Five weeks ago, I got home from spending five weeks at Ellerslie Advanced Discipleship training in the beautiful state of Colorado. My time away was precious, challenging, wonderful, and humbling all at once. At the risk of being hyperbolic, I would say those five weeks were life changing. (This post is not sponsored by Ellerslie; I’m just sharing my personal reflections.)
When I got home five weeks ago, I wasn’t sure if I would share anything about my time at Ellerslie. My plan had been to record a podcast episode when I got home sharing what I’d learned, but when I got home, I was not ready for that. I was still processing what the Lord had taught me and was doing in my heart. And I didn’t want to claim that Ellerslie had changed my life if I came home and returned to my usual status-quo. Plus, those five weeks of communion with the Lord felt very sacred, like maybe it was meant to be just between me and God and not shared with the rest of the world.
Now I’m five weeks post-Ellerslie. And there’s some reflections to be made.
At Ellerslie, I had five weeks of uninterrupted time to focus on my walk with the Lord. The Advanced program focused on devotional excellence and ministry preparedness. We read the entire New Testament, Psalms, Proverbs, and all four gospels a second time in five weeks. We read four classic Christian works. We had three classes a day with different focuses of study per week. We went out to evangelize on Saturdays. We had a week of prayer nights.
I learned that you can read a lot of Scripture in an hour. I learned that prayer walks help me focus. I learned to “make yourself be free a little bit” (aka raise my hand above my head in answer to questions during the lectures… thanks Pastor Leroy!) and to not care what others think of me during prayer and worship. I experienced the beauty of constant communion with God alongside twenty-five other students who were passionate about knowing God. I learned that tears can be worship, too, and I experienced a taste of sharing God’s burdens. I was reminded afresh of the importance of being a doer of the Word. I learned there is freedom in confessing our sins aloud and praying with one another. I witnessed what it looks like to truly walk and be led by the Spirit. My eyes were opened to the opportunities that surround us to share Jesus.
There is so much more I could say about what the Lord taught me at Ellerslie, but much of it I will keep between me and God. Instead, I want to share some observations I’ve made since coming home from Bible school. So, here are five reflections I’ve made in these five weeks after being at Ellerslie for five weeks! 😉
1: Intentionality Matters.
The wonderful thing about Ellerslie is that it’s a set-apart environment to focus on the Lord. The challenging thing about Ellerslie is that it’s a set-apart environment, not your typical everyday life. Eventually you have to go home to the distractions and responsibilities and pressures of home life. And transitioning back is hard.
I knew it would be a challenging transition coming home. I left home running at a hundred miles an hour to slam on the breaks to an almost uncomfortably slow pace for this Oregonian while at Ellerslie. But eventually I cherished the slowness and sweetness of my days at Ellerslie with the Lord, and I dreaded returning to the busy pace of Oregon. I feared that busyness would crowd out the new devotional habits I was forming at discipleship school.
These past weeks post-Ellerslie have been back to supernova speeds. My well-laid plans to come home and protect my schedule have fallen apart. Between a family vacation, writing conference, church responsibilities, and unexpected schedule changes, I’m still struggling to figure out what my normal looks like post-Ellerslie. Because I want my normal to look different. I want my normal to be intentional.
I want to intentionally practice the spiritual disciplines of prayer, worship, and Word (Bible reading, study, and memorizing). I want to intentionally have my eyes open for opportunities to share Jesus and impact my community. To intentionally spend time fellowshipping with other believers and discipling others. Something that was said at the training (and I don’t remember who said it to credit them) was that we are to walk at the pace of love. Jesus walked everywhere He went, and He had time for the individual, like the woman at the well (John 4) or the demonic at the Gerasenes (Luke 8). We have a Good Shepherd who leaves the ninety-nine sheep to go after the one (Luke 15:3-7). I have come to realize that my tendency is to race from one thing to another and to not go slow enough to pour into the people around me like Jesus did.
So, it’s still a process, but I’m learning what it looks like to be intentional with my time at home, not just at Ellerslie. To prioritize the spiritual disciplines of prayer, worship, and Word. To slow down and walk at the pace of love. And through it all remembering that it’s the grace of God that fuels my life, not my own strength.
2: Be Restfully Available.
At Ellerslie, we listened to an old sermon by Major Ian Thomas, and one phrase he used was to be restfully available for God to use us. We have a tendency to try to do the Christian life by our own grit and strength. We work ourselves into a frenzy trying to do it all for God that we forget to just be with God. We forget that His grace is sufficient for our weakness and that His grace is what fuels our work. Connecting back to walking at the pace of love is this idea of being restfully available. We rest in God’s presence and strength and surrender our day, our hands, and our words to God to be available for what He wants to do in and through us. Sometimes our plans stay in tact and to-do lists get done. Other times God calls upon us to go out of our way to share Jesus. But wherever we go, we can be restfully available to the opportunities God puts before us.
On our evangelism days at Ellerslie, my evangelism team went to Costco. There was no particular agenda for evangelism, but instead we prayed for God to give us opportunities to talk to people and then just walked around the store. Some people we interacted with we had conversations with about Jesus, and others the door was not open for that. I left those evangelism days realizing that sharing Jesus could be a part of my normal life (I mean, what adult doesn’t have to go grocery shopping, right?). I also was convicted that I need to obey the Great Commission. Evangelism may not be my spiritual gift, but it’s still a requirement for me as a follower of Christ to share the good news. And each time we share Jesus may not be a full gospel presentation. Actually, I never shared a full gospel presentation when we went out evangelizing. I only had the opportunity to pray for people, and that’s okay. Because we’re just planting seeds. God is the One who will cause the growth. I just need to be restfully available to plant seeds whenever He opens the door.
