Kingdoms

Mind if I treat this one like a bit of a journal entry for a second and start out with some candid, honest dismissal? I should be wrapping up a homework assignment right now. That is, I "should" be according to the part of me that tends to pipe in with great insistence that I have to put a high priority on academics. That being said, here comes the dismissal bit: as you can see, I'm not doing my homework at the moment. Don't worry, I'll get to it. I'll just probably have a bit of a clearer head to do it well once I get some things transferred from mind and heart to words. I'm weird and function that way. Now, to get more to the point so I can get around to that homework and thus ease the pain for those of you who may or may not be lecturing to your screens right now as if I can hear you...

I am not my own.

I know a lot of us Christians tend to say that a lot, but lately it's been hitting me harder and harder. It's counter-cultural, in a world that tells me my life is mine, that I should do my thing and pursue my desires and do things that will better the kingdom of Me. Well, in my limited time on this planet I've come to the conclusion that the Kingdom of Me is pretty crummy and quite a bit boring and pointless. There's another kingdom, though, that I'd much rather throw my allegiance into--a kingdom that's all about a whole lot more than me.

At the heart of this other kingdom is a King who not only has all the authority there's ever been, but who deserves such authority far more than me or you or anyone else--so much so that it's a pretty pathetic comparison. There's no one to compare with this King, for not only does He have all this power, but in His sovereignty He chooses deliberately to rescue the broken and frail and helpless--basically, the people who could never have any hope of either doing or being anything close to what this holy King deserves. Not only does He rescue us, though, He turns around and chooses just as deliberately to use these broken containers to transport His message--His heart--to others who are just as broken and incapable (hint: that's all of us).

Now, I know you're not necessarily too familiar with the Kingdom of Me, but doesn't the Kingdom of Him sound a whole lot more glorious than a pitiful one-man show squeaking about its own importance amid a crowd of other solo-citizen kingdoms fighting their way through this life for their own fading glories? I think so.

I had a conversation with a friend a little while back in which we were discussing happiness, and I remarked to her that I've noticed in my own life I'm never happier than when my life is more about other people than it is about just me. There's really no quicker way to misery for me than for all my thoughts, prayers, and desired to be centered around the Kingdom of Me. Don't get me wrong; I still find myself wandering down that miserable trail sometimes--in fact, it's a lot more often than my prideful self would like me to admit. But it's still miserable. It feels empty and pointless and lonely. And it reeks of self-pity, judgmental harshness, and failure.

I don't like that path. But to get off it, I must allow Jesus to shift my thoughts, prayers, and desires toward what (who) He is thinking of and praying for and desiring. And to do that, I have to let go of the many and mini concerns of the Kingdom of Me. I have to hand it over to Him all over again and remind myself that He's a much more capable ruler than I am, and that His Kingdom will remain long after my fleeting time on this earth is ended.

But although His Kingdom is far better than mine, it still doesn't mean an easy road for its citizens. It means my life is not my own, that it's not about me, which means it's actually a whole lot about others. It's all about Jesus, but I find He very often has people on His heart, and has this tendency to put them on my heart as well. And so there are times when my own individual life may seem to be going pretty smoothly along with work and school and only the usual, rather insignificant issues or struggles of normal everyday life.

Perhaps it would be so simple and straightforward, if His Kingdom were somehow still all about the Kingdom of Me. But it's not. And because it's not, I carry around with me pieces of other people's lives. I get to rejoice in the triumphs of what God's doing in one friend's life, and meanwhile be absolutely aching for what another is going through. I get to stand hopeful and expectant, and I get to weep tears of anguish, pleading for redemption or victory or peace in the lives of people I love. It means sometimes I am compelled to say things that sheepish me would rather not bring up. Every once in a while, it even means giving a complete stranger a hug. But no matter how awkward or outright difficult the things He calls me to walk through are, I would never ever trade the beauty and glory and deep-seated joy to be found in living for His Kingdom, for the pitiful and temporary happiness of living for the Kingdom of Me.

But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For His sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I might gain Christ and be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes from faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith--that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and may share His sufferings, becoming like Him in His death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me His own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal of the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.  -Philippians 3:7-14

Press on.

ID Please?

I live in the midst of a generation who's been told all our lives that we need to find or forge or otherwise know our identity. And I've grown up in a culture that's told us to all be uniquely who we are, no matter if that offends others or looks odd. Strangely though, the result of this supposed "uniqueness" has produced a largely monotonous picture that I feel is best summed up in a friend's observation several years back (when camo was a fad for the cool kids) : "Everybody wears camo saying they're being unique," he said, "But everybody's wearing camo. That's not unique; that's just following the crowd."

We as humans tend to find our identity by comparison. Either we compare our lives to others' we respect, or we compare our lives to others' we despise in some way or another. A few bold souls actually manage to step out of the crowd and do something actually different, but in most cases their identities are so closely tied to their art or whatever other means they've become truly unique in--that an attack on their work (or whatever their identity is wrapped up in) comes through as a direct attack on their very being.

However, there's another place for our identities to be found. It's a place where we are asked to lose our identities in order to truly find them, and in truth, it's never really so much about our identities as this crazy, messed-up world tells us identity is. See, over the past eight or so years, I've been in the process of slowly losing my identity--or the identity I once assumed was mine--and embracing who I was really created to be. I wrote in my journal quite a few years back the statement "The more you get to know Me (God), the more you get to know the person I created you to be." At the time, it was an attempt at a song lyric, but even though that never panned out, the statement has stuck with me all this time.

You see, I serve a God (the God) who created me and knows every single detail of not only my life and how I operate, but how I was meant to operate--who I was meant to be. I was born broken, maimed by sin and dead in spirit. But that's not how my story was supposed to end, and I daresay that--although you and I share the same beginning--that's not how yours is supposed to end, either.

I mostly grew up thinking I was shy and nothing out of the ordinary. Mainly, shy. And ever since the day I read 2 Timothy 1:7, that wall started to completely and utterly crumble. Because if "God did not give us a spirit of fear, but of power, of love, and of a sound mind," then the shyness I so liked to hide behind, wasn't really the "God made me this way" thing I liked to claim it was. God hadn't intended me to live that way. And so, in these past seven our eight years, I have been on a journey that has partially been defined by a transition from being literally the shyest person I've ever met, to currently voluntarily placing myself in a foreign country where I'm surrounded by a language I'm still consistently stumbling my way through. And I actually wasn't that nervous when I got on the plane.

