I went to Women of Faith this weekend with a few friends from my Journey group at church. We went down to Wichita on Friday for the conference. I always come back from things like this completely fired up for Jesus and ready to change the world. My prayer is that my fire doesn't burn out. The speakers were amazing. Lysa Terkeurst was one of the speakers and she is hilarious and awesome. If you've never read one of her books or listened to her speak I encourage you to do so. She runs the www.Proverbs31.org website. You can sign up to have a devotional come directly to your inbox everyday. It's a great encouragement. I'm not saying I get a chance to read every single one of them, but they're always inspirational and usually just what I need to hear that day.
On Saturday she told us the story of her family. They adopted two teenage boys from Liberia, because God told them to. But she had doubts and was a little terrified of being obedient. She shared from Joshua 6 about the wall of Jericho. How God gave Joshua these crazy instructions to bring the wall down. And she related that back to our lives - how we all have a wall of impossibility that we're facing. It's different for all of us. For her, it was adopting two teenagers from another country who were at a kindergarten learning level. And how she ended up having to home school all of her kids because the school system wouldn't take her sons at that level. For others it's a struggle with depression, or drugs, alcohol, troubled children. For me, it's infertility. There are days when it feels like it is impossible - and it is...for me. But not for God. In Matthew 19:26 Jesus himself says "With man, this is impossible, but with God all things are possible". We just have to be obedient. And as much as Lysa didn't think it was possible for her to adopt two teenagers when she already had three girls at home, and as much as she didn't think she was capable of home schooling them, she was obedient and willing to follow God's lead. Did that make it easy? No way. Just because God asks us to do something doesn't mean it's going to be easy. Are we going to be blessed? Yes. Are we going to be better on the other side? Definitely. Because God sees the big picture and He's constantly growing us into the people He wants us to be, into the people He designed us to be. Isn't that hard to wrap your head around? That God designed us to be a certain way and He knows that without certain events happening in our lives we won't reach our full potential. Ephesians 2:10 says "For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do" (italics mine). So before God knit us together in our mother's womb, He knew what we were designed to do. Unfathomable. And He's taking us on a journey to get there.
I'm not sure I've completely figured out what God's designed me to do. But I know that He's using my wall of impossibility to get me there. Either through writing this blog, or just growing in patience and empathy, there's a plan, and I trust it with all my heart. And I am so thankful that I serve a God who loves me enough to care about my future and my hopes and dreams. He doesn't discount our desires, but they don't always come wrapped in packages we would expect. But they always come, and they're always so much better than your plans. Lysa ended it with saying two things - one, live a life that requires a little faith. If everything always goes our way and we always have everything under control, where does faith fit in? But if we're stepping out in obedience and willingness, we have no choice but to trust God and His plan. And second she said, "my job is to be obedient to God. God's job is my wall of impossibility." So remember that when you struggle. Remember you're not big enough to scale the wall on your own, but give it over to God and He'll bring the wall down at your feet. It just takes a little faith.
Until next time...
No comments:
Post a Comment