Tree Experience

For the last two days, I felt like I was on an incredible high with God. It was amazing, but almost too much. His presence was with me so strongly that I felt like I was bursting - and that began to hurt after a while. I knew better than to ask God to back off for a while, but I wanted to. I felt like I was on a crazy roller-coaster and was ready to get off and calm down again.
Then, last night in church God reminded me that I'm a tree. I'm a medium of His presence. He also reminded me that He would make me able to be poured out for Him. I was like, ok, God better show me who to pour on, quick!
Not an hour later, He did show me who to pour on. For the first time in my life, I felt I had the strength before I needed it, and I wasn't drained after an incredibly intense process. I felt like I had just enough again.
It just made me think - when God overflows the blessing, I need to be looking for who to give it to instead of keeping it for myself or asking God to take it back. Maybe that's why God doesn't bless His people more - He needs them to be trees or it's wasted.

God is with Me

Today I took steps to go back to the job I had before I went to Ghana. All this entailed was walking into the building and speaking to my boss. While in Ghana and while not doing anything but serving God through opportunities that came to me, I forgot how hard it is for me to deal with some pressures. I constantly fight thoughts that tell me that I'm not performing well enough, or that people pretend to like me to be polite but really can't stand me, or that I'm blowing it. It's the constant feeling that I'm not good enough, and if I'm successful, it's luck and could change in an instant.
As I walked into the building where I used to work, I was shaking. I would have to face people and would have to face whether I would be welcomed back. As I shook, I prayed, "God, nothing I've learned from my isolation with you in any way helps me with what I'm going through now." God has dealt with me about patience, love, humility, faith, etc, but I felt like He didn't ever address anxiety. However, as I walked through the door, I heard the words, "I'm here, and that's all that matters." I had peace from that moment on. Later, I started to see why.
I don't have to worry about what people think of me, and I don't have to worry about how I perform. There's only one approval that matters. God can't manifest His presence in garbage. That doesn't mean I'm something special to earn the privilege of having Him dwell with and in me. That means I'm something special because of what He made me when I allowed Him to have my life. And whether the world recognizes me as special or whether they see me as a fool, it doesn't matter. God's view of me is the only thing that does, and He sees me as someone worth saving and being with.

1 Cor 13

Last night I read 1 Cor 13 - the famous chapter that gets quoted at weddings so often on one can stand to hear it anymore. But it actually is a really good chapter, so please indulge me as I explore it.
As I read about love, I realized that I don't trust feelings. I trust a my knowledge that God loves me, but when I feel that love, I have in the back of my mind that the feeling won't last. But there's one problem with poo-pooing the side of love that's a feeling - I wouldn't be with God if I didn't feel He loved me. Yes, there are times when I don't feel the love, but if I never did, there'd be no incentive to be a Christian.
But if love is a feeling, how can I trust it? Right now I can feel it, but what happens when it fades? Nothing in my life is anything without it. I've written before that I can go on because God is, but I really mean that I can go on because God is love. If He were grace, whoopie. So my sins are forgiven. What does that get me except the promise that I'll fly around some after I die? If He were truth? so what? I would have the right answer, but no reason to care. I'm looking for a feeling.
That feeling can be combined with knowledge that God loves me, but if I go for long enough with just knowledge, I'll die of misery. The knowledge that God is love whether I feel it or not isn't the kind of knowledge I think is helpful. The kind of knowledge that helps is the knowledge that when I don't feel it, I know where to go looking for it.
I can't live for the knowledge of love, and if I don't have it I certainly can't spread it. But I don't have to be scared of this feeling. God's love is the one feeling that can be trusted, because He is love. God is always there, and so is His love.

