New Beginnings?

 

A couple of weeks ago, I had a dream I was fired from my job. I’m coming up on 5 years there at the end of this month and in all honesty I never thought I would be there this long since it is far from my dream job. With the economy being shaky for the past few years, I wasn’t all that nervous about getting laid off and of fired. I know that I was not meant to be there long term because God has a different path for me. He has been strategic lately with moving me around to a different team, so I wouldn’t be surprised if He is guarding me to keep me safe from lay offs or to just position me to get ready to be transitioned out. I guess its that peace that surpasses all understanding and knowing that God is my provider has kept me from freaking out.

Anyway, in my dream, my office manager walks up to me in my cubicle starts talking. All I happen to catch was “fired” and “go home.” She didn’t say it in a mean way, just very matter of factly, like it wasn’t a big deal. I was a little surprised, but wasn’t worried. I didn’t cry or panic, I just slowly gathered my things. I looked over at my supervisor who sits across from me and she was just busy filing papers. I looked over the top of the cubicles to 6 cubicles and 1 office on the other side of me and it was completely empty. No cubicles, chairs, desks, or people. I looked down the hallway where my cubicle sits that goes straight to the door that opens up into the lobby and I just saw some of my coworkers exiting out that door. People had purses and jackets on their arms and smiles on their faces. My friend Christina saw me looking down the hall and with the biggest smile, she waved me towards her, saying “Come on.”

I gathered my things in my arms, a little hesitant to go, and I looked back at my supervisor. She was still busy filing papers, whistling away like there was not a mass exodus of people around her. I felt a little sorry for her, as if she missed her chance to leave like the rest of us. I left her there by herself just hoping that one day she would get the chance to leave too.

I woke up in the middle of the night and thought about what would really happen if I lost my job. Strangely enough, my first thought was pack up everything, move to Thessaloniki, Greece and work at A21 Campaign rescue shelter.

I had no idea where that idea came from in the middle of the night but it was something to think about. Fast forward to the following Sunday, and I am in the Furnace with some leaders I am training talking about prayer. As we are discussing prayer, I couldn’t help but glance over at the map on the wall at the far end of the room. I kept hearing the word Thessaloniki over and over, getting louder and louder each time. I was trying not to look obviously freaked out at the unknown voice that I kept hearing but I don’t know how well that worked.

I am still on the skeptical side when it comes to dreams and visions. I am trying to learn how to discern when my random dreams and visions are from God or just a manifestation of some stray thoughts in my mind. I am always seeking confirmation and answers before say with confidence that it is God speaking so with a dream like this, I am grinding my feet in the sand until I know better. Maybe its a fluke, maybe its a sign. Who knows?

Praying Like It Mattered

“What would happen if we prayed like it mattered?”

That was a question our new Fusion pastor David Stephens asked a couple of weeks ago. It’s one of those questions that convicts and challenges. I realize I don’t pray nearly as often as I should and with not nearly enough expectation that God will answer them. I try not to lace my prayers with selfish things because there are bigger problems in this world than my desire to get married, write a book, and move to Greece to work with the A21 campaign to rescue sex slaves. I tend to elevate the prayers for others over my prayers for myself almost as if my mere prayers don’t matter as much as someone else suffering more than me.

Even if I am suffering, the whisper of “someone else has it a lot worse than you” echoes in my head. I wasn’t praying like it mattered. I wasn’t praying like my prayers to my own Father mattered.

But they do matter. My prayers are powerful, yet delightfully pleasing to Him. Psalm 141:2 says “may my prayers be set before You like incense and the lifting of my hands be like an evening sacrifice.” When I come to God in heartfelt prayers and hands raised in worship, my actions are like the sweet smell of incense and my own personal sacrifice to the one who created me.

Pray like it matters because each prayer matters. Prayers cause a glorious stirring in Heaven and a fearful trembling in Hell. Prayers can heal the sick, save the lost, restore the poor in spirit, set the captives free, reconcile nations, cast out demons, mend broken families, calm the storms of life, redeem a generation, and give strength and hope to the weary.

Pray like it matters because it does matter.

Photo credit: Wayne Richardson

Good Girls & Bad Guys

I was talking with a friend last night about two very important topics…Jesus and boys. She asked one of the age old questions that I had to stop and think about.

“Why do good girls always go after the bad boys?”

Now as someone who spent quiet a few teenage years chasing after the bad boys, I really couldn’t think of any logical reason why any sensible, God fearing woman would chase after some rebel without a cause. But it happens. More often than it should.

Maybe it’s the thrill of capturing the attention of someone who is wild and rough around the edges.

Maybe it’s the intrigue of swooning after someone who walks to the beat of their own drum, shrugging off the commands of authority.

Maybe it’s the innate desire to be protected by someone who go against the grain.

Wrong.

Maybe it’s because good girls don’t realize they should be pursued instead of chasing someone who delights in attention from women who are willing to chase them.

Maybe it’s because good girls are deceived into believing they have to work to earn love and affection from men who treat them with such a cavalier attitude.

