I’m going to start off this little piece with a Bible verse. You might just read over it and not think twice, as I would have at the beginning of this summer. Ready? Here it is:

Hebrews 12:11 “For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.”

Ok ~ Lodge that verse in the back of your mind and continue reading.

As a broad overview to catch you up on what I’m doing with my life this summer for 10 weeks, it is this: I’m in South Carolina with a ministry called Campus Outreach that I got involved with this past year at the University of Minnesota. I decided to spend 10 weeks here in the hopes of growing in a deeper relationship with God.

Ok, thats a nice little thought right? I believe my prayer going into this summer went something like this: “Dear God, just help me to draw closer to you this summer. I want to grow stronger in my relationship with you. In Jesus name, Amen.”

I think God heard my prayer, chuckled, leaned back and said, “Yes.” And as he said yes, my world as I know it began to fall apart.

We left Bethlehem Baptist early May 28th and began the 22 hour drive down to Murrels Inlet, South Carolina. Two days and a night spent in the Knight’s Inn later (it was a motel behind a gas station…) and we were there.

I can clearly remember sitting down on that first night for our big group meeting. At the end they asked us to sit down and write out how we were feeling about the upcoming summer. This is just a small excerpt from what I wrote in answer to the question “What are you hoping God will do this summer?”:

“I’m not sure why I feel so overwhelmed right now. But it sucks. I am hoping that God will do a work in my life and help me to enjoy my time here and truly grow in my relationship with him. And that might hurt and might be really hard. And I could despair and be overwhelmed and want to quit and give up and go home. But I am going to trust and have faith that God has me here for a reason. He has things he wants me to learn while I’m here. I’m just not really sure what those things are yet.”

Oh Caleb. If only you knew.

List of things God wanted me to learn I didn’t need to be happy:

0: Golf ~ I’m literally in what is known as “The Golf Capital of the World” and I am not going to go once this summer

1: Giving up time with family and friends is really hard, but they wont satisfy

2: Living with 120 other people in close proximity and in a room with 3 other guys may at times feel like a living hell… but its not. (Connor, Tyler, and Shaoren I love you guys)

3: Hot showers… apparently not a necessity

4: Sleep? ha. ha.

5: Control over my schedule? Nope. Didn’t think so.

6: Ellen ~ We have had to sacrifice a lot of time together while down here.

To maybe give you a picture of how hard all of this is for me: Im introverted. I love to have control over what I do with my time. I love golf. People wear me down. I cherish quality time spent with Ellen. I love a hot shower. While I didn’t realize it at the beginning of Project, God was stripping away everything that I ran to for comfort that wasn’t him.

As I reflect on the first four weeks of Project… I cry. I think the moment when I knew this was going to be a huge challenge was when one afternoon, I was feeling pretty tired/overwhelmed and crawled into my bed for a nap. I laid there for a few minutes. I felt a tear run down my face. Then another. Before I knew it I was weeping. Sobbing. The kind of crying where you are trying to catch your breath and your nose starts running and you just feel relieved to be crying so hard because maybe it will take away some of this pressure you feel inside. The weird thing was, I never cry like that.

Now as I reflect on it I cry because I realize God was working. Whether I knew it or not, he was stripping away everything from me… and it hurt so bad.

I love C.S. Lewis. And I’m sorry, this is just going to be a long blog post and I’m assuming most people won’t read all of it… but this is just so amazing for me to reflect on. Read this word picture. It brings tears to my eyes for I have experienced it first hand.

“Then the lion said — but I don’t know if it spoke — You will have to let me undress you. I was afraid of his claws, I can tell you, but I was pretty nearly desperate now. So I just lay flat down on my back to let him do it.

“The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart. And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I’ve ever felt. The only thing that made me able to bear it was jut the pleasure of feeling the stuff peel off. You know — if you’ve ever picked the scab of a sore place. It hurts like billy-oh but it is such fun to see it coming away.”

“I know exactly what you mean,” said Edmund.

“Well, he peeled the beastly stuff right off — just as I thought I’d done it myself the other three times, only they hadn’t hurt — and there it was lying on the grass, only ever so much thicker, and darker, and more knobbly-looking than the others had been. And there was I smooth and soft as a peeled switch and smaller than I had been. Then he caught hold of me — I didn’t like that much for I was very tender underneath now that I’d no skin on — and threw me into the water. It smarted like anything but only for a moment. After that it became perfectly delicious and as soon as I started swimming and splashing I found that all the pain had gone from my arm. And then I saw why. I’d turned into a boy again. . . .”

