there most of us were pretty quiet, since it was around 7 in the morning when we got up.  While I was there I just kept thinking about how much everyone was going to have such different experiences at this place.  I began to pray that God would not only open our minds and our hearts to things that he had in store for us, but that people would be able to hear and see God in a very vulnerable way.  I have really enjoyed getting to know my guys in my group and see how much they have grown this summer.  They have really been a blessing for me, because they have never been afraid to share what's on their minds when they're asked, which as a life group leader, that's quite special.  I prayed for the group, prayed for clarity, and asked for a fresh perspective in a new place, and ultimately that's exactly what I got. :)

Upon getting there, we split and went our separate ways.  This park is quite large, so odds are we weren't going to come across each other very often, which for this type of experience is definitely a good thing.  And I decided to walk...and walk...and walk...and eventually I came to a stop at the northernmost point of the park about 45 minutes later.  Something that I have noticed throughout most of my times with God have been in motion: mostly while walking, sometimes biking.  But for me, this experience was a perfect opportunity to truly walk with God.

The last photo above is the spot that I staked out at for a while.  It was called the swamp bridge, because it was in fact a bridge that crossed one of the major swamps in the park.  But for me, it was a good spot to sit and have my first real thinking moment with God.  When I sat down, I didn't really know how to start off my day, so I decided to just go back through my journal from the summer, and I started at the very beginning.  While I was looking through it I came across some questions that we were asked from the very first day of LT.  It was "what is it that defines my life?" and "what do you wish that your life was defined by?"

So, I decided to journal through what I really thought on that, and God started to really reveal some things.  I started to notice the word "expectation" showing up a lot in my mind, and I could feel God really putting it on my heart.  Something I started realizing is that my life has always been defined by that very word: expectation.  I have always felt defined by the expectations that American society, my family and friends, and even I myself have placed on myself.  My expectation in life has always been like the rest of the American population: go to school, get good grades, go to college, get a good job, make a lot of money, meet someone, get married, have a family, and be happy.  And as I thought about what this "American Dream" looked like, I started to realize that for anyone that is a really high expectation for anyone to meet.

I found this to be quite monumental because my entire life I have always been told that if I do exactly what I need to do then everything will work out exactly when it should, and in some ways that's true.  But it has always been on MY terms and MY schedule, not God's.  I always expect things to happen because of things I do, and most often that selfish design and perspective leads me to doubt because everything falls apart, even when I think I'm doing the right things in life.  My life always has revolved around getting those things and being happy, yet none of those things have really ever played out the way most would expect.  I have always gotten good grades and I went to college, but I never went to college with the expectation that there God would find me and invite me into his eternal Kingdom.  

I have always gone to school, yet I have struggled with acceptance of others.  I have always gotten good grades, yet I have struggled time and time again with pride and fearing that someone may be at better at something that I am.  I may have come to college with the expectation that I was going to get a degree and graduate to find a job making a ton of money, but I decided to pursue education, a field that is very much not a wealthy profession, and even in that I'm not sure what I really want my life to look like.  Since coming to college, I have not found any person that I want to share the rest of my life with, while most people I know have been having great success.  I want to meet someone, but I struggle with intimate relationships and fear of rejection.  Things have played out very differently from that dream so far, yet somehow I keep expecting that they will work.

And since coming to know Christ, my world of expectation has translated into expecting those very same things from God.  My doubt sways when I feel like I'm not hearing from God on every single thing.  I struggle with all of these things because I expect all of these things to come from God, but I never simply sit back and just embrace that God is present in my life and working for the good of my life.

In turn, I want my life to be more about a hope and desire for God's will in my life, and less about expectation.  If I live a life of expectation, I am going to miss out on so much in life that God is presenting, because doing everything the way the world has planned will lead me even farther from God's good, pleasing, and perfect will (Romans 12:2).  I want to be defined by my faith, not by my expectations.  Having a hope means that things will be more as surprises and blessings when they come, where expectation takes away the joy of those gifts.

It was a really powerful time spent with the Lord, because it revealed a lot about just how much I have been bound by this cut and dry laundry list.  And ultimately, God is showing me that everything I had planned is very different from His plan, and that's ok.  It's just time for me to start learning more from Him, and less from everything else around me.

After working through this very big realization, I started to walk with God a little more through the confines of the park.  So I traipsed.

And I traipsed some more...and came across an uprooted tree.

And I traipsed some more...

I ended up stopping along this path to reflect some more.  After reading six chapters of Luke, I decided to focus on another question from the previous weeks.  This time the question was this: "Is there anything that is putting a wedge between myself and the Lord?"

