Many of you know that at the beginning of the year I packed up my apartment back in Ontario and I headed out to the West to live with my sisters in Cochrane, Alberta. It was a pretty quick decision to move, I as struggling with feelings of having no purpose, that God had abandoned me and that things were just going to stay the same and not ever change.
I was so tired of working at Tim Hortons, feeling like I couldn't do anything better with my life. I felt like all my purpose in life was gone. Of course there were so many good things happening at the same time, I was close to my family, I was surrounded by the greatest of friends, I was serving with the youth and involved with worship... but all those things didn't give me a purpose, something worth living for. They were, and still are, just a part of my life. Something I was doing or something I had. Not something I was living for.
And for a time I just lost all desire to seek out the Lord. I felt like he brought be back to Canada and then left me, forgot about me. But now I see it was the exact opposite. I had gone to Canada and left him, forgot about him. I filled my time with all things Hannah. I was running away from Him because all I wanted was to be somewhere safe, doing something that I knew I could do, being with people that I knew liked me. I was hurt and scared away from what he had called me to do because I had let the enemies lies become the truth that I believed.Of course I've only realized these things in the last couple months being back here in Costa Rica.
When I decided to move out West it was because I had told God I was sick of the way things were and that I would give everything up for him, if he would just show up in my life again. So I went out West to focus, to clear my mind and get away from everything that I was using to distract myself from him. I wanted to be able to hear him and to have time to understand what he was saying without being distracted.
And man, Alberta was amazing. God blew me away.
He began at the very beginning, it was like I was in sunday school again and God was the teacher. He began teaching me very shortly after I arrived. The moment I saw the Rocky Mountains God spoke to me of how huge and mighty he is. The mountains were huuuugge! And every time I looked at them God would say to me "Hannah, I pulled all those mountains up into the sky with only one of my hands!". I don't know how that effects you, but man, I wanted to cry. His hand is bigger then a mountain! I am so small and he is so big, so mighty, so amazing. I was in awe of him.
HOPE, hope was the biggest thing God taught me in Alberta. I had been struggling with the feeling of having no purpose and nothing to live for. For several months prior to moving out West I had been desperately longing for God to show me what hope was. One night I was listening to a Francis Chan sermon and was just writing out what I had learned from it, and God began to give me the biggest revelation of hope I have ever had.
Hope is the knowledge of getting to spend eternity with Jesus. My time on earth is so small compared to life after death and as a follower of Jesus I am a citizen of heaven, I am called to make my home there in heaven, not here on earth. There I have a great purpose, building my eternity with the one I love. I don't live this life on earth thinking that one day I am going to die and it is all over. I get to live this life on earth knowing that what I sow here on earth, I will reap after death in eternity with Jesus himself, the one I love.
Perspective change! I am living for something so much greater and my hope is is Jesus and his promises.
There were some other little things that God showed me during my time in Alberta. But what I have shared here were the ones that had the biggest effect on my me. I was seriously just blown away with God and the way that he spoke to me. And my response to him was, 'whatever you want me to do, where ever you want me to go, I will go. I will follow you till the end.'
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