Maybe it’s because good girls are busy focusing on the outward appearances that don’t speak to the heart of someone.

Maybe. Just maybe.

I didn’t have a clear answer to why good girls like bad boys. I just know that chasing after the riding off into the sunset on his motorcycle movie ending type of fantasy just doesn’t appeal to me. Bad boys don’t make me get butterflies or the random desire to scribble their names on a notebook with X’s and O’s.

A man who loves the Lord with all his heart, all his soul, all his strength and lives accordingly does.

A man who serves before wanting to be served does.

A man who is a leader and can submit to authority does.

A man who strives for righteousness and not perfection does.

A man who desires to change the face of this Earth, one redeemed heart at a time does.

A man who is a warrior for God’s kingdom, not his own kingdom does.

Why do good girls love bad boys?  Who knows. I would much rather be that woman after God’s own heart being pursued by a man after the same thing.

Much better movie ending.

Live Like We’re Dying

A couple of night ago, one of my closet friends Kisha sent me a text message with two words that rocked my world.

“She’s gone.”

I felt the words choked in my throat because I really didn’t want to believe that what she was saying was true.

My friend’s mom had passed away. The lady I always jokingly called Aunt Darlene was gone.

This was a shock for me because it just made it even more real how finite this life is. James 4:14 says “Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away.”

Just like that.

I have had few instances of where I have lost people close to me. My aunt Diana, my great-grandmother Elizabeth, my uncle Frank. None were easy to deal with but at some point, the hurt became bearable enough to keep pushing forward with life. I wasn’t close to God when any of these loses happened so having someone I have known since I was in Jr. high school pass away makes me look at life through a different filter.

I smiled at the old memories of hanging out with Kisha and her family on the weekends when we were kids in Mississippi. Darlene was the coolest mom because she drove a fancy foreign car (a Saab but it was fancy and foreign in my 8th grade mind). She bought Kisha and I a bottle of Boone’s strawberry daiquiri and let us drink them out of wine glasses. She made the best collard greens on earth, told the funniest stories about Kisha and her sister growing up, wouldn’t mind driving half an hour to my house to pick up Kisha when we would plot to get detention together just to hang out with our favorite science teacher Mr. Coleman then slum around in my neighbor. Darlene never turned her nose up at me when I got became a mom at 17 like some of my other friends parents did. She always said with a matter of fact tone that “a baby don’t stop no show.”

I still say that very line to this day.

I don’t know if her heart belonged to Christ when she took her last breath. I hope it did. That’s what haunts me the most. I tend to get wrapped up in my own life, or trying to save the world while checking off my to do list, that I sometimes fail to think that people die every second of everyday. People that I know and love will die. I have to ask myself what am I doing with my time here on Earth if it’s not sharing the love of Jesus to someone whose just might be running out?

Life is but a vapor. With that thought, we should live like we are dying. Live like we really know that tomorrow is not promised and that we should make the most of the 86,400 second that we get each day to make an impact on someone in this world.

Are we living like we know we are going to die or are we just sticking our head in the sand thinking we have all the time in the world. We don’t. We each have a specific number of decades, years, months, weeks, days, minutes and seconds available to make the most of this life that we have been given by God.

Do what God has called you to do. He has a reason why He called you to do it.

Say “I love you” to the ones closest to you as often as you can.

Never pass up a chance to encourage, pray for and pray with someone.

God gives us second, third, fourth and fifth chances to get things right. His grace is endless and His forgiveness is constant. It’s never too late to make a change.

This song has been on repeat for a couple of days now. My reminder to live like I’m dying.

Waist Deep In A River of Faith

 

You are standing in the river that flows from the throne of God. You tend to tread only so far, maybe ankle deep for the most part. Knee deep when you are feeling brave. God wants you to go beyond that. He wants you to walk waist deep in faith, up to your neck even. Don’t even be afraid to let the river completely wash over you.

These were words that someone spoke over me a few weeks ago when I visited Daystar Church for their prophetic ministry night. I tend to be a bit skeptic when it comes to the prophetic. Not intentionally, but out of human nature. I know that it’s a gift that many possess and I have been told many times by random people that it’s a gifting I have as well except I haven’t quite tapped into it yet. I am tend to reject things from God (again not intentionally) so to hear that I could have a prophetic gift when I am a skeptic of the prophetic seems about right. Go figure.

For whatever reason, those words have been echoing in my head now since I heard it. God wants me to be waist deep in faith. Up to my neck even. I’m standing in the river that flows from the throne of God but I am afraid to let the water get too high. I’m afraid to step out on faith and let have His way, even when I know that God’s way is the best way. I’m afraid to let water get up to my neck in real life (which is why I avoid pools in the summer) so hearing those words is like having to face one of my biggest fears.

I’m stalling on a lot of things God is calling me to do. I’m only letting the water reach my ankles. Not even knee deep at this point because of fear of the unknown. Yet faith is the confidence that what we hope for will actually happen; it gives us assurance about things we cannot see.

Maybe it’s time to let the water get a little higher.