I heard someone say today that following God means embarking on adventure. How true that is! I think about my life with the Lord, and I am bombarded by memory after memory of God asking me to do things that make me uncomfortable: Travel to Asia, perform with my dad's band, talk to the homeless girl on the street. So many times I hear the gentle Holy Spirit asking me to do something, accompanied by a pit in my stomach. Sometimes I walk past the opportunity, knowing that God will forgive me (which is not good, by the way--just want to make that clear). And He does forgive me. But I think it makes Him kind of sad.
See, God doesn't put opportunities in my path as some kind of exam that I have to pass to be a true Christian, although I approach it that way sometimes. I think He genuinely wants to bless me. However, the truth of His grace and selflessness makes me self-conscious and convicted. Sometimes the opportunities He places in front of me just reveal all the more how weak I am and how unable I am to lead a fulfilling life without God. So I turn my face away and speed-walk past the blessing. And I don't know what I'm missing.
Sunday night, I was walking to church when I saw a girl around my age asking for money on the side of the street. My heart instantly broke for her as I thought about how different our lives were. God asked me to go talk to her. I continued to walk. Eventually I turned around and headed back; I have ignored God in this department many times recently, and I wanted to finally obey. I began to talk to the girl, whose name is Nancy. She is such a sweet and genuine person. I could feel walls crumbling in my spirit. These people that we often treat as objects are real people. They have names. They have souls. And they have stories.
I started to realize how much my lifestyle has not been reflecting Jesus, the guy that spent most of His time with the marginalized and forgotten. There's a mug in the house cupboard that says "See and be seen". I feel like that is our ultimate desire as humans; we just want our presence to be acknowledged, and we want to be intimately known. Although I will never know Nancy as intimately as Jesus can, we can be friends. I can give her the gift of humanness and value her simply because God created her.
Although I felt pretty unsure and uncomfortable when approaching Nancy, I was able to see God through the life of another person. I was blessed in my discomfort. I wonder what would happen if we set our fear aside and trusted that obeying Christ through the discomfort would result in breakthrough. Maybe we have been praying for healing, and the answer is in a situation that we have been ignoring. Perhaps we are dreading going home because of conflict with our flatmate, and God wants to teach us humility through living with others. Or maybe we are dreading going to tutorials because we don't want to listen to a list of corrections to our essay, and God wants to show us that our worth is not in our work, and His corrections to our path are to strengthen us and prepare us for the future. God is one smart cookie, and He thinks ahead.
Lord, please open us up. Show us that there is no fear in obedience. Lord, You walk with us through every step of discomfort, You strengthen us to release our bondage, and You strengthen us to step into freedom. Reveal to us the truth about ourselves so that we can look more like You.
Amen.
See, God doesn't put opportunities in my path as some kind of exam that I have to pass to be a true Christian, although I approach it that way sometimes. I think He genuinely wants to bless me. However, the truth of His grace and selflessness makes me self-conscious and convicted. Sometimes the opportunities He places in front of me just reveal all the more how weak I am and how unable I am to lead a fulfilling life without God. So I turn my face away and speed-walk past the blessing. And I don't know what I'm missing.
Sunday night, I was walking to church when I saw a girl around my age asking for money on the side of the street. My heart instantly broke for her as I thought about how different our lives were. God asked me to go talk to her. I continued to walk. Eventually I turned around and headed back; I have ignored God in this department many times recently, and I wanted to finally obey. I began to talk to the girl, whose name is Nancy. She is such a sweet and genuine person. I could feel walls crumbling in my spirit. These people that we often treat as objects are real people. They have names. They have souls. And they have stories.
I started to realize how much my lifestyle has not been reflecting Jesus, the guy that spent most of His time with the marginalized and forgotten. There's a mug in the house cupboard that says "See and be seen". I feel like that is our ultimate desire as humans; we just want our presence to be acknowledged, and we want to be intimately known. Although I will never know Nancy as intimately as Jesus can, we can be friends. I can give her the gift of humanness and value her simply because God created her.
Although I felt pretty unsure and uncomfortable when approaching Nancy, I was able to see God through the life of another person. I was blessed in my discomfort. I wonder what would happen if we set our fear aside and trusted that obeying Christ through the discomfort would result in breakthrough. Maybe we have been praying for healing, and the answer is in a situation that we have been ignoring. Perhaps we are dreading going home because of conflict with our flatmate, and God wants to teach us humility through living with others. Or maybe we are dreading going to tutorials because we don't want to listen to a list of corrections to our essay, and God wants to show us that our worth is not in our work, and His corrections to our path are to strengthen us and prepare us for the future. God is one smart cookie, and He thinks ahead.
Lord, please open us up. Show us that there is no fear in obedience. Lord, You walk with us through every step of discomfort, You strengthen us to release our bondage, and You strengthen us to step into freedom. Reveal to us the truth about ourselves so that we can look more like You.
Amen.
