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On October 1, 2009, with prayer & fasting, I reached a decision regarding the next step of my life.
I am applying for the One Thing Internship at the International House of Prayer. Chances are I’ll get accepted and will thus be moving to Kansas City, Missouri in 3 months. I anticipate that I will stay there & attend the IHOP University for a 4-year degree.
If you know me at all, you know that I tend to get excited about something, “decide” to pursue it, and then change my mind up to a month later (usually quicker). I am ambivalent about almost everything- except my desire to pursue God & give my all to Him. I have come up with more ideas and dreams for my life than I want to think about: professional ballet, medicine, writing, photography, youth ministry, a music career, theology. I have tried the path the world tells you to take: college. It doesn’t work for me. It’s not what God has for me. I don’t want to waste another minute trying to fit into a square hole when my peg is round.
Thus, I will be leaving Oceanside again. I know what the whole-leaving-everyything-behind deal is like; I did it straight out of high school at 16 when I moved to Winnipeg (capitol of Manitoba, Canada). I’m excited to do it again. I will miss home dearly. New Song is more my home than Southern California itself, more even than the house I live in. I have already cried over what I will leave behind, but I am confident that I will gain more than I will lose.
Until January I’m going to keep doing what I do, hopefully soon with the addition of a part-time job. Also, I want to spend as much time with my friends as I possibly can, so if you want to hang out, let me know! We need to have some memorable adventures before I kiss this place goodbye.
Also, I will be shutting down this blog and starting up a new one as I make this transition. I want to start fresh as I see this as the end of a season of my life (2007-2009: New Song) and the beginning of a new one (2010-?: IHOP). When I launch it, you can find the new site at courtneyaugustin.wordpress.com
I haven’t written very many highly personal entries lately. This was a conscious decision: I wanted to make my blog less about me and more about God, which is the same thing I want for my life. I suppose, however, it is okay to write about my personal journey every once in a while. Thus, here I am.
Tonight has been a night of realizations. Essentially, I am conceding that I am willing to do a couple of specific things God’s way instead of mine. I’m willing to let go of one vision for my life and trade it for another.
I gave my testimony at ATS tonight, my church’s high school small groups night. I wanted to do it because I felt that God wanted to say something to one or more of the students through my story. I’ve only shared my testimony twice; the first time was at Seven24 (college group), the second time tonight. Both times, though the second was a bit better, I felt like I was babbling on and on and leaving out important things. My hands were shaking and I was bad at keeping eye contact with my audience. (I also broke down in tears in the middle, but that’s another story.) I am going to work on writing it out in a more concise, effective manner; however, the experience showed me something: I am not gifted in public speaking.
Lately I have been trying to work up a vision for my future, a bit of a general idea of what my ministry might look like one day. (I don’t make “plans” anymore, because God is really into changing them on me.) I thought that maybe I could be a college pastor someday. God told me to dream bigger, so that was my response. Well, tonight changed that. I felt it pretty clearly from Him that He does not intend to make me a traditional pastor of any kind. I may have the spiritual gift of shepherding, but I’m not cut out for being the one up front doing all the talking.
Another way in which I surrendered to God’s plan & timing tonight is with school. My goal is to get my BA in Music and then go to seminary for either an MDiv or an MA. I am so excited to go to seminary that I have been trying to rush my undergrad work as quickly as I can. Having no “technical” background in music, this is a difficult task. I’m going to be getting help on theory with one friend and coaching on vocals with another, but even with all that help and practice, I am beginning to realize that I will probably take longer getting my Bachelors than I would like. I think I’m going to be okay with that. I can’t cram as many pre-transfer music courses into a semester as I thought I could. God has called me to this degree, so I’m going to do it, no matter how hard it is. Instead of being focused solely on seminary, I’m going to start looking for what God would have for me now, while working on my BA.
So that’s just a little taste of where I’m at lately. I’m still not going to write about me that much, and I’m working on removing all the previous entries that focus on me-me-me. If I have some urgent prayer request or awesome praise report, you’ll probably hear about it, but other than that, I’m going to be relatively silent when it comes to my life.
It seems that every year around this time I feel like reviewing the past year of my life. I still see life in the cycle of school years (though less so now that I haven’t finished a semester since last summer), and so around June 7-15th seems to be the time frame in which I get extra sentimental and want to draw things to a close.
It is June 15th, and I don’t really feel like going over all the major events of the past year. I’m simply marveling at these facts:
June 15, 2006: graduated from high school (age 16).
June 10, 2007: flew home from Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada for the last time.
June 15, 2008: experienced one of the most personally meaningful Seven24 services yet.
June 15, 2009 (today): working the front desk of New Song Community Church and programming services for Celebrate Recovery & my worship internship.
It’s amazing what God can do with one life in three years.
What will He do in the next three years? I really don’t know. I hope that by then (2012) I will be graduating with my BA in Music and preparing for seminary in the fall. I hope I’ll be paid staff at a church (which I hope would be New Song). I hope I’ll at least be in a serious relationship if not engaged or newly married. I hope I’ll be regularly leading worship and mentoring a couple of high school or early-college age girls. Or who knows; maybe I’ll be done with all He had for me here and it’ll be time to go Home (and by that I mean heaven, of course).
There are many things for which to hope, but all we know is what today holds. I’m not going to plan for anything more than what God would have for me here and now.
Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”- yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that. James 4:13-15
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Praise the Lord! Sing to the Lord a new song, his praise in the assembly of the godly! [...] For the Lord takes pleasure in His people; He adorns the humble with salvation. Psalm 149:1 & 4
