SLAM Week Impact
Journal Prompt
SLAM Nashville week: What did you learn? How were you challenged? What will you take away from this experience?
My Thoughts
I learned so much from SLAM Nashville week. As I sit and write this I find myself very thankful for the opportunity to be on this trip, participating with my team in learning lessons that I know are going to refine us so that we can be vessels used by God for what he wants. For the theme of “How Much It Cost?” Mr. Garner went over John chapter 15 with an emphasis on the theme verse: “No greater love has anyone than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.” Each day we’ve had so far has been filled with productivity and life as we’ve served and spent time in various different places with very diverse demographics. The night sessions we had for SLAM were potent with the Spirit of God and his presence. Each night, we collectively called out to the Lord, got down on our knees, and cried tears of thankfulness and intercession for both the kids we were working with and our peers. God moved. I was challenged to find my strength and my energy in the Lord, and I was challenged to move past my own preferences so that I can lay down my life for my friends. I am going to take with me from this experience the invaluable lesson of the importance of abiding and remaining in the Lord, and a continued drive to learn how to love my friends the way that Jesus loves.
This isn’t something I know how to do intuitively, and I’ve found that to only continue to be revealed to me as we’ve spent more time together trying to learn how to grow our team dynamic. I really need that education unto maturation from God’s Word that will teach me how to be a good friend. I need to continue to learn how to really accept God’s love for me so I can love others fully. I know that the joy that is found as a result of experiencing the Father’s love and sharing it with one another is the greatest kind of joy. I’ve felt it on this trip already with my friends and leaders as we jump and dance and sing in worship or work alongside one another in a refugee kids camp. I want to continue to learn to be vulnerable with my friends, being honest and real with them, because I know we all have the shared goal to do what God wants. I know that my friends are the kind of people who want to do what God wants, so I’m looking forward in faith to all of us learning how to deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow Jesus as we lay down our lives for one another daily. I want to ask my friends more about what it is that God is showing them, and I want to be the kind of friend that Jesus is to me, to my brothers and sisters. I’ve committed to that, and I’ve committed to abiding in the Lord, letting him prune me this summer and take away everything that he doesn't want for me, so that I can bear fruit for him. Because that’s what I really want. I just want to make the Lord proud, and I know that there’s nothing he loves more than seeing his kids love each other. I’m going to take these lessons and goals with me as I walk through life. I know God’s goal is for this trip to be fruitful and productive and I have faith that he will grow us up a little bit more as we continue on this trip into people who know how to be really good friends.