Intern Impact is a blog series that highlights past interns and gives them the opportunity to reflect on the way God has used their time at One Hope to impact their lives and ministries. 

The summer of 2010 was my first summer to intern. It was the summer before my senior year of college, and I remember coming to Tulsa utterly scared out of my mind. I felt very inadequate- I had never worked with at-risk kids, had never lived or worked in any kind of inner-city, and I didn’t feel like I was spiritually mature enough to help with a ministry, I didn’t even have a pastoral reference for my intern application. But I knew that the Lord wanted me to step out in faith and go.

That feeling of inadequacy to minister didn’t go away. It actually intensified as God revealed to me my sinful, loveless, selfish, and self-righteous heart. But as God revealed the ugly state of my heart He also met me with grace, acceptance, and love. I remember specifically our study through John 17 in church was a huge blessing to my heart that summer.

Another huge thing I remember God teaching me was the importance of dying. Not physically dying necessarily, but dying to yourself in love for God and love for people. Through reading Radical by David Platt and seeing the people of Springs of Grace pour out their lives every day in love, I was greatly challenged by this almost foreign concept. All day every day I was surrounded by brothers and sisters who were pouring out their lives for others, abandoning their own desires and comforts to love people who didn’t necessarily love them back; and the goal in all of it was to glorify God and make Him look beautiful and more desirable than anything.

If you are thinking about interning and aren’t sure what to expect, let me help a little. Expect to be pruned, expect to be greatly challenged spiritually and physically, expect to pray a lot, expect for God to be extremely faithful, expect to immediately become a part of the family here, and don’t be surprised if you end up just moving to Tulsa. 🙂

 

from One Hope Ministry http://ift.tt/1jZaDjr