Monday, August 21, 2006

Not Losing It

On our last Sunday in Montreal, there were lots of tears. We chose to say, "So long," rather than "Goodbye" to our new family there, longing to return to Eastern Canada as soon as God provides the green light. Gary Smith said there were lots of tears at the end of church at Renaissance that morning because of how the Spirit moved, but I did not see any of them. I was too overcome by emotion myself. The screaming cry of my heart? "I don't want to be the way I was when I came to Canada!" As if it is possible to even find the box that I used to use to corral God! "I want to stay outside of the box where God is, to see others through His eyes, to be a servant and have a humble heart, to take leaps of faith as He leads me, to direct o others into a deeper/clearer faith walk where 'no sight' is necessary to trust his hand/heart." These are the words that I wrote and passed to my daughters across the aisle of the tiny cropduster plane we rode back to Atlanta from Montreal. The girls both nodded. No words were necessary. We had seen things we could not explain any other way than that we had seen God move. Of course, it is in Him that "we live and move and have our being." He's everywhere, not just where we were in Canada. Now that we are back in the States, our desire is to "walk and not grow faint." We want to "find God in the everyday experiences" of our lives. Ultimately, our desire is not to "need the moutaintops to see God's work." As John told me the first week that the girls and I were back from Canada--and he was one week away from his incredible experiences with International World Changers in Salvador, Brazil--"Falling off the mountain is going to be painful but not losing the passion is important." On that same plane-ride, I felt like God was saying to me that the real question is "WHOM shall I serve?" I had been asking a lot of other questions first--such as, "When?" "Where?" "TO whom will I serve?" The question for me is not "Why?" or "Why me?" or even "WHAT will I do?" God asked Isaiah, "WHOM shall I send? WHO will go for us?" He's asking us, "WHOM shall you serve?" And He's waiting for us to respond, "Here am I, Lord. Send me!"

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