How did that happen? Well, you see, that little line in my journal however-many-years-ago has rung true all this time. The more I get to know Jesus, the more I find myself transformed by Him. It's more than Him rubbing off on me; He is in the process of forging in me what He saw when He created me. The more I know His heart, the more I want mine to look like it. And that looks different in different people, because we serve a God who delights in constructing unique lives and stories with a common theme expressed in a multitude of ways. All us Christians have one calling: to follow Christ and let His love cause us to love others and treat them as more important than ourselves. And yet, that calling looks different in different believers: some are called to other countries either temporarily or long-term, some are called to stay in their hometown all their lives, some are called to write, some to teach, some to sing, some to study, some many of these things at once. God has uniquely gifted every individual, and has a plan and a purpose for them.

Which leads me to the inspiration of this post. Some friends of mine are incredibly gifted in the areas of music scoring and video production. That, combined with a tremendous passion for and pursuit of Christ, has led to the creation of a video entitled "He Is," which is a meditation on the Names of God.

There's a reason when someone asks you for your ID, that identification has your name on it. Names are important; and the names God calls Himself in the Bible say much about His character. Because He can't lie, therefore each of these descriptions is true of Him. And He is so much vaster than any one descriptor can pin down for our finite minds. We can't grasp the fullness of who He is. Not in this life. And it is the grandest of all adventures to follow Him on a path of getting to know exactly who He is in deeper ways day after day.

All that being said, please give "He Is" a view and a listen, and allow yourself and your identity to shrink into a tiny, forgotten speck before the grandeur that is our God. Because He is...

Plans

Lately, I've been in or around quite a few conversations in which someone (sometimes myself) has said, "I don't know what it's gonna look like." And, believe it or not, those words have been deeply encouraging to me.

You see, I have grown up amid a culture that preached to me continually the importance of having a plan. When I was in high school, I was told I needed to set goals for myself, both short-term and long-term. I needed to have clear aims to focus on, self-imposed "deadlines," so-to-speak. Because, if you don't have a plan and don't know where you're going, you're obviously not going to get anywhere or do anything worthwhile with your life...right?

I struggled with this because at that time I honestly didn't know what my future was going to look like. There were a lot of things I could see myself doing as a job, but when it came to choosing what to pursue, I felt completely at a loss. Adults in my life told me it was okay to not have a clear picture just yet, as I still had several more years to figure it out before going to college and picking a major, etc.

But then something incredible happened. Just as I was starting to formulate my short-term goals for what would happen once I graduated college, God intervened. He started to nudge me down a different path than anything I had ever considered. As I walked a little hesitantly down this new path that started with putting college off for a year to attend Ellerslie, I tasted for the first time the sheer bliss of having only a general sense of what God was about to do in my life. I knew He had been clear that this was where and how I was supposed to spend the next few months (actually, at the time I thought I would be there for a full year), but as for what it would look like, I had no clue nor any way to predict it. Ellerslie was just starting up the summer I went there; there was no predicting just what was going to happen with students from all over coming to this tiny town in Colorado with the goal of pursuing Christ together.

Since that summer, it seems every major step I've taken--and even the smaller steps, too--have followed a very similar pattern of knowing where God was leading me but not having any kind of a clear or easily-articulated picture of what it was going to look like. And over and over again, I've seen God work in amazing ways, doing more than I ever could have imagined. His thoughts aren't like ours; He sees the big picture, as well as every tiny and minute detail that goes into it. Consequently, His ways are different than ours--they're higher; they're better (Isaiah 55:8). And they tend to look crazy or even a little more than crazy in the eyes of the world, because they don't follow the same line of thinking as our limited point of view. His plans often cause us to take risks--risks that don't make sense, even to us at times. But they always cause us to rely on Him more and in ways that we wouldn't otherwise.

And that is why I get excited when I hear someone talking about starting something new or doing things differently, and those words, "I don't know what it's going to look like exactly," come out of that person's mouth: because in those words I recognize a sense of willingness to let God take the lead and orchestrate the steps in carrying out whatever dream or desire or "goal" the person may be talking about. It's in those times where where we don't know exactly what will happen next or what something is about to look like--what an idea will look like when it's actually being lived out--that our faith grows and our hearts begin to taste the deep joy of allowing God to have all there is of us.

"The heart of man plans his way, but the LORD establishes his steps." -Proverbs 16:9

Now.

In this life, every season has an ending. Just as we don't stay helpless newborns forever, there comes a day when you realize (or your parents realize) that you're getting too big to be carried. The days of being fed by others pass, and in time we grow and learn how to feed ourselves, how to make our own decisions, how to live. And even though we may sometimes look back at those special seasons of our lives where everything seemed great and want to go back to those carefree summer days in fourth grade catching fireflies in the backyard, that season has ended. A new one is here. And just ahead, peeking through the trees over the crest of this next hill, another season will come. And we don't always know what comes next. For me, I seldom do, and even when I have a glimpse of what lies ahead, I never, ever, know exactly how it is to unfold, and when it does, I realize that that little glimpse I had was just one very small part out of all God was doing.

But this is what has been impressed like a blazing brand upon my heart and mind lately: Now. Yesterday's seasons have passed, and God knows exactly how their memories and lessons will play into what is to come. Tomorrow is not yet here, but rests in the faithful hands of the very Author of time. But every moment, this is what lies before me: Now. I can't change the past or the future, but I am given a choice in the now, right here. Will I trust my God, or look to my own strength? Will I focus on those around me, who may only be nearby for a short amount of time, or on myself, whom I'll be stuck with for my entire life? Will I seek their good, or my own? Will I be bold when the moment calls for it, or will I cower? Will I dare to trust my God?

As with every season, this moment in my life is coming to an end--rapidly! I have just over three weeks left on this campus...three. Three short weeks. And then I venture into yet another adventure-filled season which I have no idea what exactly it may look like. God's leading me back home, leading me to transfer colleges and embark on a brand new adventure in regards to...well, pretty much everything. Life as I know it is once again changing. 

