Nobody likes adversity...it put it simple it stinks and it's not fun at all,but in reality God uses adversity quite a bit in our lives (at least He has in mine!). Although adversity is not fun at all to go through...it has pushed me to depend more on the LORD. God uses adversity for many reasons it could be personal growth or it may be part of the ministry that you are doing, never the less I can say that as a missionary going out to the field I will be experiencing a lot of adversity and in everyday life people experience adversity but the real question is how do you react to adversity? Will you run to the LORD, who is good, faithful and the God of all comfort or will you run to the things of this world?
For me I don't like adversity because it is hard and its not fun and most of the time it really hurts and we just want God to take it away but as much as I don't like to say He does have a reason and He wants to revel something to us that will draw Him closer to Himself. We spent a good chunk of the time talking and dissecting 2Corinthians 12:7-10:
"or because of these surpassingly great revelations. Therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong."
We talked about how God is enough and we also talked about contentment in the midst of adversity and Robin gave us these very true statements: Contentment isn't an innate quality...it originates from God, Contentment is rooted and grounded in God, Contentment can be learned. So in the midst of adversity we should run to the LORD.Robin gave us this quote and it really resonated with me:
"We have in ourselves by God's grace and power all that's needed to carry on independently of external circumstances"
We also talked a lot about stress and I have to say that its a very intense couple of sessions. Weather we like to admit it or not we all get stressed and it effects us and the things that we do and the decisions that we make. Learned to try and identify things that stress us and how we feel/how our bodies react and how we deal with stress. We also learned about how to relieve stress. On the mission field the lack of dealing with stress can be a big issue if not dealt with and leads a lot to burnout because the missionary gets too stressed out because they can't say no and allow themselves to rest. The next session was probably the most overall intense session of SPLICE, I am not going to go into detail but we were put in a situation that we had absolutely no control over and it was quite the intense and stress level raising situation. After that occurred we talked quite about high stress situations, because in all reality as we go out on the field that first little while of being on the field is always going to be a high stress situation and honestly our highest values will be tested. This is a huge thing that missionaries have to face. However, they talked us through ways to help manage our stress which included learning to say NO and taking a Sabbath, because as I mentioned before unmanaged and prolonged high stress leads to burnout and the missionary returning form the field.
Although stress and adversity are not fun subjects to experience or talk about they are real issues that a missionary will face on a daily basis. I am SO thankful that we talked and learned about these things!
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