A Story, Part IV

After God showed this girl that she could survive when He wasn't moving - even learn to enjoy the quiet times - He brought her into a period of activity. She was so grateful to finally see Him move again. The times at His feet were valuable, but working with Him was so much more fun... for a while. After about a week she started to feel like God moving wasn't all it was cracked up to be. The initial excitement wore off, and it became another form of work. Suddenly those times of sitting on the bed and praying for hours didn't seem so bad.
Something prompted her to go back and look at the moment God revealed Himself to her. She pointed to her miracle. But God showed her she was wrong. God wasn't answering her prayer when she got chills down her spine. He wasn't even proving His reality when He planted a seed of life in her the first time she prayed. God showed her He was real that day He woke her up. He answered her prayer before she had the ability to speak the words.
In that moment, she knew that God doesn't move when she sees action. He moves through His voice. He moved the day He promised Abraham a son, not the day Isaac was born. When God says something, it is, even if we don't see it until later. That quiet voice is the most powerful force in the universe.
God showed this girl that His voice is the only thing that matters. It doesn't just see her through moments when He's not doing what she wants. It doesn't just give her patience when she's waiting for Him to do anything at all. It's there, it will always be there, and it was there before she had the ability to hear it. It's there in the stillness and it's there in every earthquake, whirlwind, and fire. That voice is the God she fell in love with, though she didn't know it then. It's not just good enough to get her through a hard time, it's better than the best time. It's all she will ever need. That voice proves God is real.
And that voice will never leave her, no matter what. Who could ask for more?

A Story, Part III

Over time, the girl learned to think of God in terms of who He was. At first she learned to trust Him when He didn't move in a way she liked. Then she learned to trust Him when He didn't move at all, because she knew He had some reason she couldn't understand.
But then she face a situation where He wasn't moving, wasn't moving, and still wasn't moving. She waited until she could stand it no more. She knew His timing was perfect, but if He didn't give her some hope, she would die before she saw her faith realized. She could only trust so long while waiting for Him to move before she began to doubt that He ever would.
That's when she heard a song she'd known since childhood. "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord, God, Almighty, who was and is and is to come," an elderly black woman sang softly. The words gripped her mind, pushing out all doubt, freeing her from all fear. God wasn't holy because of what He did in the past to change her life. God wasn't holy because of what He was doing now (or wasn't doing). God wasn't even holy because of what He would do if she had the patience to wait. He was holy because he WAS. In that moment, and in every moment, He was there. She shouldn't go to Him for what He would do, but to spend time with a God who forever IS.
God's presence washed over her. "God," she prayed, "I don't need you to do anything... ever. I realize that all my life, all I've ever wanted was to know that you're with me." After that, whenever she started to get depressed or impatient, she learned to pray, "God, You're here, and that's all that matters."
She thought of the story of Elijah, when he saw the earthquake, whirlwind, and fire, but God was in the voice. She realized that she wanted to see God's power, she wanted to see Him move. But what she was really looking for wasn't His glory but His voice - a voice that would stay with her no matter what happened. Moments are fun, but they don't last.

A Story, Part II

This girl walked with God for a while, sharing with everyone how He had changed her life. She talked about how she discovered life the day He showed her He was real. She shared about how it took a while for her to realize just how great He was, because it took a while for her to let Him have His way in every aspect of her life. At first, she just wanted Him to fit into it and make all her plans amazing. But as she finally released control, He showed her that His plans weren't compatible with hers. Though the life changes He made her go through were painful, she learned that when she let Him do what He wanted, He did something far more wonderful than what she had in mind for herself. She learned that when she didn't see how His idea could possibly be good, if she waited she would see that it was actually amazing. She learned to trust Him when He didn't give her what she wanted, because she learned not to want what He didn't want to give her. What a glorious testimony of a victorious Christian, whose life was changed when God answered two weeks worth of prayers with a single revelation.
Then one day her faith was challenged almost to the breaking point. She was faced with a situation where she knew that if God didn't do what she wanted, it wasn't because He had something better in mind. She knew what she wanted was the will of God, yet she knew He wouldn't do it if it meant forcing Himself on someone else. But if things in this world could go wrong - terribly wrong - where did that leave her? Could she suffer under a plan God didn't intend because God chose not to act? Could she trust God would work everything for good when she saw sometimes He didn't?
The answer came quietly. She could never trust God because of what He did, because she could never understand His ways. But she knew He was good. She could trust God because He was good.
The answer satisfied her and got her through her crisis, but it would take years for her to understand the full significance of the concept. In fact, she's now sure she will never fully understand. However, each day God shows her a little more of what it means to trust Him for who He is, not for what He does. For now, that's enough.