And it means a lot of painful goodbyes. For that, I'm truly grateful, because it's proof that God has blessed me so richly by surrounding me with so many people that I love dearly in Him and who have impacted and enriched my life in ways they may never know. Goodbyes for me are always intensely bittersweet, because I can't seem to help but deeply love the people God puts in my path. Even the ones my heart aches and agonizes over because they are so far from Him...in fact, those people are sometimes the hardest to say goodbye to, because some part of me they may never fully see expressed is inwardly crying out on their behalf, yearning for them to behold the Living God. 

But somehow, all these dreaded, agonizing farewells have come to hold a very special place in my heart. They are a token of God's goodness, and a reminder that even in my most painful moments, He is faithful to sustain and His joy remains unquenched. They may be moments I'd rather live without (I hate goodbyes!), but they are moments I would have never had unless God had brought me to them, unless He had never put people in my life whom I could care this deeply for. 

Still it is before me: Now. I have right now. Yesterday is gone, and tomorrow awaits, but unless my gaze is set on Christ's face and ready for what He has to say and do in the right now, that now will pass away before I had the chance to live it. When my eyes are straining ahead to try to figure out steps I haven't yet gotten to, they fail to see the now that lies between me and that future ahead. It is now I am responsible for. But praise God, I do not have to bear that responsibility alone. My life is mine to yield to Him. Now. Right now, in this moment.

So don't take the now for granted. Pull your thoughts from your to-do list and rest in His faithfulness, in the right now. He sees the future. He knows. He's got it. Quit worrying and trying to get there on your own steam and in your own ways, and let the One who laid this path at your feet lead you from the now to the tomorrow. 

Whatever season you find yourself in right now, don't take it for granted. Don't let now slip by without you getting to taste the beauty of living it with the One who brought you to it. Don't let it fade into the yesterdays by treating it as though it were gone already. Treasure it. Treasure Him. Seek Him. Follow hard.

Rak khazak!

When People I Respect Break My Heart...

My confidence is not in people; it’s in Christ. Were it not for that, by now I probably would have been much more deeply shaken when people who are leaders in my generation give me reason to lose a measure of respect for them. However, it still grieves me deeply to see that kind of thing happen, especially with leaders who are Christians.

Lies can be powerful, but the Truth is stronger. Which is part of why I am not personally shaken in my beliefs or my stance when I see someone else believing or teaching a lie. But at the same time, witnessing that kind of thing always hits me squarely in the heart, because it grieves me to see anyone deceived themselves and/or deceiving others without knowing it.

I am currently in the middle of the third book in Ted Dekker’s Circle Trilogy, which have been my first introduction to his writings. These books are amazing and have deeply encouraged me in my own writing because of how poignantly and powerfully they display the Gospel through fiction and fantasy. Many times while reading these books, even though I haven’t finished yet, I have paused in awe as I witnessed within them something I have begun to glimpse in recent years about writing and its purpose. The ultimate purpose of writing is to communicate the truth, and fiction and fantasy provide an incredibly unique and—I believe—needed (at least to an extent) opportunity to talk about things that are real in terms of things that aren’t. Good writing will always, invariably, express at least some aspect of reality—be it human nature, a particular society or culture, whatever. But the most important thing any of it can point to is the reality of the things of God—who He is, what He has done, how He interacts with people, how He is at work in our world.

The Circle Trilogy contains a powerful and creative view of creation, the Fall, Christ’s sacrifice, and the new life we now have access to. Which is why I love them and part of why, when I found out Ted Dekker was coming out with a new sort of mini-series, I trusted him as a storyteller and expected to see the Gospel again within a different fictional premise.

He came so close.

But rather than the glory of the Good News, in the latter part of Eyes Wide Open, I instead found a painfully watered-down message posing in its place. The moment I started to realize where Dekker was going with the story, I started in shock and felt my heart tighten in a mixture of anguish and anger from the blow.

If it was only about me, I wouldn’t care this much. I learned a long time ago to “eat the meat and spit out the bones” when it comes to reading. But it’s not about me. That anguish and anger I felt? It wasn’t directed at Ted Dekker. It was directed at the subtle lies the enemy has somehow woven into our culture and which I suddenly realized Dekker had fallen prey to in some form.

Let me break away from this for a moment to give some explanation surrounding things here. In Eyes Wide Open, one of the main things Ted Dekker is confronting is self-image, which I agree with him is something that a lot of Christians struggle with. One of his main characters is a girl who is convinced she is ugly and who struggles with her external sense of image. I don’t want to act like all girls wrestle with this same issue of feeling the need to be pretty or beautiful, but I’ll admit that I, too, used to secretly lament that I felt I was fairly plain-looking and not attractive.

I haven’t believed that in years. 

What happened? Well first, I met the One who looks not on the outward appearance, but at the heart. Then, I realized just how vile and disgusting my heart was. Over the years, my sin had ravaged the thing and turned it into an icky, slimy, wretched, self-centered mess. But the same One who saw that even more clearly than I did, had already done something about it. He stepped into human flesh and lived a perfect life and died the death that alone could atone for God’s own, just wrath over the wickedness that otherwise would have forever separated me from His holiness. “He fought death, beat it, gave His life to the public,” as Flame says in the song “Joyful Noise.” He conquered sin and death and offered me new life in Him—His life.

Now my life is His, not mine. I died to my old self, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. I get to share my life with the One who gave it to me in the first place! And right around that same time when I started to truly understand who He is and who I am in Him, my feelings of insecurity slid to the back burner and then gradually started to disappear. I stopped caring about what others thought of me, because I was beginning to care more what God thought of me. And, not because of my own merit or anything I had to offer Him, He loved me. He loves me because of who He is, not who I am. He is love. And Love reached down to fight for the soul of a feeble, rebellious, selfish young girl so that He could draw her towards Himself, the only One who could right what was wrong within that soul. He performed His surgery, removing my heart of stone and transplanting His living, beating heart within my chest. It was all Him.

And where I defined my confidence and identity as coming from started to change from myself to Christ, I found I no longer had to worry about what I looked like—my physical appearance or people’s perception of me as a person—because it just didn’t matter anymore. All I really started to care about was what God thought, and because of Christ I am justified in His sight. God looks at me, and sees Jesus’ sacrifice that has washed me clean and given me access to enter before Him and to commune with Him. And at the same time, amazingly, He is aware of my sin and continues His work of sanctifying me—leading me in repentance and helping me to love and trust Him more with every step.

