The scary part for me isn't so much the idea of change--I LOVE change, and would thrive on constant change, if possible. The scary part of me is that we live our life of faith by just that--FAITH. It means that the decisions I make in my life are not guaranteed. I do the best I can with the understanding that I have and then leave the rest up to God.
And for a reformed control freak - that's HARD.
So God gave me a challenge. And if God gives you a challenge, you'd better do it.
My challenge was to document the major decisions in my adult life, and to examine how I came to make the decisions I made.
The list began:
Going to North Central
Quitting my job
Haiti
Facilitating Freedom Session for a second year
On and on I wrote about how God communicated with me. And two things became clear:
1) For all of these decisions, I KNEW. Something deep in my gut told me what the right decision was, and I knew that I had to follow it--no matter what other people said or did. Some of them happened instantaneously (like Haiti--I knew the night I was asked to go, even though I didn't admit it for a few days). Others took years (like quitting my job--I'd wanted to for a long time, but it wasn't until last fall that I was released to do so). But no matter how long it took to get to the point of knowing, I knew. And the end result is that my life was changed--AND the lives of the people I interact with.
2) Knowing the answer often meant knowing what NOT to do more than what TO do. The disobedience in Freedom Session again. I didn't have a clear answer for awhile. Then Ken, the founder of Freedom Session, came to our church to preach--and I realized what life would be if I did NOT facilitate... and recognized that as disobedience.each of these decisions was sometimes easier to see than the obedience. Last year I asked God if I should be facilitating
So what does that mean for me right now?
I get to pray some more. A LOT more. And it's encouraging. Because it means that if I'm open to hear when God is saying "YES" or "NO," I will hear. I don't have to push for a decision. I don't have to force it. God will clearly say, "Yes, do this," in His way.
It just may sound (to me) a lot like, "NO-you can't do that anymore."




