He wants a fresh yes

He wants a fresh yes 

My first personal encounter with the Lord happened at my first youth camp with my church. I grew up in the Bible Belt of Alabama and was in and out of churches all of growing up. Up until that point of my life I had been basing my relationship with Jesus off of what I had seen in others. I would change and mold how I saw religion and faith into what mirrored theirs. At the classic youth group Holy Spirit night with the emotional music blaring I saw what Jesus could look like just to me. I felt and heard his voice in a personal, intimate way. In a way where he knew the inner thoughts of my heart that never saw the light of day. I knew this was a sweet and pure love that I wanted to feel more of. And a few weeks later I was baptized by my mom. I was 14. 

Almost 6 years later I can confidently say that my yes then was so genuine. There was so much giddiness, so much nervousness for the unknown. This love that I had only a taste of was untamable and unpredictable. And I was both excited and totally terrified to say yes to this for the rest of my life. I went into that water so sure that I always wanted to experience that love I had felt that one night. I wanted it every second. And being dunked was a testament to that wanting. 

Flash forward to the beginning of my race. As selfish as it sounds to put in writing, I was totally sure there was going to be no significant change within my heart during this time. My thought process was that since I loved Jesus, and was a pretty likable person, I was all set. No big change needed. I would get in and get out, and go back to the same life I had left behind with a couple more stamps in my passport. Like most things, God had very different plans  than the ones I had set out for myself. 

Being immersed into a community like the one I am living in is hard to put into words. All of a sudden I am side by side with people who don’t take a single step in life without praying first. That concept was foreign to me. I was debating on getting a piercing and a squad mate asked me if I had brought it to the Lord. I thought they were crazy. Why should I bring it to him? An all powerful God doesn’t care that I want a piercing or what hair color I want. He has other things to do than get to know me or hear about my little daily occurrences. But to me there was something admirable in the way that they depended so fully on the Lord. In the way that they were so in tuned with the spirit that they couldn’t possibly take another step without conferring with Him first. And I realized in the face of my lack of deep relationship just how desperately I wanted one. How much I thirsted for a relationship as intimate and as deep as that. I wanted to be someone who was so in tune with the spirit that it was painfully obvious with one look at them. And since that realization God has been throwing me curveball after curveball. I had prayed a dangerous prayer. A prayer that was the catalyst for purification and refinement. A prayer that led me to change the basic way I lived my life. 

I found myself being convicted all the time. Seriously, all the time. I was asking for forgiveness left and right, constantly re-aligning myself with the cross and the love I had tasted and seen. And along with that came a hunger to know the actual character of this God I was following. How can I look more like him if I don’t know who he is? I began looking to the word, wrestling with the things I didn’t understand, and seeing how he spoke to his people. Slowly but surely came a strengthening in my knowledge of who I was learning about. A little love affair growing the more I learned. 

In November my squad had the opportunity to get baptized in the ocean at Jaco, Costa Rica. We had a week to pray about whether the lord was asking for our yes. I prayed and asked, thinking it might be cool to say I got dunked in Costa Rica. But I’m the end I felt no confirmation from the Lord. Besides, my yes when I was 14 was the same yes I had in Costa Rica, so what was the use? 

I continued to stand firm with my decision to forgo a second baptism. And during the rest of my time in Costa Rica I continued to learn more about Christ. I saw how he can move in and through people. heard his voice in my head whispering sweet encouragements and asking for obedience. There were moments where I would just find myself weeping because of how good He was. 

Flash forward to last Thursday. My squad was attending a teaching on calling. A common thing amongst the church. Always wanting to know what the purpose of your life is, where to go next. I was expecting some revelation from the Father on what to do with the next season of my life after the race, so you can understand my surprise when the speaker invited the audience to go straight from the sermon to a baptismal. 

Initially I had the same reaction as I had in Costa Rica. Something along the lines of “meh, cool for someone else but not for me.” And then the speaker said the words “He is looking for a fresh yes.” And something in my spirit shifted, a nudge to take a deeper look at the yes I gave all those years ago. I argued with God a little at first. Told him to back off because he knew my yes was genuine, so why even bring it up? But when taking a deeper look I realized that my yes was not staked to a firm foundation. It was built on pure sand. It wasn’t based on intimacy or relationship, it was based on the hope for one in the future. So when the first obstacle came as promised, my yes just couldn’t hold up. It fell beneath the feet of my emotions and my circumstances. Yes, my declaration was genuine, but it had no weight behind it. Which begs the question, where does my yes lie now, after getting to know my Father in true intimacy and after falling into to the love that he has for me? And in that moment I knew my yes today is much different than the one before, it is so deeply rooted in love that it is practically immovable. No amount of obstacles or bad circumstances or negative emotions could change it. My yes was concrete. And I knew that the Lord was asking for my fresh yes to him.
So, I ran out of that room and got baptized in a tiny bathtub the AIM staff had found on the side of the road with all of my family here watching. It was a declaration to stick through the good and the bad, to live out obedience even in the little things, to run after Him with eagerness, and to continue in this dance of romance with The Father. 

Here is a lil snippet of my prayer to God I have in my journal from that day: 

“Now my yes to you and your faithfulness is something that will never come second to anything ever again. Never again. You have my full yes now and forever.” 

God knew when I got baptized all those years ago that there would be years of struggle, periods of uncomfortable refinement, and eventually a fresh yes on a pretty spring day in Guatemala. Even if I would have never dreamed about getting re-baptized, let alone on some random Thursday with no warning. 

So, hear is to a life realigned with the cross. A life lived with a never ending eagerness, and a life that is totally rooted in love. 

All the love, 

Delaney Sue