Returning to the book: in Eyes Wide Open, Ted Dekker presents a message that is based on a somewhat-subtle distortion of the Gospel. And I don’t think he did that on purpose in any way. The idea is rather prevalent in our “Christian” culture today, firstly, that salvation is all about us. Don’t get me wrong; it is and it isn’t. Christ did not die merely to let us feel better about things or to give us a better life, just like He didn’t die just to get us into Heaven after we die. Jesus said He came that we might have life, and have it abundantly. He also said He is the Life, and that the only way to the Father is through Him (John 14:6).

See, something crazy happens at salvation. You die to yourself so that you may truly live—experiencing Life as it was meant to be, united with God. And, according to Scripture, you find your life and your identity in the person of Jesus Christ. (I highly recommend reading Romans—Paul explains all this much better than I can!) God doesn’t step into your life to empower you to live like you want; He steps into your life to empower to live like He wants—what He created you for, which also turns out to always be what is best for us in the first place. Crazy, huh?

But see, there’s this lie that has crept into some people’s understanding of all that. It’s loosely based on parts of Scripture but not the whole—saying that because God created everything good in the beginning, we’re still basically good at the core; the good’s just been somehow clouded over by sin. Again, I recommend Romans—specifically chapter 3—for anyone wondering what the truth on the matter is. (Paul spends about half the chapter explaining why nobody is good or righteous in God’s sight apart from Christ.) This idea so many people have swallowed, though, says that our “real,” “true” self is buried deep down there somewhere, and that it’s what God sees in us and that He wants us to discover. It says that when the Bible talks about “dying to self” it’s talking about rejecting the “fake” you, the sinful one.

But it’s not. It’s dying to you, your desires, your life, your plans. That’s a hard pill to swallow, which is probably why the more palatable idea offered by the above ideology has become so popular. But when you truly die to yourself, surrendering all that you are and offering it up as a sacrifice to God (by the way, sacrifices die), that’s when you’re ready for real Life to set you free. As often as we focus on ourselves, God did not create us to live an existence that revolves around our own little lives. He made us to get caught up in something much bigger—His existence, His story, His plans. To know Him. We have to die to our own will, so that we can be set free to live in accordance with His will—which is life and peace and hope and joy…eternal Life (see John 17:3).

A side-effect of the idea that our “true” selves are good at the core is something that is voiced by one of Dekker’s characters in Chapter 20 of Eyes Wide Open: “You cannot love anything or anyone more than you love yourself and you can’t truly love yourself unless you see yourself whole. If you secretly disapprove of any part of yourself, you will secretly hate part of the one who made you.”

Love yourself…nowhere is that commanded in the entire Bible. If that was such an important component of what it means to be a Christian or to be set free to live as God wants us to, don’t you think He would have mentioned it at least once? Nope, again and again throughout Scripture love is characterized by a willingness to offer up itself, to give of itself for the sake of another. In fact, Jesus actually said that your love for your self and your own life should look like more like hatred in comparison with loving God, or else you are not His disciple. 

I know that some people have acted like certain passages imply that we're supposed to love ourselves, and if you believe that's the case, I beg you to go back and read the context of those verses. See if that's really what God is saying there. Also, keep in mind that human reasoning about what a verse says or means will always, only, invariably be that—human reasoning.

We love others because God first loved us. It’s not dependent on us or our ability. Like everything else about our lives, when we accept Christ’s gift of salvation, everything comes to rely on not us, but Him. Our identity is wrapped up in who He is—for apart from Him we can do nothing, and without Him we are worthless and without hope.

But we have Him! Because of His great love with which He loved us, Christ died to impart to us the Life that we could not live apart from Him, and He gave us Life in abundance. We get to trade in our identities—who we once were—and embrace who we are in Him—redeemed, rescued, restored, made alive to God in Christ, bearing His Spirit whose fruit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. “And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires” (Galatians 5:24). “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I that live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me” (Galatians 2:20).

It’s obvious that Ted Dekker is addressing some major issues with Eyes Wide Open—identity being one of them. For that, I do respect him. I don’t want it to seem like I suddenly hate him or think he has terrible motives; I don’t. But like all of us, he is human and capable of being deceived. My prayer is that he would see the infinite beauty and know the peace that comes with the truth that our identities are not to be based on anything outside of Christ. It’s not up to us to do anything but believe and rely on Him. When we do that, we embark on the most glorious adventure of all: the life we were made for, a life spent knowing Him, more and more.

And the more you get to know Him, the more you get to know the person He created you to be. For that person cannot exist without Him, and will grow to look more like Him every day. 

{Philippians 3:7-16}

“My identity is found in Christ. Any other identity will self-destruct.” -Lecrae 

Restless

Many times in my life, I have been restless. The reasons for restlessness have varied, but it's definitely been a recurring theme in my life. Sometimes, it's been a literal lack of rest--when I am not choosing moment-by-moment to trust in the Lord and His ability to work all things together according to His purposes, which are always far better than my own pitiful plans. Other times, however, I have experienced the type of restlessness that is more characterized by an earnest desire to see righteousness lived out, in my own life and the lives of others. And sometimes, it's sort of a combination of the two, when I want to see God's will happen, but fail to rest in His ability to accomplish it. 

There is, however, a certain restlessness we're called to as followers of Christ. It's the restlessness that cries out for God's Kingdom to come to this earth as it is in heaven, just as Jesus did (Matthew 6:10); the restlessness that relies on Him while yearning for Him to deliver and to have His way (Psalm 70:5), that shouts "Rak Khazak!" to others as it faces the seemingly-impossible, knowing that the Lord will overcome (2 Chronicles 32:7-8; Romans 8:31-39). It's the restlessness that causes us to forsake the temporary comforts this world offers us, and to plunge recklessly ahead into pursuing the fullness of the life Christ has given us--the eternal life which is defined as this: knowing Him (John 17:3; Psalm 16:11)...to count everything else as a loss compared with the greatness of knowing Him...to go all-out and be willing to sacrifice everything for the sake of following where He leads, trusting Him with everything He's given us. 

And so, today finds me restless. Restless in the desire to know Him more, restless to some extent in wanting  to move forward in certain things that He has shown me are part of His will for my life in the future, but also restless for the faith to trust Him more in everything, to seek His face and know His heart more and more, and to believe He will have His way. Restless for the world around me to see and know that He is God. I am restless to move forward in these things by continuing to entrust them to His perfect timing, for my ideas have never once proven to be better than His. So no matter how long I must wait, I will rest in confidence that the God who has never once failed to work all things together according to His good and glorious purposes will by no means fail to accomplish what He has promised. 