A Story, Part I

About three years ago, a young girl "found herself" and discovered there was nothing there.
She had abandoned God years before, deciding He was irrelevant. Though she had grown up as a Christian, the only good she saw it did her was that it helped her achieve success. It made her work hard (do everything to the glory of God), helped her brown-nose those in high places (respect those in authority), and kept her from ruining her life with drugs and sex (your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit.) However, in high school she had discovered that she could follow all Christian morals that helped her get ahead without doing the inconvenient stuff. She didn't have to get up early on Sunday to go to church. She didn't have to be honest when the truth hurt. She didn't have to be a goody-goody when she could fool everyone into thinking she was. She didn't have to take time out to read the Bible and pray. Essentially, she didn't have to follow rules when there was no benefit to doing so. God and Christianity were nothing more than a bunch of good ideas, and those who didn't embrace these ideas were just plain stupid.
For all of high school, her way of looking at the world worked for her. By the time she graduated, she had risen to the top and had been given a life most girls would kill for. She had a job that was the envy of any American female waiting for her in an exciting new city. She would have her own apartment, set up according to her dreams. She had been able to look at all those who thought she would fail and shoved her glorious success in their face. She had everything she had ever wanted.
So how did life get so bad so quickly? How in the world could this kind of girl battle clinical depression? How in the world could she be a walking shell of a person within four months? With all her energy focused on existing, she wasn't even capable of realizing she was dead.
As this deadness took hold of her, her dreams became curses. The job became something that took more energy than she could give it, and it left her empty every night. Most nights she fell asleep wondering how she could go back the next morning. The wonderful apartment became a cage. She found no joy in it but couldn't find an incentive to go anywhere else for a few hours. And her success vanished as she became incapable of achieving anything close to her potential.
One day everything changed - and this could only be explained by the grace of God. That which was dead woke up. It woke up, looked around, and asked what had gone wrong. In that moment, this girl remembered whisperings from her childhood, and turned to a God she had thought she didn't need. First she read her Bible, but the words were as dead on the page as they had always been. "Lord," she cried, "show me that you're real. If you're not - if this is all there is - then my life is meaningless."
She thought maybe lightning would strike. Perhaps she'd be knocked to the ground, "slain in the Spirit" like she'd seen happen in churches when she was young. Perhaps tears would stream down her face as she felt a tingly sensation of pleasure overwhelm her. She didn't know exactly what she expected, but she expected something. Instead, she sent her prayer to the ceiling, then eventually fell asleep. She never noticed a seed of life had been planted.
Over the next two weeks, her miracle eluded her. She waited for indisputable proof that He was real, but none came. Yet each night her prayer never weakened. In fact, it got stronger and more desperate. She knew He was real, and was determined to hound Him until He showed Himself to her. She would seek with all her heart. She wouldn't give up. She would show Him she meant business. She would show Him that she was willing to work hard enough to be worthy of His time. She had no other choice, if she wanted to go on living.
Despite her spiritual disappointments, she did notice she was becoming more alive. She began to see a reason to go to work every morning. She started to be able to enjoy things. People started to notice a difference in her performance. Slowly, her life was building to a climax. After two weeks, her miracle happened. When it happened, she was so overcome with awe and terror at the reality of God that she knew she would never be the same again.
God had waited until she was almost ready to give up, but He had eventually come through. In that moment, He revealed Himself to her. She would tell this story as her testimony for three years.
But one day she would look back and realize things weren't as they had seemed.

Losing Interest in Devotions

As I've gotten more active in serving God, I've been shocked at how quickly I've lost interest in doing personal devotions. For some reason, my flesh is convinced that it's much more fun to serve God than to just be with Him. People in romantic relationships often feel that though it's fun to go to parties or whatever with their loved one, the best times are when they can be alone. Yet with God, the opposite seems to be true. I used to think I avoided facing God because of some sin I didn't want to give up, but I don't think that's completely true. Maybe I think of some sin to use as an excuse for why I'm avoiding devotions, but there's something more that keeps me away from God. I think it's so easy to stop looking up and start looking around. I wrote before that I've seen how easy it is to start taking credit for gifts, but it's also easy to get selfish about serving. It's easy to want to help because I don't want to see suffering, or because I want to have a feeling of fulfillment. Such sneaky ways to take my eyes off God! But whatever the reason, the moment it becomes about me I lose interest in being with God.
However, when I start working for myself, I lose everything! I lose God, and I lose the fulfillment that only He can give. Suddenly, it has become obvious to me why I feel my strength runs out. God's love, power, strength, etc is endless, but I have to stay near the supply. True, sometimes I want to do things in my own strength for the glory or whatever, but there are other times that I want to do things in God's strength, but I feel it isn't enough. It's because I move away from the source. I start looking around and forget to look up... until I get exhausted and depressed and begin to wonder what went wrong.

