For the last ten years, my life has been a litany of successive ‘yeses’ to wherever God would have me go next. Listening is hard, but it is imperative for good discernment. The key thing that happened was a group of core passages and verses from the Bible revealed who I felt who I have been created to be. Each of those core scriptures were then used to affirm, as well as affirmation from the community around me, where God was sending me next.

First it was to Global Orphan Project in Haiti, then to Children’s Hopechest in Colorado and now to North Cross UMC in Kansas City. But before being sent to any of those places, my heart and soul were oppressed by words spoken into me that were not true. Words telling me who I was and what I should be doing…they were lies spoken without actual discernment and without love for the woman God has created me to be.

As I began 2013, I was pushing through the oppression and emerged with statements that spoke to who I believed I had been created to be and essentially guide me in how I made future life choices. I needed some ways to define how I hoped others saw me, and how I saw myself despite the negative voices. Something to confirm I was on the right path or point to and say that doesn’t fit…it’s not what God wants of me and it takes me off course.

While some have morphed over ten years, and some have been added, these verses and passages speak to who I am continually becoming:

• I believe God has built us to be in community with each other. [Ephesians 2:19-22]
• I choose to represent God’s laughter. [Romans 15:13 & John 15:11]
• I believe in an active and alive Holy Spirit. [John 14:16-17, 26, John 16:13-14, Acts 1:8 & Acts 2:4]
• I am ultimately held accountable by God alone. [Acts 5:38-39]
• I believe in the passion God has given me for orphans, orphan prevention and to see God’s justice righting the wrongs in this world. [Isaiah 1:17, Isaiah 58, James 1:27, Malachi 4:6 & Micah 6:8]
• I believe in following God humbly and obediently to our neighbors, our country, places that make me uncomfortable and outside of our borders with compassion and empathy. [Acts 1:8]
• I believe each one of us is called to live sent and love with compassion and truth as we try to be more and more like Jesus. [Luke 10:1-11, Luke 10:25-37, John 4:1-42 & Ephesians 4:1-3; 4:32-5:2]
• I believe in God’s power to transform. [Acts 9:1-9]
• I believe God is using all generations to love others into the Kingdom. [Ephesians 3:14-21 & Luke 17:20-21]
• I believe we are created to be storytellers who point to God at work in us and draw others into his story. [Matthew 13:34-35 MSG & Acts 18:9-11]
• I believe discipleship is trying to be more and more like Jesus and listening when he instructed his disciples to love God and love your neighbor after inviting them to “Follow me.” [John 13:34-35, Matthew 9:9 & Luke 10:27-28]
• I believe God’s Kingdom is oneness. I believe in Kingdom equality where there is no ‘here’ or ‘there’ and no ‘them’ or ‘us,’ is inclusive, and honors every beautiful skin color, language, and culture throughout the world. [Galatians 3:23-29, Ephesians 2:11-22, Colossians 3:11 & Revelation 7:9-10]
• I believe racism is a sin and it is our responsibility as believers to call it out as sin and commit to actions of reconciliation. [2 Corinthians 5:18-19]
• I believe we are called to genuinely embody and alert others to the universal reign of God through Christ. [Revelation 11:15]
• I live for God’s Kingdom to be renewed and restored. [Revelation 21:3-5]

As I type all of this in one space again, I realize the sheer amount of places in the Bible that have revealed who I believe I am are insane, as well the fifteen statements. I think it also speaks to how I hear God in my life. Everyone hears God in a way that is uniquely theirs, and I’ve never discovered anyone who hears God in the same way as someone else. It is about figuring out how God is trying to speak to you.

I think this list also keeps growing based on how I continue to spend time with God and who I am learning from where I’ve been called. Committing to be more and more like Jesus means we are never done changing and transforming into a better version of ourselves. I tend to say a lot ‘that is a discipleship issue,’ and what I really mean by that is that many are not trying to be more and more like Jesus. I accept I am an sinful asshole, but I also commit to transformation. Discipleship involves a lot of things: walking alongside people in community, learning from the words of Jesus we have been given in the Bible, modeling behavior and actions we see in Jesus, normalizing where the Holy Spirit is active, allowing the Holy Spirit to continually transform us and committing to help others grow in their discipleship.

I’ve been thinking about this list for several months. I kept sensing the Spirit telling me to come back to this list, but I kept putting it off and I’m not really sure why.

Maybe I thought God would lead me somewhere else again and I don’t feel healthy enough for that right now. Maybe I thought I would be ashamed that I have not been living fully into my calling.

Maybe I thought I would be overwhelmed with the loss of not being able to be present in places I am called to around the world.

But the reality is for the last year, a lot of things in my life were paused as I dealt with cancer and all the extremely harsh side effects of radiation and chemo.

With all my heart and soul, I hope my body continues to get stronger. I hope I never have to deal with nausea and vomiting as a way of life ever again. I hope I can schedule things and not cancel. I hope I can hope and dream again, instead of living 24 hours at a time.

And as I walk into a new year of life after the last year of bat-shit crazy things involving surgery and cancer, I am choosing to live in all the ways that reflect who God has created me to be.