I'm finally back in Penang!

After completing my DTS with YWAM here last year, I've been longing to come back. Now just a year later, God has granted my desire and sent me to spend a month here. It's been great seeing old faces and meeting new friends, and it's been especially awesome catching up with Hailey (my old DTS roommate) and hearing how the Lord has been working in her life over the last year.

It's definitely different though...when I came here last year in January, I had been moving around so many countries that I didn't have any "normal" life and routine to miss. In a way, it was easier. I didn't care about checking my email and phone all the time because I knew that no one would be writing or calling, and so it was easier to devote myself completely to the Lord without any distractions.

This time I find myself torn. I've been here one day and I'm fretting over emails that have not been returned, SMSes that have not been replied too...missing my life and friends, a bit too distracted to really be 100% here. I don't like it. I miss my singleminded devotion to the Lord that I had last year...and yet I know that it was He that filled my life so much to delight me and thrill me, and that cutting people out of my life is not the answer.

More love for Him is the answer. Everytime I get frustrated with my divided heart, I hear Him whisper, "Don't pray for Me to take those things away. Pray for Me to give you so much love for Me that it makes your love for everything else seem so dim."

And so here I am. Take me, Lord. Take me and make me completely Yours. I am so grieved to see how easily my heart is led astray. I know that the people You have put in my life are so awesome and I thank You that You want me to love them, and Lord, I really do love them so much. But do not let my love for people leave me dissatisfied because this summer is for You. This summer is Yours, oh Lord.

I want to be even more set apart to You by the end of this summer. I want even more passion and desire than I have now. So help me, Holy Spirit, to die to myself and release all those that I love to You, trusting that You will take care of everything for me and that those friendships will still be there when I return home. I left behind so many loose ends and I'm the kind of person who likes closure...but Lord, help me to know that closure is found in You. Closure is found in my heart being brought to the right place and not in anything others might do or say.

I am wrestling with myself, Lord. Help me, Father, because I long so much to be with You fully, completely, with an undivided heart. Come, Lord Jesus, come....come and meet me in this place.