Confession

I feel better about myself when I'm suffering. I don't want to spend money not because any money I save I can send to Africa to feed children, but because I feel guilty about having so much when others have so little. But I realized that my suffering doesn't do anything to help anyone. I could do these children so much good if I prayed for them, but I see now that my goal isn't really to help them. It's not about them at all. It's about me, and feeling good about myself. When I deny myself I'm not honoring God, I'm feeding my pride.
I might never be able to explain why God has blessed me with a roof over my head and enough food to function properly. I don't know why I have the opportunity to get the best education this world has to offer, and can access every resource necessary to accomplish any goal I might set for myself. But it does me no good to try to get rid of these blessings in the name of fairness. Instead, God gave me these blessings so I could bless others.

Impossible

Impossible that God created
As He spoke a single word
A world beautifully complicated.
But by faith I can believe.

Impossible that God is plural
Father, Spirit, and a Son
Reigning in a realm eternal.
But by faith I will believe.

Impossible that God would love me
While I was a slave to sin
Dying so I could be set free.
But by faith I do believe.

A Word

Today my pastor spoke about believers who go through trials. He brought up people like Paul, who went through ridiculous trials for the sake of the Gospel. When we look at stories like his, we don't understand why God allowed him to go through so much. Lines like "God was making him stronger" wear thin pretty quickly, because after a while you want to go, "God, wasn't he strong enough? When is enough enough?" Lines like, "God used his suffering to reach people for His kingdom" also wear thin. We know God could have orchestrated things differently if He had chosen to.
My pastor came to the conclusion that we humans will never be able to fully understand the suffering of the righteous. However, God had spoken a word to him that made him feel the suffering he was going through had an incredible purpose. I could tell he was totally liberated by this word. The problem is, the word did nothing for me. Though my trials are nothing compared to Paul's or my pastor's, I've had my share. And I felt the word God has given me is very different, though no less satisfactory to me than my pastor's was to him. And I've spoken to other people with still another freeing word.
So what am I to think? Are we all off? Should we all try to figure out which word is right and speak it to all who suffer? I don't think so. I think that my pastor's right when he says we can't humanly comprehend suffering. I don't think any word in the world would do any good if it weren't for the One who spoke it. We are comforted by a word because we are hearing the voice of our Savior, and He's telling us He's in control and He has a reason. The individual word applies to our particular circumstances, but in the end I don't think it really matters. What matters is that God is real, and He speaks to us.

Glimpses of God

Today I made a list of all the things that come easily to me - things I used to take for granted but now recognize as incredible gifts from God. It was an incredible experience, for I found that each gift showed me a glimpse of what God is like. Certain gifts, like a natural compassion for kids, are regularly thought of as ways to show an aspect of God's character, so no surprise there. But others, like anything artistic, I feel are often overlooked. These gifts speak of His incredible creativity, His zest for life, and His sense of humor.
It's funny because I used to beg God to show me more of what He was like - what made Him laugh, or what His favorite color was. I never dreamed the answers lay in the gifts I ignored because I didn't credit God with granting them to me. I thought that by claiming God's gifts as my own natural ability, I would gain a sense of fulfillment. But in reality, I lost everything, because I lost sight of God.

