‘As we consider all the options we are trying to change our language from "is that possible?" (because of course with God it is!!!) to "what is the next step God wants us to take?"’
A friend said this to me in an email the other day. For her, this comes from the context of walking with the Lord in a monumental change in geography that will affect her entire family. While we’re talking about that, let me take this opportunity to say how much I admire she and her husband for the voracity with which they are pursuing this next step in the Lord’s design for them. It is both encouraging and inspiring. I want to be like them when I grow up - which begs the question, at what point to I stop looking ahead to being grown up and just exist there?
I digress.
As I celebrated the good news in other parts of the email and thanked the Lord for putting these people in my path, I kept coming back to this statement; wondering what that would look like fleshed out as reality in my own life.
It caught me off guard a couple hours later that this sentiment, this very statement really, is exactly where I’ve been living since Israel. She said, in a far more eloquent way, what I could only express as, “I’m ready to trust God for big things” - which is admirable, but vague.
In contemplating these things, I came to another conclusion. I’ve been living my life according to a certain set of rules. My family loves to play the game Mexican Train, and we particularly love it when someone is visiting and we can play with new people. The problem is, sometimes they have played Mexican Train for years...but they play by a different set of rules. I’ve been living my life according to a rule book written by this world.
The reality is, my rule book is the watered down, adventure-less version. I’ve discovered a rule book written by a God who is able to do exceeding abundantly beyond anything I can imagine. Do you know how much more fun and free that is?
According to this new (well, new to me) rule book, I don’t have to wait and work for another year until my debt is paid off...I can ask and trust God to pay it now.
I don’t have to wonder and plan for the day that I won’t be able to walk anymore - which, according to the chiropractor, is a mere decade away. I can ask and trust God to heal my inoperable spinal birth defect.
This new rule book lets a girl who lives paycheck to paycheck give away a year’s worth of savings that had been set aside for a dream journey...only to have it returned four days before her planed departure date - and then grants her the joy of watching that story transform lives, her own and others.
It lets that same girl travel again, just five months later on yet another epic expedition.
I should give fair warning: I’ve changed rule books - traded in the old, boring empty one for one filled with life, adventure and wonder. I like this new, higher one better. It’s certainly more fun. It lets me hope and dream instead of work and wait. It lets me be who I am instead of who people want me to be.
It lets me tell my best friend that she is the man at the pool of Bethesda and doesn’t really want to be healed, because I now know she’ll love me anyway. And, let’s be honest, I didn’t really care if she’d love me anyway. These new rules let me love her enough to want her whole, regardless of what it cost me.
The good news is that she does love me anyway. The Good News is how remarkably easy its been to make this change. In fact, the change over happened without me even realizing it. A revolution begins in a moment.
I’m in a process of changing my language - much like my friend said, ‘ from "is that possible?"...to "what is the next step God wants us to take?"’ But also from, “I CAN’T move overseas until next year” to “God, pay off my debt so I can go sooner.” And from “the doctor says I won’t be able to walk when I’m 40” to “the doctor said I wouldn’t be able to walk by the time I was 40...but my God is bigger than a prognosis.”
That’s where I am right now with trusting God for big things. I’m there, but I’m also in a land of looking for more big things to trust God for, like hope and peace in Palestine, like healing and wholeness in the lives of my friends, like really, actually living and sustaining myself on my art. Trusting God to make dreams a reality.
For now, that’s what I have to say about what my trip to Israel did to me. There are many, many more stories of things the Lord did there, things we saw and experienced - and they are coming. I’m writing those now in the hopes of starting a weekly blog series just about the trip. But, this is where my heart is now, after the trip. So, if I seem a little wide-eyed, crazy and excited...it’s because I am. I want to see God do big things; and the reality is, He is doing them every day. We just need to ask Him for the eyes to see them, and then play by the rule book that allows them to be a reality.
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