For example part of me wants to move into the Hood...now. In fact, if God were to suddenly tell me to drop out of college and move there, I'd do it in a heartbeat. But He hasn't, and it actually looks like He still has other plans for me in the meantime. And as I said, His plans are always better than mine, for He alone knows all things. So I will continue to trust Him with it all, to lay my life at His feet every day in surrender to His will, to follow where He leads and trust His steadfast faithfulness, knowing that when the time is right He will move things forward and it will all be far better than anything I could dream up or enact myself.

"I wait for the LORD, my soul waits, and in His word I hope; 

my soul waits for the LORD more than watchmen for the morning,

more than watchmen for the morning.

O Israel, hope in the LORD! For with the LORD there is steadfast love, and with Him is plentiful redemption. 

And He will redeem Israel from all his iniquities."

-Psalm 130:5-8

Leaving Memphis...Again

In a few short hours, I will be on the road, saying goodbye to the city I love and feel so called to as I follow God's calling elsewhere for a time. It's not the first time. The first time was a little over two years ago, when I left my family, friends, hometown--pretty much everything I'd known and was used to--in order to attend a discipleship training school called Ellerslie all the way in Colorado.

I remember crossing the Memphis Bridge and feeling torn between the place I was leaving behind and what God had in store at the place I was heading to. It wasn't just the city--it was also having to leave behind my family, friends that were so close they almost might as well be family, and all the people I knew and had grown up with here--but deep down, there was a painful awareness that I had to leave Memphis for a time, the city I had grown to love while so many I knew merely tolerated, if not hated, living in.

After I came home from Ellerslie about six months later and spent the subsequent six or so months here in Memphis, I found God calling me to leave once again--this time for college. That transition was rougher than the one from Memphis to Ellerslie, not because the move held more of an unknown (when I left for Ellerslie I had no idea what I was getting into), but somewhat because of the opposite; I knew I was heading into a completely different sort of environment and that even as I was going to college, I was going against the flow of our culture. I knew I wasn't going to college for an education and wasn't called to keep my head low and simply make it through. It was going to be hard, a different kind of hard than I had ever known before. And as we left Memphis, I once again felt torn between my more long-term calling to Memphis and my current call to this college three and a half hours away.

But it was a good kind of torn, even as the extremely similar bittersweet ache I am feeling right now is a good kind of pain. It's the kind of pain that comes with leaving someone--or a group of someones--you have grown to love deeply. This summer, God brought me to some of the front lines in the battle for Memphis. Through living and working with Street Reach this summer, I have gained a better perspective of that battle, as well as getting to know specific people who are also fighting it and other specific people whose souls hang in the balance.

The good news is that I do not have to be here to continue to fight in this battle. Prayer reaches farther, deeper, and faster than any weapon of this world. Still, it is painful to physically leave Memphis. But the One who has called me is faithful, and as always, He has a plan and will not fail to carry it out as He leads me on from here. His has a purpose for taking me back to Mississippi, and He will not fail to use me there or to use this season to draw me yet closer to Him and to prepare me for what lies in store. Just as He perfectly orchestrated the timing of leading me to Street Reach this summer--from preparing me for it even when I had no idea what Street Reach even was, to walking me through every day of it this summer--He has perfectly orchestrated everything about leading me back to MC this school year.

So, as bittersweet as leaving Memphis is going to be, at the same I am excited for what lies ahead. The same God who led me from here before into adventures I never could have dreamed of, who led be back here and walked me through even more, has infinitely greater plans for what is yet to come than I can possibly imagine. It's going to be hard, but at the same time it will be infinitely rich and beautiful because my King will never leave my side nor fail to draw me closer to Himself.

Here goes.

Wanna Hear a Cool Story?

This is going to be a bit long, but I wanted to give as much of the full story as possible.
Almost a year ago (has it really been that long?), I wrote a blog post about Memphis and the love and calling God has given me for my hometown. For at least five years now, God has been planting and growing desires in my heart regarding Memphis; He's given me a deep, unwavering love for the people of my city and a passionate longing to have them see and know God as He is, to surrender to Him, and to be forever changed by the power of the Gospel. At some point along the way, I started thinking about the inner city, and found myself growing more and more eager to go there and share the Gospel with the people who live there.

You see, when I was growing up, Memphis saw a huge movement (literally) of Christians. The problem was, they were moving out of the neighborhoods where gangs, drugs, and crime were becoming more prevalent, and into safer parts of town. They had good intentions; the main reason I've heard from some of these families was that they moved to protect their kids. That is a very real responsibility of parenthood, and I am not trying to point fingers or make a blanket-judgment on everyone who did this. My family moved too, and I do not and never have held it against my parents. They did what they felt was best, and looking back I believe it actually was the right choice for our family, especially because of the results it has had for my brothers. That being said, I'm not trying to condemn all the Christians in Memphis who now live in the suburbs and other "safe" areas of town. I cannot make some kind of blanket statement that it's wrong--especially when I just said that, for my family at least, it probably was the right choice.

However, this relocation had dramatic and harmful effects on those left behind. As the Christians moved out, these communities were left vulnerable and open to attack, and Satan took full advantage of that. Crime rates skyrocketed; drug use and gang violence became more and more prevalent; rape, murder, break-ins, arrests, and other reports started to become more and more commonplace in our local news stations' nightly reports. Memphis, we abandoned our own turf to this. The government didn't give up (at least not fully) on these parts of town: Money was poured into projects and school problems, and the police presence was upped to fight crime. But those things are not the ultimate answer; they cannot change crime and sin at the root; only the Gospel can. But during this time, nearly everyone who could, left.

Even while I was growing up in the suburbs, a passion for the inner city started growing in my heart. And somewhere along the way, I started praying. It's funny how, so many times, you start praying for God to do something without asking to be any part of it, and over time He changes your heart and you find yourself asking Him to send you. That's exactly what happened. But there was a problem, it seemed: I didn't live anywhere near the inner city, and honestly had hardly ever been close to it. Now what?