It's All Him

I started this blog during a time where my only purpose was to soak in God's love and be with Him rather to serve Him. You could say God called me to a brief time as a hermit or something like that. As I'm sure you've gathered from reading my blog, it hasn't often been fun for me to just sit and allow Him to minister to me, but I have learned more about Him than I ever thought possible, and I'm grateful He made me go through this time. But now, I can see that God's finally calling me to a time of serving. Now I'm serving in capacities I never have before, and I can see that what I do is simply an outpouring of all He's brought me through in the past few months. Just like He told me, there's no struggle. Serving in these new ways is as natural as breathing, because He's doing it all. It's pure glory to be a medium for God to flow through (a tree!).
But you know what God has shown me? Why it's so hard to live in this place of empowerment. See, not only are things coming easily to me, but I'm also doing them well. How can I not when God's doing them through me? But it's so easy to forget and to start thinking I'm something special. Then I know what will happen, because I've been here before. I'll start by enjoying the praises of men and enjoying feeling good at something. Then I'll start trying to impress people with what I do. The minute that happens, the minute I start trying in my own strength, I take the work out of God's hands. Then suddenly I'm stuck with a burden I was never meant to bear, trying to live up to something I could never live up to, wondering what went wrong.
As I wrote in "Standing," the fight is to lie down at God's feet and stay there, no matter what happens.

Exploding for Jesus

Two Sundays ago I felt God speak a special promise over my life. It was Psalm 22:14, "I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint. " Not necessarily something you tell all your friends and celebrate over, but I knew what God meant. He meant that He was growing me into the person who could fully be His tree [see Dua Fe]. He was making me into someone who was capable of being fully given for God and for others, to the point where it ripped my body to shreds. And as unappealing as this sounds to the flesh (who, in its defense, will be the most directly affected), this is my greatest desire. Don't ask me to explain why, because the only answer to that question I have is that God put that desire within me when He spoke that promise.
Anyway, as I was thinking of the previous post, it occurred to me that God is so big He would destroy me if He tried to fit inside of me. I would burst. The it hit me.. if that happened my bones would be out of joint and my blood would be running everywhere.
Is it possible that God asks us to take in so much of Him that it literally destroys our flesh, but in the bursting of that flesh His glory is revealed? It's an interesting thought - one that is threatening to burst my brain!

God is Too Good

I was thinking about the struggle between wanting God to do and wanting God to be. It seems like the hardest command in the Bible is "be still and know that I am God." Yet God has shown me over the past few months that those moments when I let Him sow me a glimpse of who He is - those moments when I allow myself to be still - are the most incredible moments of my life. So why is this command such a struggle? You'd think I'd go to the other extreme, sitting in my room refusing to move for days on end!
I think God scares me. It's not that I'm scared to go into His presence because I feel unworthy or anything like that. That would be a common problem easy to identify and deal with. No, I think I'm scared that God is simply too good to be true. I've been raised in a world where good things don't last - the other shoe always drops. If I'm having a mountaintop experience with God one day, my mind assures me that a valley's coming tomorrow.
In this world, good things don't last. It's a world full of shifting sand. But God isn't of this world, and neither am I. He will be with me in the valley the same way He is on the mountaintop. He will be with me when a child dies the same way He is with me when a child's life is saved. He never changes. He's always with me. He always loves me. God isn't too good to be true, He's true and He's good.
Now, maybe if I repeat this to myself one hundred times a day for the next lifetime, I'll start to believe it. I'll start to be able to fathom the incredible goodness of my Savior!

Lessons from a Dog

While I was praying today, my dog came into my room [the one of "Worse than a Dog" fame]. Without even realizing what I was doing, I put my hand on her, looked into her eyes, and said, "You are so beautiful." I immediately became self-conscious, thinking there was no reason why God would have had me do that. I began to rationalize, thinking maybe what I said would transfer in the Spirit to some kid somewhere. But God had something to show me.
What possessed me to think He wouldn't care about a dog? My natural, fleshly instinct was to argue that a child was more important, and it was a waste to spend time on a dog with so much else to do. That's when it hit me. God doesn't prioritize. He doesn't have to. He doesn't ignore the most insignificant being, like lilies in a field, to go feed starving children in Africa. Jesus made it very clear that I can't even begin to imagine the depth of His concern for little flowers. Yet it's not like He devotes Himself to them at the expense of other things. He is so great and good that He is able to care for us exponentially more than lilies.
As I sat there looking at my dog, I was given a tiny taste of how much God cared for her. The love I felt was almost too much for my human frame to bear. If this is how much God loves my goofy little dog, how much more must He love His children?
You know, when I wrote the poem "Lord, You are Awesome", I couldn't explain why I ended every stanza with that statement. Now I know. As I began to grasp God's love for my dog, all I could say was, "Lord, You are awesome."

