My Relationship With The Lord

My new life here in Georgia in the middle of the woods is a wonderful life. I have good friends, a great relationship with God, and I’m learning what abandonment really means.

But beyond the romanticized part of my life, what is it really like here? How has my life changed on the God side, and why?

Today I feel led to share with you some of the things I have been learning in my walk with God.

I’m sure all of you have heard something along the lines of Psalm 63:1. “O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.”

Before coming here, I was like, “Yeah, I seek God.”

But now that I am here… it’s different. Never before have I felt this kind of a longing for the Lord. I am always surrounded by him, but when I haven’t taken the time for the day to speak with him and be with him, I feel it in my mood, in my words, and in my actions. I feel it deep within me… like David says in that verse, my soul thirsts for him, my flesh faints for him like I am in a land without water.

It’s so wild to me that I’ve already grown that close with the Lord and I’ve only been here for three and a half weeks! I never expected to be this close to him, never even knew the kind of love he has for me until I was able to sit (for three and a half weeks) and explore the relationship I have with him.

It took a lot of not-work on my part. One thing that is bizarre to me that I’ve never heard of before experiencing it myself was that sometimes, a relationship with God doesn’t take any work on your part. Like, yes, you should surrender the things you’re stressed about, and you should surrender yourself… but I did all that, and I still felt like the Lord was far from me.

I asked him, “What else do I need to do? You’re not here all the way- there’s still something in the way of you being with me the way I want you to be.”

And he frowned at me and said, “Sophia, it’s nothing you need to do. It’s my turn to pursue you.“

What ended up happening was that I just needed to take a break and let my Lord… love me.

He is really sweet in the way he does things for me. We have conversations now that I can just tell he is so excited to have! And I am excited to talk with him and walk with him in the life he has given me.

Being in nature too reminds me every day that I am close to God this way. In his creation, I can see and appreciate the detail and design that went into making everything on earth. The beauty of some of these plants you won’t believe; maybe how the spiders make their perfectly circular webs is something I should ask him about. How did he do it? And in a whole day? It’s unreal- but I am here with him, and he is with me.

Even better, what I’ve been learning is that he is unafraid to be seen with me.

Can you imagine? Being unafraid to be with me despite all my flaws and things I have yet to learn? Unashamed of loving and walking with me? Proud of doing such a thing?!

As you may be able to tell, I am still, in fact, learning that I am loved by God and am important to him.

It’s really just… wild. Wild. I don’t have any other words for what this is between us. Just the purest form of being loved.

On another note, I have a fun little story from God about a question I asked him a while ago.

I was curious about all the names God has, so I asked him which name he likes to be called the most. (Jehovah Jireh, Abba, Elohim… etc.)

And he looked at me and said, “I like to be called God.”

And I went, “That’s totally lame. You have all these cool names and you choose God out of all of them?”

“That’s the point. They all mean the same thing. Each one of My names still means God at the very root of it.”

I thought this was a very good point, because nobody goes around calling anyone else Jehovah Jireh, or El Shaddai, or anything like that. Those are all strictly for God. They all mean God.

So. If you were worried about not having a spicy enough name to call God, worry not. He gets the message no matter what you call him.

Honestly, I love having conversations with him. I wish I could tell you all of them, but there’s so many. I just love being in community with him literally all the time.

I was telling some friends of mine today that I was so thankful and also mind-blown that we’re in a place where we can literally just worship all day. You can’t do that in normal society. You have things to do and a job to go to and people to talk to, but here there are no obligations to be doing any of those things, and you can just go out and worship all day and nobody will say anything. In fact, more than likely, people will join you in doing nothing but worship!!! And it’s so cool!!! I have never experienced anything like this before in my life.

But it’s great. I love this more than I can accurately express.

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In other news, I still have $2,271 to raise before the October 15th deadline! I am selling these cool shirts and also I have a Venmo now which is a rad thing to have- it’s an easy way of sending others money. You can find me with the username @shobogans. You can donate to me that way, as well as on this very website that you are on currently.

Also, if you would like to send me any mail that is NOT a package, feel free to ask me for the address. I’ve already gotten some mail and it made my day.

And, last thing to address in this blog post- I mentioned in my last one that there was a video of me crossing the finish line for the hike! Well, here it is!

At least– the link. It worked the first time I uploaded it it worked, but it will not work again, so we’re doing it this way.

But that’s all for now. My friend Kate made a video and it’s currently being edited, but it’s really cool. Once she’s done with it I’ll link you all to it.

Please pray that I do not miss the October deadline for fundraising.

Be on the lookout for another story post later this week!

Until then,

Sophia