So I kept praying and asking God to show me what to do and to open the doors to whatever it was He had in store for me. Ironically, in the fall of 2009, I felt like He was telling me to go to this discipleship program that was just starting up the following summer--in Colorado. (This also wrecked my plans of going straight into college the fall after graduating high school, and I'm so glad it did!) As He is so faithful to do, God made it clear this was where He wanted me, and so the last few days of May 2010 found me saying a painful goodbye to the city I loved so dearly (and everyone in the city, including family and lifelong friends).

But God knew exactly what He was doing, even when I didn't have a clue. During my two semesters at Ellerslie, He did more in me than I could have ever anticipated or imagined. And when He sent me home to Memphis that December, I was ready to fight like never before for my city to know Christ. For I had learned how to fight--God had opened my eyes to what I had only just barely, once glimpsed before Ellerslie--how much of a battle ground prayer is, and how able our God is of working mightily through lives surrendered to His will. I still had no clear direction in regards to the inner city, but my prayers for Memphis had become more fervent, and I was more confident that they were not in vain--that God fully intends to redeem my city for His Kingdom.

A few months later, He provided me a job where I was paid to love on kiddos three days a week, and through that trained me in relying on His strength when my own was spent, relying on Him alone to give me grace to press on beyond my own abilities and be fully poured out for the children I worked with. There were so many times while I worked there that I knew I was worn out and needed to take a break and stop playing, but also knew that my calling right then was to stay engaged, to keep playing with and loving on these kids. And in those times of weakness, as I mentally cried out to God, "It has to be your strength, because I don't have any," again and again I saw Him come through. (Yes, this has something to do with where I'm going--trust me.)

One morning as I was listening to music on the way to work. My mp3 player was on shuffle, and a Lecrae song called "Beautiful Feet" came on. The song tells the stories of two men who grew up in the hood and ended up getting saved and going back to their neighborhoods to preach the Gospel. I'm sure I had heard this song before, but it hadn't hit home until that morning as I listened to the challenge Lecrae presents through it, calling on those whom God has called to the 'Hood to go there with the good news. He addresses those of us who haven't necessarily grown up in that environment, but who are called to go there and be His beautiful feet by bringing the Gospel. That morning, one line from this song leapt out at me and gripped me. I'm not sure if I'd ever caught it before, but if I had it hadn't sunk in that it was addressed to me. The line was this: "But who would minister in the sinister part of town? I pray if Jesus is calling you, you would be found." It cut me to the heart. In that moment, God whispered to my soul something to the effect of, "I have called you, and you know it. Will you answer the call?"

I didn't know what specifically He was asking of me, but I knew I needed to surrender again to His plans and His timing, even when I had no idea what they would look like. What I did have some clarity on was that He was asking me to be open to whatever timing God would present, and that I couldn't box it off in my mind that there was no way I could do anything in inner-city Memphis until I was out of college, etc. The other thing I felt Him clearly asking of me was to talk with my parents and share this with them, to ask them ahead of time to let me go wherever God led me, whenever He presented the opportunity. Mom and Dad already knew my heart for Memphis and the sense of calling I had for my city, but I felt that God needed to prepare them to be willing to let me risk potential danger for the sake of following our King. And He did prepare them for that; He used our conversations to make all three of us willing to allow God to lead me wherever and whenever He would into the heart of Memphis.

One Saturday evening not too long after that (this was in summer 2011), I had some time on my hands and felt the need to just spend time with God. I took my guitar with me to a nearby park and spent some time in worship and then in prayer, and when the sun started to set I packed up and headed to Starbucks, where I planned to find a nice little nook and sit with my Bible and a journal and soak up some more time alone with Jesus. On the way, I spontaneously changed my mind about which location I was going to, because I realized there was one closer that would probably be less populated on a night like this (this was pure conjecture, because I can probably count on one hand the number of times I've been to any Starbucks in the Memphis area).

As I pulled into the parking lot of this coffee shop that had not been in my original agenda, I thought things were still going basically according to plan. And they were, it just wasn't my plan! As I got in line behind two college-age girls, my sparkling raspberry soda in hand (yes, I knew I was in a coffee joint), I overheard them talking to the cashier. Some comment had made it obvious they didn't live in Memphis, so he asked what brought them here. When one of them replied that they were summer missionaries with a ministry in inner-city Memphis, my pulse quickened and my ears perked up. I paid for my soda, and then did something completely uncharacteristic for me: I walked up to complete strangers and introduced myself. Not only that, I explained that I had heard their conversation with the cashier and if they had a minute to tell me more about this ministry they were working with.

As it turned out, they were there with a whole group of summer missionaries and staff from Street Reach, which at that time I had never even heard of. Not only was the whole team there, but the director, Jason Cox, was there too. I was introduced to the rest of the group, and I explained to them basically what I've just been laying out here (though I gave them a shorter version)--how God has been giving me a passion for Memphis, specifically the inner city. And they told me about more of what they do.

Street Reach is a ministry based at Brinkley Heights Baptist Church--in inner-city Memphis! It started as the result of this small, impoverished church body, who about twenty years ago began praying that, if God would send the resources and reinforcements, they would work to take back their community for the Kingdom of God. Street Reach is what has come out of that prayer. While active in the community year-round, Street Reach runs Backyard Bible Clubs throughout the summer each year, with youth groups and college students coming in one-week shifts throughout to help facilitate these and also serve the community in other ways like nursing home visits, maintenance, lawn mowing, etcetera.

As you can probably imagine (especially if you know me very well), as I listened to all this I was getting more and more excited. I could already see that it had not been coincidence that I ran into these people or heard about this, and while I didn't know yet what might come of it, I knew God was up to something here. Before I left, Jason Cox (the director) gave me his card and told me to feel free to email him sometime if I ever wanted to drop by and see what they did first-hand, or if I was interested in being a part of Street Reach in the future.

I went home enthusiastic and ready to dive headfirst through this door God was clearly opening before me, but as it turned out, He was only showing me a glimpse; it wasn't time yet. I emailed Jason a few weeks later and asked about being able to come volunteer and help out, but I never heard back from him. For a while, this was puzzling to me, but God knew exactly what He was doing. He had other things lined up.