Random Thought

You know how in heaven Jesus will wipe away every tear? Maybe that means finally He'll be able to comfort us Himself and not have to go through another person. I believe Jesus is looking forward to the day when He'll personally hold us and wipe away all our tears!

Long Distance Prayer

Ok, God's really emphasizing the prayer thing right now. Today I remembered an incident that happened about a year ago. I was massaging a particularly difficult and hard-harted woman, and while I worked I prayed for her. I prayed for God to touch her life. God told me, "I can't. She would never receive it. But she lets you touch her, so you'll have to do it for me." Now obviously God was touching her through me, but I got the point. People have never been particularly eager to go to God directly - they want someone with skin on. I think this is the biggest reason why God chooses to work through His followers even though we limit Him so much.
Anyway, since that time I've believed that I carry God's presence with me everywhere I go. That's why in Ghana I felt that God was holding those children as I did. But now I'm back home, and I felt that my hope for those kids (assuming another Christian never goes to volunteer at that orphanage) was that they would remember that presence and seek it for themselves. Let's just say today God blew that assumption right out of the water!
Today my pastor made a simple statement that has the capacity to change my life. He said we could wash the feet of others in our thoughts and with our prayers. How stupid of me to think that God is confined to physical space! I don't fully understand how this works, but God clearly showed me that when I pray for those kids, He is holding them through me even though I'm hundreds of miles away.
I can't express to you how I felt as I received this revelation. I can hold my kids! The kids I've been missing so much I can't even think about them. The kids I've been weeping for. God gave them back to me! If I could fully wrap my head around this, I don't think I'd ever stop praying. I'd never let them go!
You know what's funny? When I was the only volunteer at that orphanage, and when the kids were feeling especially cuddly, I had to employ a specially developed way of sitting that would allow up to eight kids to sit in my lap at once (don't ask!). But when I pray, I can hold all of them at once!
Just when I thought prayer was all about God and not about what I wanted, God showed me more.

A More Mature Prayer

God often, if not always, has to draw people to Himself by showing them how He can benefit them. He gives them the love they've been looking for all their life. He gives them peace. He heals them. He gives them dreams and promises. God loves, and it's His delight to open the storehouses of heaven and rain down blessings upon us. But if we never care to get to know more about God than what He can do for us, we will never enter into the fullness of His presence. If we think of God as a being who fulfills our needs, we will eventually be disappointed and disillusioned. Eventually, God won't do what we expect, and we won't be able to understand why.
God fills our every need, but He's so much more than a being that hands out the daily necessities of life. To not catch a glimpse of the incredible richness of ALL a relationship with God has to offer is to remain forever a child.

Humorous Aside

On a more humorous note, I thought I'd just put it out there that the last few blogs were written on the notepad of my cellphone. Not a pda or anything like that, but an ordinary flip phone. When you don't have paper but God is speaking, what are you going to do? But I wonder if I'm the first one to write a poem using T9!
Also, I'd like to make sure you know I"m aware that the last few blogs have been variations on a theme. Obviously it's a theme of my life right now. Maybe if one blog doesn't speak to you, another one will. Skim!

Why Pray

I have struggled with the concept of prayer all my Christian life. At first it was questions like, why bother to tell God things He already knows? Why ask God for things if He'll only do them if it's His will? Do I really believe God would make a sick person die just because I wouldn't pray for them? More recently God has showed me how amazing it is to be in the presence of God - I've had moments of joy that I wouldn't trade for the world. From that I learned that prayer helps me, but what about the other six billion people on the planet? Well, obviously if I'm full of the presence of God, everyone I touch will experience His presence as well. And what about people on the other side of the world? God showed me that when I pray for them, I bring them into His presence as well.
All good stuff, and all totally true, but I think my focus is wrong. Once again, I'm looking for God to DO something. I'm praying to get that tingly feeling all over or because I don't want to se someone suffer. But the point of Christianity is to BE with Christ. How can I sit and tell people Jesus is everything if He isn't everything to me? Prayer isn't just about getting stuff from God, it's acknowledging that there's nowhere else I'd rather be. It's giving up all my selfish desires of what I'd like to do with my time as I dedicate my life to sitting at His feet. It's total surrender. And when God has a people who pray like that, He has a people He can use to do anything!
Of course, it could be that when we pray, we're otherwise occupied and not able to get in the way of God's plans! Joking... sort-of! ;)

