Grace Upon Grace Upon Grace

Wynter Moseley
Jun 6, 2024
6 min read

Updated: Jul 24, 2024

Every day for all eternity--without pause or end--the riches of the glory of God's grace in Christ will become increasingly great and beautiful in our perception of them. We are finite. They are 'immeasurable'--infinite. Therefore, we cannot ever take them in fully. Let that sink in. There will always be more. Gloriously more. Forever." -John Piper

ree — May Intern Team (Madi, Rachel, Bethany, Angel, Mariam, Kendall, Wynter)

I'm sitting in the Reno airport thinking about the overwhelming sovereignty of God. Six weeks ago, I was feeling an abundance of grief and rejection and abandonment and injustice. Three very important people in my life were leaving soon, my niece had been born and I couldn't be there, and I just found out I would be missing my very close friend's wedding. I was sitting in intern meeting weeping over the losses, wrestling with the Lord with the things that he had asked me to give up in order to be here at the ranch. Knowing that I only have two vacation days as a 6 month intern, it would be pretty logistically challenging to be able to go home to Alabama, and even if I could make it work, there wasn't a way I would be able to afford it. The next day, Jensen approached me and said that he would like to give me a long weekend to go home. And that the ranch has a benevolence fund that the staff wanted to gift to me. AND someone had donated money to bless an intern and they wanted to give it to me. This made up 90% of my plane ticket. He gave me the option of taking it the weekend of May 17th or May 24th. I chose the 24th. My parents happen to also be visiting my sister that weekend as well so I was feeling exceedingly blessed.

The following weeks, I struggled with a lot of little things. Making several little mistakes and feeling the weight of trauma anniversaries, not having the emotional energy to be fully present with the students and then feeling guilty of that. This past week was especially hard for me. One of my fellow interns, David, is being prayed out and I had grown closer to him over the past six weeks. The week was full of "lasts" with him. Struggling with letting him go, I was so excited to spend our last day off together. We had planned on going hammocking and he was going to read me a book. This was already a unique thing as David rarely have time together, just him and I. Sitting there, I got an email with tragic news. I didn't even know how to react to the news, so I sat there with my hand over my mouth and tears welling up in my eyes. The thoughts in my mind were racing towards believing the lie that the world and the enemy had convinced me were true. I was right to not trust anyone, that men are not trust-worthy, not even men in the church and in leadership. Like a dark storm cloud creeps quickly over the sky, resentment and bitterness and distrust and hatred started to creep into my heart.

Two years ago, I began to adopt a new spiritual practice. I wanted to develop a better prayer life and I didn't know how to do that. I had heard of the PRAY model: praise, repent, ask, and yield. This made sense to me, I see this model used by people in the bible and most certainly throughout the Psalms. A very wise and godly woman suggested to me once, "If Jesus is the great teacher, why not ask him to teach and train you?" So I asked the Holy Spirit to teach and guide and train me in this discipline of praise and prayer. In the beginning, it was really easy to start my prayers with praise and gratitude and it was easy to yield to the Lord's word and authority. It became harder as my zeal for this new practice fluctuated. But I would sit and wait and not begin until I could bring praise, even if the praise was me just telling Jesus I didn't have words to bring to him that were sufficient. This practice started to bleed into my journaling and poetry. Start with truth, bring my heart to God and tell him the lies I believe, the feelings I have, the sin I need to be cleansed of, my needs, then end with truth.

The work that the Lord has done in me over the past three years has been immense and evident. As I have learned to trust the Lord more fully, I have been able to trust others more, especially those who God has providentially placed into my life. Going to a new church in 2022 without knowing anyone or if the church could be trusted and then being pursued by broken people with sanctified hearts. Experiencing God's healing through biblical reconciliation. Being called to Discovery Ministries and seeing the men I work with love their wives well and honor them and me and the other women they work with. Then coming here, to the ranch, being thrown into internship where I have to seemingly blindly trust the men in authority over me and the other interns. I knew that this reality would be challenging for me but the Lord has been so gracious to me and given me a supernatural faith in him and the people he has put in my life for my benefit. The two male interns that I have been with the past five months have been so gracious and understanding and patient with me as I take longer to get comfortable and vulnerable with them. They haven't asked anything from me and have supported me in my wrestling and considering and figuring out without knowing my story. When the time came to share my story with the team, Jesus had already been gifting me with confidence in them. And once I did, they received it with gentleness and compassion and have been sensitive to my hurt.

David and I sat in silence for 15 minutes. I finally told him what my mind was battling. I wanted to fall into the temptation to hate men again. To say that I was right the whole time. No one can be trusted, not even those in the church. Men only want to serve themselves and view women as objects of satisfaction and only hold value in their submission and how easily they can be controlled. I asked David to speak the truth to me. How can I believe the lies when God had placed this man in front of me who was showing me the opposite? My first response was to seek truth. The grace of God who had instilled this habit of looking for the truth. If I had been by myself when I received this news, if I had been with a girl friend, I wouldn't have been able to combat that lie so easily. My Father knew where my weakness would be and he proved his power and sovereignty by putting the truth in my face. Creating David the way he did for the past 25 years so that he would be perfectly placed into my life. For prompting me and training me in the spiritual discipline of praise and truth for the past two years. For providing a way to be home on this weekend so that I can be home to grieve with my church family. For giving me almost an entire week between receiving the news before I had to be supervision for the students again. For giving me the spiritual eyes and revelation to recognize all these things. Coincidence is too simple. I belong to a Father who by choosing that human beings would have belly-buttons I would be taken care of on May 22nd, May 23rd, and May 24th, 2024. What have I done in this life to have the honor of serving such a God? Nothing. But thank God for generosity and grace and sanctification.