Friday, February 18, 2011

Your not ready yet

Today was the first time I cried in a while. The weather is warming up, the snow is melting and the date when me and Leah first met is drawing closer. This has been making me depressed lately which really sucks! Plain and simple, I HATE it! I felt like I had been doing so well, I felt like I was coming out of the darkness I had been in. Today made me realize that I'm not even close. They say you can't put a date on when you will be fully OK again. This is one reality I have been trying to change. I just want to know when is this going to be over?! The only thing I know for sure is that I'm not as close to being done as I thought I was.

God has been shaping me and molding me through this entire process and I believe that he has something truly great planned for me. But what is it? I want to know now! I want to just take a peek maybe at what the next year of my life looks like? That's all I want. However God does not grant us peeks, where would faith be if we knew exactly what was going to happen? We probably wouldn't even follow Gods plan and try and make our own. But anyway, lately I feel like I have been spinning my wheels. I feel so charged up to go do something immaculate for God that I get frustrated and ask why am I here?  I ask "God let me go out and do something great!!! Is that not what You want?" Of course that's what He wants and that's what He has planned. But the simple fact of it is He wants me to effect change here and now. God wants me to bloom right where I'm planted. This realization struck me when I was doing my latest God study "Experiencing God". I was reading about how before we do something great God has to prepare us for that great task. It hit me like a ton of bricks. I was dumbfounded that I had been missing what God was trying to teach me right now. I have been trying my best to help other people and share my testimony. This has felt so small to what I feel like I should be doing. But it hit me, "God has me doing these tasks right now to mold me into what He wants me to be, so I can accomplish GREAT things through Him later." Duh? I mean if you think about it if the manager for the Atlanta Braves baseball club told a rookie pitcher, for his career debut, he was pitching in game 7 of the World Series he probably would be pretty excited, I know I would! But when that game came he probably would do so hot. Why? Because he would not be ready! He needs a lot more experience and more training before he is ready for game 7 of the World Series. That is how God gets us ready for His ultimate purpose, by starting small and building are way up. Jeremiah 29:11 talks about how God has plans for us to prosper. But we may not be ready for that prosperity yet. We may have some more growing to do. So, as sad and scary as knowing that I have a long way to go before I'm out of this, I find it terrifying. However I am also very excited! Just seeing how He has grown me in these past few months makes me excited to see how much I will have grown when this is over.

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Why worry?

Everyday I wonder what will happen next? Where do I go from here? What is my career going to be? Who will I marry? God what is your plan for my life?
I really want to know what God has planned for my life and I want to follow His plan. I think as Christians we all do! But the simple fact is He doesn't lay it out for us. Do we think even if he did we would follow it? Do I think that if I looked at the plan for my life I would say, "Yep God everything looks exactly how I want it! I cant wait until I fall in love with that girl and then she unexpectedly dies in a car accident!" No, I don't think we would be all to excited to follow everything God has planned for us. We would want to change things, maybe skip some of the hardships and troubling times. How arrogant of us right? To think that we could make our plans for our lives better than God can? But no, God does not lay it all out for us. In fact he doesn't really give us a whole lot of detail about what are lives will be like? Look at what Jesus says to Matthew in Matt 9:9 "As Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector's booth. "Follow me," he told him, and Matthew got up and followed him." What?! I mean seriously! If I was sitting on a bench and some guy walked up to me and said "Hey come follow me, I'm gonna save the world" would I be like "Yea OK, you look like an honest guy why not?" Heck no! I would say "Well I don't know who you think you are? But I'm not going anywhere with you." But that's not what Matthew did at all. He got up and followed Jesus! He didn't know where he was going or what to expect he just got up and went. That is EXACTLY what God calls us to do! He doesn't really tell us what is going to happen exactly, He just tells us to get up and go! Then He tells us to trust him and to know that His plan will be revealed to us if we follow Him. We as humans expect a plan and drawn out well detailed plan that will tell us exactly what to do. But God tells us to just go! "Just go? But God what about? Just GO!" So why do we worry? God tells us to just go and serve Him and he will take care of us. In Matt 6:25-27 This is what Jesus says "Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? 26 Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? 27 Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?" He tells us not to worry, it does nothing for us? He tells us he will provide for us. So again why do I worry? I don't know? All I know is that God will provide if I just trust in Him!