Wow, what can I say..? Joshua has felt like a dream. This whole year has been filled with so many ups and downs. These hills and valleys that I’ve experienced all add up to God’s perfect plan. Whether in the beautiful times or in the times of hardship and struggle, God has just been so good to me. I can’t possibly begin to expect to explain everything that the Lord has done this past nine months in Joshua… The ways in which the Lord transformed my heart of stone into one of flesh. He saw me in seasons of doubt and uncertainty, still walking with me through these times, & revealing the truth of God’s word and who he is.
Before coming to Joshua, I had a really misconstrued idea (or lack thereof) of grace. I really didn’t think too much about God’s grace for me. I thought: Oh yes, God is so good, very nonchalantly. Truly however, I had my own invisible set of rules that I had to follow, in order to try to earn God’s love or favor, in order that he may possibly accept me or reject me. I did all these things, while thinking I had good intentions. Truly, I did not realize how lost I simply was. My story coming to Joshua Wilderness Institute wasn’t something that was quite simple and easy.
I first went to Hume Lake as a camper 10 years ago this summer. For high school camp up at Ponderosa during my high school years, he was a place of refuge, a place where I felt seen, accepted, and known. And saw God’s creation firsthand in nature and through worship and the camp experience. Every summer and pretty much every winter, I went up to Pondy for camp with my church, Whittier Area Community Church (WACC). It was there that I experienced the campwide phenomenon called the camp high or the Hume High. The camp high was fantastic, I felt poured into you by the speakers, and by the camp directors: Jonny Ardavanis and Rachel Closs, had a blast during recreation and fun times with my cabin and my church, yet it always ended once I went down the mountain.
It was sometime in high school that I first heard about JWI and in my senior year, I decided that was something I was interested in doing and pursuing. I don’t know why at the time, because I didn’t have a saving belief in Jesus Christ and lived partially for the world. I was a lukewarm teenager going to church twice a week, and the rest of the week I was living life how I wanted to. I was supposed to attend Joshua Wilderness Institute in the year 2020-2021 right after I graduated from high school at the age of 18, but three weeks before the program started it was canceled because of the Coronavirus pandemic. It was during this time that I began to question God and his existence. Why would a God who’s still loving, allow his child to simply suffer the way that I did. It was there that I didn’t see his saving grace that was so close and yet I felt so utterly far.
This went on for years, never having a true faith in Jesus that there was a silver lining of grace. If only you can just read in-between the lines, then you see his grace. I didn’t have the Holy Spirit empowered vision to know the truth and be set free, all I could see was suffering and all I could see was this distant God who didn’t care about me. So last year as a student at GCU, I got saved at this retreat that I went to. I had a mustard seed of faith that he is a God of grace that will save a sinner like me. However, it was easy to fall back into the legalism lie: that God only listens to me if I do good works; that I’d got to be the perfect Christian Who had all the right answers and went to all the church services… but doing that was all in vain.
There was no grace there, from myself. I was a bubblegum believer frolicking through the fields of Candyland with my Cotton Candy Christianity. That was the lie of a life that I was living. These nine months of Joshua have made me realize that there’s a God who created me, who knew me from the very beginning and saw what was coming , and had so much love in his heart for me. God sent his one and only son to die for a sinner like me, a parent that will not fail- he’s a perfect loving father. It took me the whole year here in Joshua to realize this. But God’s love never fails and God’s love never falters.
And God’s not here to punish me, just because I don’t do things perfectly, just because I constantly fail and mess up again and again. He leaves the 99 again and again, even for lil old me. Yahweh loves me more than I can ever realize, comprehend, or fathom. He loves me more than I could ever love myself and he loves me more than the world ever possibly could. I’m utterly grateful for the gift of getting to experience these past nine months here at Joshua wilderness Institute, These past nine months of dead branches being pruned and of the snow globe of a heart being shaken and him giving me a new heart instead. I can see all of the broken puzzle pieces that were once scattered on the ground, pieces that you thought could never be found and be brought together…
It was those broken pieces that he put together to paint a pretty picture… the most beautiful picture, the story of a broken sinner being welcomed by the father home into the pasture. I know that I am but a lost sheep, yet the father runs after me every single time. I came to Joshua looking for answers while feeling unfulfilled at my college at the time and I wanted to know what I was supposed to do with the rest of my life. Instead, I found the acceptance, grace, and love that I had been subconsciously searching for in the feeble things of the world, my whole life. I know that through these nine months of feeling more like hardship in the growing pains than anything else, the creator of the universe brought me here for a reason.
I believe God brought me to Joshua for me to realize that it is possible to be loved, seen, and known by God and I don’t. I don’t have to plan a performance or put on a masquerade mask, but simply have to come as you are, however broken. Oh come to the altar, the father’s arms are wide open. He is the everlasting God and I cannot be more grateful. Thank you Jesus for welcoming me with open arms, walking with me through the game of life and all of its chutes and ladders; trials and triumphs. Thank you Lord for these 9 perplexing months of discipleship. It has truly been an enigma of sorts. I pray I will continue to process and grow from what the Lord has done here and to live a life worthy of the Gospel (all by God’s grace). When Joshua ends, it begins!
-Aaron Cody Malena (Current Student)