Of course there is.  We all have wedges, and they usually differ from day to day.  And for me, what has been wedging itself into my life with the Lord has been a fear of lack of security.  I have always struggled with the idea of being comfortable and secure with what I have.  I have always feared change, because all my life and surroundings did was change growing up.  I moved a lot, and a lot of times I found it hard to find people to turn to.  And my past is something that I find myself getting angry with God about.  I fear that because my life has been marked with insecurity, I lack the willingness to feel comfortable.  I fear provision because I always feel like I'm never going to have it or that I don't deserve it.  I don't know how to feel comfortable, and I always fear that I'm just going to be left in the dust while everyone else continues to charge on forward.

I also looked at another question: "What would you like to hear God say to you right now?"

I wish that I could hear him always say that He's here for me and that he will never leave me.  Something like this: "Don't expect everything to go as planned, but don't always expect everything to fall apart.  Trust in me.  You are going to be fine."

As you can probably imagine, my mind had been going a million miles an hour by this point in the day, but it was only 1:30 in the afternoon!  We were only about 2/3 done with the day! Wow...God works in mysterious ways.  So I decided to walk some more.

And I walked some more...

Then I stopped again to reflect yet a third time.  By this time it was an hour later.  While resting at a picnic table, I started to jot some things down and really wrestle with God on some more things that really made themselves known through simply going back and looking at what we have done all summer.  I was struck by a question that I didn't really expect (shocking...considering that I normally expect many things from God.)  

This time it was this: "Am I truly full of joy with all that God has done?"

Wow, what a convicting question.  In the moment a lot of times I do.  But when I go back and look broad scale on life, I tend to not be super excited about what is going on spiritually in my life.  Mostly, it's because I just never really focus on the present.  I'm always in pursuit of the next best thing, and ultimately I lose out on rejoicing over what I already have because I'm so focused on the things that I don't have yet (the things that I EXPECT from God).  I thought about how my mom was always right when she told me that I was never happy with what I had growing up.  It's been a part of my life since I can remember.  And again, it has translated into my journey with God.  If I don't get what I want all the time from God at my time, then I don't rejoice.  My selfish nature wins yet another battle.

Then I came across this one: "What am I ultimately praying FOR?"

My prayer life most times is constituted by unpassionate praise to God and very passionate cries out to God when things are bad.  I pray to God when everything is a mess, but I never really sit back and thank the Lord for all of the amazing things that he has placed in my life.  The good things from God deserve so much more praise, passion, and excitement that I actually let off.  Prayer is communication to God, and who wants to only hear about our problems and never hear our joys?  God is certainly not. But yet that's what I always do.  Again...super convicting.

By the time I was done with this list of things I experienced, it was actually about time for us to reunite as a group for the first time all day.  So, naturally, I started to walk yet again.  I eventually crossed back over the main bridge over to the shelters at the entrance of the park.

Upon meeting back up as a group, we broke the silence and the solitude with a time of reflection, sharing of experiences people had, and worship together.  During the worship, we had communion.  So we ended the day by truly embracing our vulnerability and our hunger by filling it with Jesus' blood and body.  His sacrifice paved a way for us to embrace God in all circumstances, and this is a way for us to celebrate that together.

After we finished this time, we all truly realized just how hungry we were after not eating for an entire day and traipsing around a state park.  So we got back into our life groups and headed out on the road again, this time to Cici's Pizza.  We had a community gorge fest on the pizza buffet to break the fast and enjoy noms.  After facing rush hour traffic, we made it there safely, we ate, and we were happily filled. The rest of the the night consisted of really just hanging together, being present in each other's lives, and for me, I posted on this very blog!!!!!

This day for most was the pinnacle of what this entire summer has been about.  In a short time, we as a group had the chance to embrace the Lord in a very delicate way in a very strange place, and for most God embraced us with his open arms.  I'm extremely thankful that this opportunity got to happen, because it really put a lot into perspective, and it's all stuff that I get to work through more as I progress farther into the summer.

I think I end posts with this every time, but I am going to do it again anyways.  I am EXTREMELY excited about what has been happening this summer, despite the fatigue that has set in.  We are all working full time, seeking God full time, and being a community in very tight knit quarters.  But despite the difficulties we face, I honestly wouldn't trade this experience for anything in the world.  It truly has been a blessing to live this life here in VB, even though it's a very short blip of life.

And this verse is something that I think all of us can attest to after a day like this:

"You will seek me and find me when you seek me with ALL of your heart." -Jeremiah 29:13