Waiting for God's Promises

I've had a hard time lately because I feel like God has spoken so many promises to me and to my family, but none of them are coming true right now. I love it when I see God doing what He said, and I can handle it if God shows me that He wants me to work on a particular aspect of my walk before He moves. In either case, I have confidence that He's going to move. But waiting with no apparent reason is a little tougher. In fact, it freaks me out! But I finally figured out why. It's the fear that God's not going to come through - that my faith was in vain. I can accept that I was wrong sometimes, but when day after day nothing ever happens, I begin to doubt that anything ever will.
I've been thinking of David a lot lately. I've sympathized with him because he had to spend time hiding in caves just because some insecure king was jealous of him. Now I've been sympathizing with him because he had to wait twenty years to see a promise fulfilled. What doubts must have clouded David's mind during that time! He must have wondered if Samuel was wrong. Maybe sometimes he wondered if he did something wrong and blew it. Perhaps he just lived with the fear that he would be a laughingstock to all who know he had been anointed if God didn't come through. But from reading the Psalms, I can see that David must have come to the same conclusion God recently brought me to.
If I'm focusing on the promises, I'm focusing on what God will do. I'm not focusing on who God IS. And He IS here with me right now. That's one promise I don't have to wait for - He will never leave me or forsake me. He has me in His arms and will never let me go. If I focus on what God does, I will never be satisfied, because I will never be able to understand His ways. But if I focus on who He is, I have everything I will ever need or want... right now!

My Testimony

I was thinking about my testimony today. I gave up a dream I had devoted twenty years of my life to because I learned that the plans God has for me are far better than the ones I have for myself. When I was pursuing my own plan for my life, I found it never satisfied me. I knew God wanted me to give it up, but for years I had myself convinced that God wanted to take away everything that I held dear. I was convinced I would be happy when I achieved this or that goal. When I finally submitted to God, I saw how God was only asking me to give up what was killing me. Happy ending, right? Unfortunately, if I had learned all I needed to, I'd be the perfect Christian now would be off saving souls instead of blogging! As I think of what happened in Ghana, I see that the problem with my past life wasn't simply that I wasn't following God's plan.
One of the plans God had for me that I certainly didn't have for myself was to go to Ghana and minister to children there. I went, all excited to watch God's plan unfold. And though I wouldn't trade that time for anything, I certainly didn't feel the incredible joy I expected as I walked the life of a victorious Christian. I've talked in past blogs about how I tried to do things in my own power, a power I didn't have. But I wasn't just miserable because I was always exhausted, I was miserable because I was alone. God's plan for my life is great, but even that plan means nothing if I don't have Him. I used to think of my past life and shudder at how miserable I felt. I would say that I would give up anything because I learned God's plan was so much better than my own, but even that wonderful plan is meaningless. Now I see my life was empty because I didn't have Him - I didn't have that living presence with me through each day, no matter what happened. Living with Him is everything. I'll follow Him, not because my life will be so much better if I do what He says, but because I want to be with Him, no matter where that is.

Children

I've been thinking about how we really can't do anything for children - the ones that starve to death in Africa every day or the ones we see in America. Without God, they have nothing, and He is the only one who can reach them. Many people believe you have to wait for them to grow up so they can understand the intricacies of Christianity, but I don't. Christianity is simple, it's adults who make it complicated. I think children just need an encounter with God, and basic Bible knowledge to clarify what they've experienced. But once they meet God, He grows and shapes their lives. I long for them to feel His presence and want everything He has for them. God has given me a vision for all children everywhere.

Not to...

Teach them to worship, but to give them a reason to worship.

Teach them about God, but to introduce them to God through teaching.

Make them be good, but to give them a reason to want to be good.

Teach them the way, but to show them the way.

Tell them God loves them, but to love them with the love of God.

Try to wear them out, but to channel their energy.

Try to help them, but to allow God to help them through me.

Shape their destinies, but to show them who they are.