I took the first step of peeling off my skin. I decided to follow Jesus when I was young. I went to church and read my Bible and began to grow in my relationship with Jesus. Then, hard times came and my family was thrown about. We trusted God. But it planted a thorn in my side and a thought in my head. “Maybe I can’t trust God. I should probably just try my best to do it on my own.”

So I continued on… trying to always peel away at the skin when I saw that it needed peeling. Of course, I could never go deep enough. I could cover up this sin long enough to forget about it… but it was just putting duct tape on pipes that had already been leaking for ages. I didn’t just need to fix my broken plumbing system. I needed someone to come in and completely tear it out and build it back from the ground up. I needed Aslan to cut deep. I needed God to break me down so he could build me back up.

So for four weeks it hurt. It hurt so bad. Many of you reading this know how badly I was hurting. I called you, texted, sent messages on Facebook. Remember that reflection I wrote on the first day? All of that came true and more. My worst fears had been realized. I had no comfort left. Everything I knew and loved had been taken away. You think I’m being dramatic? Maybe. But when God works in you… when he really decides to come and work in you… it really frickin hurts (sorry mom).

Here was my problem. I was still doing it on my own. And God was just waiting for me to let him. But of course, I fought it every single step of the way.

Everything came to a T on Wednesday, July 2nd. This was the day God brought me to my knees. That day, the last straw had been thrown on the camels back and it broke. I’m not going to share the specific event… but it wasn’t even that big of a deal. But when it happened, I was furious. I stormed out of our Evangelism Training meeting just angry. Mad. Mad that I was in South Carolina, wasting my time, not getting what I wanted, not having any fun, not feeling God work in me (come on God I came down here so you could work in me, so work!). All of these thoughts and more just flying around in my confused, overwhelmed, exhausted head.

I went back to my room and of course. Called my mom. And she had the words God wanted me to hear. She listened to my rant of everything I was sick of. How tired I was. How I felt like I was bearing this burden that I simply couldn’t carry anymore. She shared some thoughts with me. As she began talking… I began to weep. God was peeling back the skin.

She kept on sharing. Kept on talking… and tears were streaming down my face. I didn’t know what was going on… but ~ God did.. and he was going deeper.

My mom had two things in closing for me:

1: She said she wanted me to write out every burden I was carrying, every frustration I had, everything I was overwhelmed with. Write it down. Then go to the pier and throw it into the ocean.

2: A question. A question I must keep asking myself… we all must ask ourselves.

“Do you trust him?”

Who?

God.

Do. You. Trust. Him?

I hung up the phone. Grabbed a pad and pen. And wrote. For 30 minutes I wrote on only one sheet of paper. Sobbing. Wrestling with God. Desparate. I had nowhere left to turn… and here I was. Nothing to give. Nothing to bring to the table. All that was left was Caleb. Sinful, broken, messed up, rebellious, worthless, lost, and tired Caleb.

Pause.

Remember the beginning of this?

Hebrews 12:11 “For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.”

God was pealing back the skin. He had ripped it off. And there I was. Caleb. Loved. Cherished. A child of the king. Son. Brother. Adopted. Forgiven.

There wasn’t one moment I can think of where something just clicked. But as I walked to the pier and threw off that note… there was peace. Not just peace of mind. But soul gripping, life changing peace. Lasting peace.

God isn’t finished either. There have still been really really hard days. My circumstances absolutely haven’t changed. But you know what is changing? My heart. God is ripping away the calluses that have formed on my heart. It hurts a lot sometimes. It is painful. But the fruit of righteousness is so sweet. The peace that I have now, compared to 6 weeks ago is amazing. God is so good.

And you know what? He answered my prayer. He is anserwing my prayer still. Until the day that I die I will be a work in progress.

My theme verse for this summer is this:

2 Corinthians 4:16-18 “So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away,our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but things things that are unseen are eternal.”

I’m not really sure how to wrap this up. Maybe just a challenge. God wants to work in you. So ask him to. And expect the unexpected. I’m not an author. And you’re probably tired of reading this. So. Thank you. God loves you. He doesn’t want to leave you where you’re at. He is after your heart. Surrender it.