So last fall found me headed to college in Mississippi, once again saying an agonizing goodbye to my city for a season, and unsure of when God would ever open the door for me to go work in Memphis' inner city. But as I said, He had a plan (as always!). About a month later, my sister and I found the church in Jackson (Wesley Chapel) that was to become our home while we're at college. The youth group there, which we also got involved working with, is largely inner-city kids, plus some homeschoolers (it makes for an awesome combination, believe me--love our youth!!). Also at college, I've gotten involved with apartment ministries through the BSU (Baptist Student Union), and this semester my English class has been doing service-learning by helping tutor kids at a nearby apartment complex. Through all of these, and through college life in general, God has not only provided more experience working with kids from different backgrounds, but He has also been training me in how to be more fully poured out and to rely upon Him to lead me and give me words to speak when I tell them about Him, among other things. (Ever notice it's kind of hard to summarize everything God is working in your life?)

Ready? Here's where things start getting really exciting. On January 20, 2012, I received an email from Jason, the director of Street Reach, saying that they had some senior-staff positions open for this summer. He attached the application for it in case I was interested. I was stunned at first, for multiple reasons. One, I had never heard back from him when I'd emailed before, and I thought they had probably forgotten about ever meeting me--but he specifically mentioned that in the email. Two, I had assumed I was going back to my old job (childcare) for the summer, and that that was where God wanted me; now here was an opportunity to instead spend my summer in the very part of town He had been burdening me for for so long. I was a bit overwhelmed, to say the least.

Not wanting to repeat history and jump the gun on this, I spent a lot of time praying before I responded. I did email back with a few questions, and in that way found out that it would be a full-time commitment from the end of May all the way to the end of July, and then that it was actually a paying position, which I had not expected. In fact, as I had been praying before I found that out, I was asking God to be clear with me because I knew He could provide for me if He wanted me to do this instead of working elsewhere to earn money towards college. One by one, the doors started to swing open...from my parents being not only okay with, but excited about the opportunity...to God giving me the go-ahead to start on the application...to one of my employers at my old job being so enthusiastic that she was not only willing to not have me work there for the sake of this, but was also willing to provide a reference for me for the Street Reach application...to confirmations on nearly every side... In a lot of ways, what God has done these past few months is simply too awesome to put into words.

(This is the part where everything starts to tie together.) During Spring Break, I went in for my interview for the position at Street Reach. It was one of the most amazing, worshipful experiences of my life! It was then, as they explained in greater detail what this summer will look like and asked me questions, I suddenly became aware of so many of God's fingerprints in setting all of this up. It was then that I saw all the ways He has prepared me, from my family background and upbringing, to the youth group I grew up in, to the church we're at now in Memphis, to various experiences through the years, to Ellerslie and all that happened there, to the church and youth group my sister and I are plugged into in Jackson, to apartment ministries and tutoring here in Mississippi...everything God has been building in me for just about my entire life, He is going to utilize--and deepen--this summer as I work with Street Reach (yes, I got the job!).

After years and years of being readied for this, without knowing it, at long last I am heading into the place God has been laying on my heart for years. It's humbling to see this coming to pass and to realize the depth of the calling I have been given--to be fully spent and poured out in service to my King by serving in the heart of my city and fighting alongside Him to rescue those that most would overlook.

I know God has great plans for this city, this nation, this world, and this generation. He's called us to be a part of that, but it starts in the here and now. Memphis will not change unless the hearts of the people in this city change. America will not be changed unless the people in it surrender themselves to the Lord and allow Him to change them. This world and this generation will see no lasting good, until the individuals who make up this world and our generation call upon the only One who is good. Humans have tried for centuries to solve the world's problems. We've spent lifetimes of hours and millions of dollars in research, programs, methodologies, and so on, trying to make the world a better place, and all the while it has only gotten worse. The problem lies at the heart: sinful human nature. And there is only one Cure: the Gospel of Jesus Christ, who through His life, death, and resurrection defeated the powers of sin and death and purchased not only redemption and forgiveness, but also our inheritance: the Holy Spirit (see Ephesians 1). It is only by the power of Christ in us that we can live for Him and be His hands and His feet to this dying world.

It is only through Him that I can have any true or lasting effect on my city. But where He calls, He equips. He may be sending this girl who has thus far lived a pretty sheltered life, largely in the suburbs, to live in a neighborhood with a completely different culture than what I've grown up in, but His plans don't look like the ones we humans would come up with. I am indescribably excited to embark on this new assignment just over a month from now, and to see all that God does then, in the meantime, and after. I have a feeling this will not be my only opportunity to serve and fight on the front lines for my city.

But God's Kingdom is advanced through prayer. I have already put years of prayer into this, but that doesn't end now that the opportunity is here. If anything, it must increase. Will you join me in praying for our great God to have His way--now, this summer, and beyond--in Memphis, in your city, in our nations, in this world, and in our generation? Rise up, men and women of the Lord Most High, and fight like never before for our King and His glory! Rak Khazak!!

"And I will be known in the eyes of many nations, 

and they shall know that I am the LORD."

-Ezekiel 38:23b

Why Am I Here?

Lately I've been realizing more and more how atypical I am, how ironic my life right now really is. I'm not your typical college student. I didn't come to college to get a high-paying job, to afford a nice house and a fancy car, to have a husband, 1.3 kids, and a dog. I'm not here to find a man. I'm not here to prove myself, academically or otherwise. I'm not here to get away from home and my family. It seems like I'm not here for any of the possible reasons most people go to college. So why am I here?

Honestly, that's something I questioned a lot, particularly during my first month or so here at MC. If you don't believe me, ask the people back home who, when I came home one weekend for a visit a few weeks into school, asked how college was and all I could say was an emphatic, "It's good to be home!" I had to wrestle through this question, because from the start I haven't been here for any of the reasons I just listed. During those first few weeks, I repeatedly found myself asking God, "Am I really supposed to be here? Can I please drop out?" A large part of what made me want to be anywhere but here is just how grieved I was to see the spiritual state of things. I'm at a university that calls itself Christian, but with all the distractions, the complacency, the subtle lies that seem to surround and permeate this campus on so many levels, at first especially it was hard for me to see any signs of life or hope. 

God's been clear with me all along that this is where He's called me. And so with that for me to cling to, He has shown me step by step that there is nothing too daunting for Him, that He is greater and stronger than everything that tries to pull the people on this campus away from Him. Through reminding me of who He is and what He wills to do, God has given me joy and faith and the grace to persevere here. 