I came home desiring to be more intentional about evangelism. The other day, I prayed telling the Lord I was going to be restfully available to share Jesus at my workout class if He opened the door. And that day, one of the guys in the class asked me about my work which gave me the opportunity to talk about how I write Bible studies. Was it a gospel presentation? No. But was it a chance to share that I follow Jesus? Yes. I’ve also started carrying around gospel tracts to hand out when I have the opportunity. So far, I’ve handed out two, which for some may not seem like a lot, but for me that is actually huge progress compared to what I was doing before I went to Ellerslie.
3: Be a Doer of the Word.
Being a doer of the Word is something I pray whenever I do Bible study, that I would not merely be a hearer of the Word but that I would actually put into action what the Lord says through His Word. I was reminded afresh of this important truth while at Ellerslie. As someone who loves to study and learn, it can be easy for me to unconsciously slip into acquiring facts and knowledge about the Word rather than coming to the Word to know Jesus and to be a doer of the Word. I greatly appreciated the encouragement from the teachers at Ellerslie to dive into Scripture but to then live it out.
4: Walk by the Spirit.
One of the pastors at Ellerslie demonstrated tangibly what it looks like to be led by the Spirit. A few times he came into class with two sets of class notes he’d written. He sat down on the edge of the stage and said we were going to pray until the Lord made it clear which set of notes he was supposed to preach through. We prayed until he felt that the Lord confirmed which message he was supposed to give, and then he would start his lecture. Other times, he would be in the middle of his lecture and then stop and say he felt that we should pray, and we would stop what we were doing and pray. The result was that sometimes the lecture would end early so that we could have personal time with the Lord in reflecting on what we’d learned, while other times he would continue preaching. One time in particular, he finished his lecture early and decided to pray before deciding to end the class. I prayed that he would continue teaching, because I enjoyed his preaching style and wanted to learn more from him. And this time he actually kept going. He only preached for three more minutes, but I left with tears in my eyes because his three minute message spoke exactly to an issue that was distracting me from focusing on the Lord that day at Ellerslie. I don’t know that the message meant anything to anyone else, but it was a reminder to me that God cares for each of us personally. And I heard that message because the pastor was willing to be led by the Spirit.
I loved that this pastor didn’t use relying on the Spirit as an excuse to come unprepared for class. And this same pastor is the one who emphasized over and over the importance of being a doer of the Word, so he was not the kind of Christian who claims to follow the Spirit while not actually following the Word of God (which is something I’ve witnessed in the past). Out of all the teachers at Ellerslie, this pastor’s example made the biggest impact on my life going home. The concept of walking by the Spirit had always mystified me, but now I’d seen it modeled, and something clicked for me. Walking by the Spirit is simply being a doer of the Word and being restfully available to walk through the doors God opens before us. It is a beautiful thing when someone is available to be used by God.
5: We can trust God’s timing and sovereignty.
Over the past year, I have applied to multiple different jobs and received rejection after rejection (I wrote an article about this experience, actually in the middle of all these rejections, for the Bible Advocate you can check out here). It was actually my discouragement over a string of rejections that caused me to apply for a scholarship to attend Ellerslie (which is how I ended up being able to attend Ellerslie in May!). I quit my previous job just before leaving for Ellerslie, unsure of what I would do when I got back home. Sure, I had my ministry to run, but at this point my writing and podcasting does not make a profit. Over and over again during my time at Ellerslie I surrendered my finances, my ministry, and the unknowns of the future to God. On graduation day at Ellerslie, I said that I was going home trusting God to provide for me financially. My plan was to focus on my ministry full-time over the summer and take on babysitting gigs, and then I would start looking for jobs again if I wasn’t making a profit from my ministry. The Lord lined up a babysitting job for me my first week back from school, and I rejoiced that He provided for me so quickly. And then, a few days later, I opened my email to find a message from one of the jobs I’d applied to earlier this year. They asked me to come back for another interview. So, I went back and interviewed and continued to surrender my plans to God. If this was how God was going to provide, I would praise Him, and if not, I would praise Him and continue to be faithful in my writing. A week later, I went in for a second interview, and after that interview I began to feel more at peace with the idea of taking the job. It was the part-time hours I needed to continue working on my ministry, it was in the pay range I needed, I would be working among other believers, I would be using my counseling degree, and I would have the opportunity to interact with my community and share the gospel, all things I have been praying for. And today I signed the paperwork to start my new job.
I was praying for God to show Himself to be Jehovah Jireh, my Provider, just as He was for George Muller (we talked a lot about George Muller at Ellerslie, so his story was on my mind whenever I was praying about my finances!). And the Lord showed up. He proved Himself faithful, just like He always has and He always will, for He cannot deny Himself (2 Tim. 2:13). The Lord answered my prayers above and beyond what I expected and in a completely different way than I expected, and I praise Him for that! What a wonderful, gracious heavenly Father we serve!
We had several lectures at Ellerslie about trusting in God, and it is beautiful to see how God demonstrates His trustworthiness to us. He doesn’t have to answer our prayers or work miracles in our lives; salvation alone is beyond what we deserve as sinners who lived in rebellion against God. And yet, He is a merciful Father who loves to give good gifts to His children (Matt. 7:11). He is so very trustworthy! And looking back over the timing of everything, from my job rejections to applying to Ellerslie, to getting a job out of the blue after coming home—it all displays God’s sovereign hand over the little details of life. He is not a distant God; He is near and He cares about the details of our lives, because even in the little details God displays His glory.
These five lessons I’ve learned from and post Ellerslie (intentionality, being restfully available, being a doer of the Word, walking by the Spirit, and trusting God’s sovereignty) are beautiful gifts from my heavenly Father that I don’t want to soon forget. These are my memorial stones. And by God’s grace He will continue to work out this sanctification in my life to the praise of His glory, because He is good.
With love,
Kelsey
