Fundraising update: I now have $6,286 raised toward my $11,500 goal! Thank you so much for your continued support, both through finances and prayer. Your reach in the Kingdom of God is far greater than you know!

I want to share two things God has been teaching me during these two weeks in Guatemala!

The first is:

1. Productivity in God's Kingdom looks a lot different than productivity from the world's perspective.

After my time back in the United States, I've realized that I had become caught up in that cycle of busyness - and in a mindset of busyness. My journey to get to Guatemala was long, and I think in part because of that, I'd wanted to jump into being "productive" now that I'd finally made it here.

However, the Lord has been teaching me that His ways are not my ways (Isaiah 55:8-9). Productivity as my human nature sees it is a whole lot of checking as many things off the to-do list as I can, and seeing how many useful things I can fit into my days, my weeks, my months. Oh, I have some spare time here. What's something productive I can fill it with?

Holy Spirit has started to make me aware of this thought pattern in my mind. We often think if we don't have anything tangible to showcase for our time, then it wasn't used productively. 

But is that really how God's Kingdom works? I don't think so. So many of the things God does in our lives or with our time do not seem "productive" by the world's standards. 

Spending a day in prayer doesn't seem like a productive thing to do. What is there to tangibly show for it? And yet, some of the most incredible changes in our hearts and minds and the people around us are brought about in that space with the Lord. You could say the same for so many other things that God does in us and through us.

And that brings me to my next point.

1. I'm not meant to carry the weight of the expectations I place on myself. 

Along with what God is teaching me about productivity, He's also been revealing to me all the ways I've placed expectations on myself, sometimes even thinking that they're expectations from Him. And a lot of them come down to expectations about my productivity. 

What a mess! He's so gently been reminding me of His heart once again. 

Lyrics from the song Jireh by Elevation Worship and Maverick City Music have really been speaking to my soul. 

They go like this:

I'll never be more loved than I am right now

Wasn't holding you up

So there's nothing I can do to let You down

It doesn't take a trophy to Make You proud

I'll never be more loved than I am right now, oh

For me, these words speak so much into the weight of the expectations I've been carrying. This whole time, I'm over here with my skewed definition of productivity, projecting an expectation of that specific type of productivity over myself, and feeling the weight of that when it's literally not even the productivity He wants. 

Thank you God, for opening my eyes to this. 

The only kind of productivity He wants is the kind where we say yes to everything He leads us in. Yes to weeping in His presence. Yes to serving in His Kingdom. Yes to the purification of our hearts. Yes to just us and Him. Yes to having an impact in the lives of others. Yes to resting in Him and yes to working in Him. Whatever it looks like - productive by worldly standards or not - He just wants our yes to Him.

And we don't need to project our own skewed expectations on ourselves when He didn't even want that for us anyway. Lord, that our eyes and ears would be opened to what you truly want from us and for us. Because it's infinitely better than anything we can come up with on our own.

It might not be easy, but being refined by Jesus is such a necessary part of our walk with Him. I'm so grateful that He's already leading me down so many paths of growth. I am expectant (yet without specific expectations, haha) for all that God is going to continue to do during this space in Guatemala, and I look forward to sharing that journey with you all!