So you might be wondering at this point why I am here. Well, in some ways I have answers to that, and in some ways I don't. Ultimately, I'm here for God's glory. Whether that means being here to be a real friend to some of the people He's put me in contact with and to live out my faith before them, or to seize hidden opportunities to serve and bless people even if they'll never know who did it, or to give a much-needed hug to one of the cleaning staff...I cannot imagine or list all the ways God can possibly use me, even in the little things, here. 

But why am I at college, earning a degree? Well, here's where you're about to see just how atypical a college student I am. =)

I'm at college to hone some skills and to earn a degree which will hopefully help me get a job editing (though I may easily wind up working for minimum wage at a gym or a fast-food chain instead), to make end's meat and go live in the "hood," to take the Gospel to those who need it and know they need it and to live among them daily as a witness of God's grace, to take on the principalities and spiritual powers that have claimed their turf in the heart of my city, and to watch my God fight for us and prove to everyone Who is the Lord Most High. I fully expect to die with a bullet in my head one day, or something similar. And, call me crazy, but what better way to go than to die standing and fighting for my God to be known by those whom Satan will fight tooth-and-nail to see destroyed?

So that's why I'm here, and it all starts now. On my own, I am completely incapable of any of this. But greater is He who is in me than he that is in this world, and I will live and die to prove that. 

Daily, may I live and die to prove that. Daily, may I lay down my rights, my desires, my way, and watch You fill me with the fullness of all You are, King Jesus. You are the Way. You are the Truth. You are the Life. You are Love. You are Lord of all, so be Lord of all I am. Have Your way.

The Adventure

There's a truth that's gradually come to my attention within the past year or so, which lately has also become a challenge to my soul:

Life is supposed to be an adventure. 

It explains a lot. It explains why we as humans are so drawn to adventure, whether it be in a fictional story in a book or a movie, or the more real-life adventures like camping, hiking, and such. But perhaps before I go too far down the road of what this means, I should backtrack and give some evidence that this is truth and not just my own opinion.
First, how about a definition of "eternal life"? After all, that is what we as Christians are promised, correct? I know in our day and age "eternal life" is seen to mean simply that when we die, we will go to live forever in heaven. Well, guess how Jesus defined it?

"And this is life eternal, that they might know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, Whom Thou has sent."        -John 17:3

That's right, eternal life is knowing God. I wonder if you're caught as stunned and simply awestruck as I was a few weeks ago when my sister brought that verse up in a conversation. I'm sure I had read it before, but quite certain it had never hit home until then. And get this, the Greek word translated there as "know" is actually pretty specific; it means intimately knowing someone in the way a husband and wife know each other. Jesus isn't talking about being simply acquainted with Him. See, He is eternal life.

"I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life: no man cometh unto the Father but by Me." -John 14:6

 Now, back to the adventure aspect. Let me ask you something, is a life of total abandon and surrender to a call to lay down everything (including our lives, for we are not our own [see 1 Corinthians 6:19-20])--does that sound like a dull, ordinary life? Sure doesn't to me. And look at the other side of this calling we have as Christians: we get to know Jesus Christ, and we get to be transformed by Him, into His likeness. And we're called to fight! I love the analogy in Ephesians 6 when Paul tells us to "put on the armor of God." Why would we wear armor, why would we have a sword, if we're not in the midst of a battle?

There's this myth that has been readily embraced by the majority of American churches and Christians these days. It goes like this: There are only a few select Christians in every generation that are called to step up and live out a radical Christianity that stands out, that accomplishes much for the Kingdom of God, that brings them ridicule and scorn; there are a few called-out ones in each generation who will step up and take the lead, and live a fully yielded and poured-out life for Jesus. I used to believe it, too. But guess what? I've got news for ya. Know how many times this idea is backed up by Scripture? ZERO.
When Jesus is saying "Whosoever will come after Me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me,"
do you see some little exemption clause anywhere in the surrounding text? Did He pause just then and say, "Well, those are the requirements for My followers who are to be the 'extreme' ones. But the rest of you..." Um, no.
Let's pause for just one second, too, and take a look at those requirements our King laid out for us:
Whosoever--anyone, whoever
will--The word implies an exertion of the will. This is no flippant decision.
come after--follow, pursue
Me--Jesus, the Messiah, Emmanuel (God with us), the King of all kings, the Lamb that was slain...
let him
deny--renounce completely 
himself--all you are, including your desires, your dreams, your talents...everything that defines you
take up--pick up, carry
his--your own
cross--an instrument of torture and death (sound fun?)
and--plus, in addition to
follow--pursue, keep company with, become disciple of, side with
Me--our King, our Master, our Life, our Leader, our Example-Setter, our Savior...


THIS is what we're called to. These are the requirements that Jesus Christ Himself set for all who would follow Him, who would be called by His Name. And last time I checked, we're not at all capable in our own strength and abilities to do any of this--which is where the adventure comes in. He didn't leave us with an impossible task and no means of carrying it out. We have His very Spirit dwelling inside us, transforming our minds by the power of His Word and changing our hearts as we come to intimately know Him, as we willingly offer ourselves to Him as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to Him.

See what I mean? ADVENTURE! The adventure of a lifetime awaits...

And that's exactly what has been challenging me lately with sweet conviction. I have tasted such adventure. I've walked these trails, or the beginnings of them. But there's deeper to go--so much deeper! Indeed, with an infinitely great God, there shall always be more of Him to know. So why do I sometimes catch myself sitting on the sidelines, watching my life drag by without this sense of adventure? The answer, though painful, is simple: the times that happens are the times I have taken my gaze off Christ. It happens when I choose to live for myself and to simply go through the motions instead of living moment-by-moment completely consumed by and caught up in the wonder of all He is and all He has in store. When I'm not getting my directions from Him, I tend to flounder. When I'm not pursuing Him and more of Him, I find myself and my life seeming strange and empty.
I don't know about you, but I for one love adventure. And the last thing I want is to live a boring, ordinary life when I'm called to more. So let's shake off the complacency that has settled in in our comfortable, safe Christianity, and chase the adventure God's set before us. Let's run this race with endurance, not staggering or fainting from fatigue, but leaning wholly upon His mighty strength in our weakness, so that we may truly run and not grow faint, but instead rise up on wings as eagles'. Let's press hard and stop settling for less than what God has in store--settling for less than eternal life, which is knowing Him. Onward!

"Have I not commanded thee? Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee withersoever thou goest."        -Joshua 1:9