my life as hannah.: I Should Be Studying...

...But, here I am.

I don't use this thing nearly as much as I would like, and that's probably because I keep a journal and simply forget that I also have this. Don't worry, I'm not about to empty the contents of said journal for the world to read, but I wanted to just share a little bit of where my heart has been.

As pretty much anyone taking time to read this knows, I just got back from a mission trip with my church, Antioch, this past week, and I'm going to get to this, but I want to give some background first, so you can get a feel for just how incredible last week was.

I've literally been in church since I was one week old. I didn't miss unless I absolutely had to, and we were active in everything. I'm so grateful for that foundation because I truly believe that it was just that - a foundation. I was saved at the age of 8, sitting in my pastor's office after weeks of asking my mom questions about sin and Heaven and everything in between. At the age of 8, I understood that I was never going to make it in this life if I tried to do it on my own. I was embarrassed by my "boring" testimony for so many years. I wanted to have a cool story, and I didn't. But you guys, I do.

As I got older, I stayed super involved in church, and eventually was looked up to as a leader - girls looked up to me, I was FCA president, I did the music on Wednesday nights - but it was all surface level. I'd been around church long enough to know the answers to all the Sunday School questions, I knew the church lingo, but I wasn't pursuing any kind of real relationship with Jesus. Without going into detail (feel free to ask me more about this part in person), I had an incorrect view of who God was and what He wanted. To me, it was all about pleasing Him by doing things and it never being sufficient, and by my sophomore year of high school, I was sick of that. So I kept putting on the church face, but I was so bitter inside, and it began to creep out. My junior year of high school is, to this day, the lowest point I've ever been in my relationship with Jesus. I was constantly arguing with my parents, I was disrespectful to my youth pastor, and I was miserable. I wanted to be cool, and I was actually just becoming more broken.

When I started my senior year, a huge group of my friends had graduated and moved away, and I was lonely. And something in my heart changed. I began to realize what I was doing with my life, and I got vulnerable. I started mending broken relationships and really fell in love with the idea of Jesus. But there was still a huge part of me that had a really hard time imagining Him as a daddy that loved me unconditionally.

When I started college, I immediately got hooked up with a Christian organization on campus and also started serving with the youth at a church in Oklahoma City. It was a good time of growth for me, and really kept my priorities straight for the first two years of college. It was Jesus, and then school, and I'm grateful that I've never had a different perspective in college.

After my sophomore year, I was spending the summer in Norman, and really felt like the Lord was calling me away from both the campus ministry I was involved in and also the group of students I loved so much, so in reluctant obedience, I began to look for new churches, specifically with strong college ministries where I could grow. Enter Antioch. Now, as a traditionally raised Southern Baptist, I was a little freaked out my first Sunday. I'd never seen people worship with abandonment like these people, but it was a beautiful picture of what I had always imagined Heaven to be. And then Chris, our pastor, got up and preached one of the best, most gospel-centered sermons I'd ever heard. And I was hooked. I went to some other churches, but was always drawn back to Antioch, so by the time school started, I was officially planting myself there. It was also at this time that I started to go to a LifeGroup, where I would quickly find not only genuine, God-fearing friends, but a family. I was on fire for Jesus.

So, now we're to last week. Leading up to the trip, which is called Revive, Satan was really attacking me. I was excited to go to Miami, but I wasn't excited to share the gospel because I'd never really done it. I knew people at my church who did it daily, and I was a little intimidated, but I knew God wanted me there, so I went.

And it changed my life.

We saw so much fruit from just the small amount of time we were there. I could tell story after story of healing, of people returning to Jesus, of people coming to Him for the first time, and of people who simply saw something different about our group and were hungry for more. Seriously. Ask me about this.

But the most impactful part of this trip for me was what it did to my heart. Literally everything we asked for happened, and we didn't just ask for little things. I realized that I trusted God, but I had never really trusted God, and He totally wrecked me in that area. But even that wasn't the biggest thing. Guys, this week I finally saw God as a daddy. I finally, for the first time in nearly 22 years, realized, whole-heartedly, that there is no amount of thing I can or can't do to change the fact that Jesus loves me unconditionally and without abandon, and it made me weep. I was filled with a new conviction to tell everyone about this love, and I found myself completely unafraid to go to complete strangers and talk to them about Jesus. Yeah, my words weren't perfect, and I was probably awkward, but the gospel was spoken and God got to use me.

It was the best week of my life. I have so many new friends, but more importantly, I have a completely new revelation of who Jesus is. I have so much joy and peace, and it's all because I'm finally seeing God for who He is - my daddy.

Hannah

And now for a few pictures (I'm really bad at documenting stuff. I promise we weren't just at the beach the whole time.)