^Exposure^

Expose (v) - to make visible by uncovering it; reveal the true, objectionable nature of someone/something
Exposure (n) - the revelation of an identity or fact, especially one that is concealed

     Throughout my 15 weeks as an intern at Elevation Church, I got a lot of exposure to the way things are run. Although I was in an environment where I was learning, observing and absorbing so much, the greatest exposure I got was exposure to myself. As the weeks went on, I recognized that God was doing a lot of deep work in my heart and, looking back at all my notes, I’m now seeing just how much God did in me through it all. 
      One of the things we got to do as interns was prepare a 7-minute teaching for our intern class (plus some staff members) and mine was scheduled very early on in the internship. At first I thought being in the first group of interns was a gift because I could get it out of the way and not have other teachings to compare mine to, but now I see that God used my teaching preparation as a time to show me His purpose in having me step into this season. Challenging myself to make it personal, I asked God to reveal what He was teaching me in that season and that would become what I’d share with everyone else. When I asked, He answered and He answered with a lot more than I expected so, with more content than I could fit into 7 minutes, in the time leading up to my teaching, I must have reworked the entire essence of it all at least 8 times. What’s clear now is that some of what God spoke at that time was just for me so it took a while before I sorted out what was mine to process and what was meant to be shared during my teaching. Now that I’ve had a few months to work through what God was teaching me, I’ve challenged myself to share it because what God does in your life and what He teaches you is never meant for you to hold onto forever, and it would be selfish for me to keep all of this to myself.

I’ll be spending more time breaking down the lessons I learned throughout the internship but for now, here are some of the things I wrote down in my initial preparation for my teaching:

• “You’ve brought me here to rest and given me space to breathe so I’ll stay still until it sinks in” (Lean Back, Capital City Music)
• Investing in me - “I want you to be free to fully press into all I have for you here with radical focus so you can experience what it’s like to serve out of the overflow of Me in your life rather than constantly feeling like you’re being drained”
  • Being poured into so that I can then serve/love from that
• Getting beneath the labels and layers of faces/masks I’ve allowed to define who I am
  • “Your arms enfold me until I am only a child of God” (Child of God, Capital City Music)
• Leaning back into God’s arms means leaning in to all He has for you in each season 
• 2 Corinthians 9:6-12
  • verse 11: You will be enriched in every way so that you can always be generous. And when you take your gifts to those who need them, they will thank God
    • surrendering so I can allow God to enrich me in every way, visible and private, for the sake of His mission 
• Stop striving, the climb was never meant to be this exhausting
• You’ve been climbing with one hand on the mountain and one holding onto all these things that if you’ll just let go of, you’ll see it’s not that your climb wasn’t meant to be hard, but it was never meant to be this exhausting, it was never meant to be this draining and you were never meant to do it alone
  • “I will climb this mountain with my hands wide open… There’s nothing I hold onto” (Nothing I Hold Onto, Will Raegan) 
• Don’t fight the freedom I’m putting right in front of you, just walk in it. It might feel uncomfortable at first but the more you go, the more you grow
• You’ve prayed for this and I heard you. Now trust the opportunity for growth that I put right in front of you and choose to fully lean in to those moments