The journey…. Two simple words can bring a multitude of different thought patterns to ones mind. They can branch into an epic adventure of knights and princesses or maybe a voyage to outer space. Could my journey have an even bigger purpose? I have been shown a lot over the past few months about life… and more intimately my life serving Jesus, my journey. A change in my heart has begun an awakening has began. My journey hit a climax this week, well really more of a wall, a hard hit into a wall that left me disorientated and unsure of anything. Unsure that there was a God that he did care, that I did have a purpose. The scary thing was I was so sure of that purpose a mere month ago. I felt that I had been disqualified. When put in this place I felt I had one option and that was to just resign myself to life as a banker, to a typical life, to a predictable stable life. I mean everything, my feelings, my heart were telling me it was over, they said, “you see the things you’ve done, you are worthless.” On top of those feelings there was the daily stress, the stress of people I love dearly suffering with huge life issues. That was the toughest part, I am wired in away that I feel the need to always have the answer, to be ready and able to solve problems and offer comfort to everyone and most especially the people I love the most in my life. I couldn’t do that this past week I was at a complete lose everything seemed so cliché. The journey had come to an end and what a weak ending it was no explosions, no damsel in distress saved, just me sitting in my office looking at an Italian cypress tree wondering how anyone thought that an adequate replacement for a palm tree but that’s a whole other story for another time.
Then God spoke…..
When God speaks it is always a good time to listen in and see what is going down. I took off work early one day because I just needed to get away. I ended up with a very wise friend of mine looking at video cables at Wal-Mart. Random I know but stick with me. We had our usual conversation about the many pressing issues of the world such as why businesses employ people dressed like the statue of liberty to stand by the highway and advertise their going out of business sale and the mystery behind Wal-Mart’s ability to always offer the most peculiar assortment of customers and employees, you never see people like these anywhere but there, truly amazing. Then he ask the question that I had been longing to be ask yet at the same time dreading to be ask, “what’s going on?”. A seemingly innocent enough question, except there is no doubt at this point he’s not asking for a casual answer to this, a oh not much man will not suffice. So I let it out, I told him it was over I had been disqualified. Then a pause, me afraid to take my eyes off the road as we drive I didn’t want to see his face, knowing that his expression would confirm I had truly been disqualified, the calling I had been so passionate about had ended and him no doubt making sure the response would not be churchy and cliché knowing I would instantly not listen if it was. His response wasn’t one of disgust at all but of hope. He said you can’t trust your feelings in times like these, he then quoted 1 John 5:13 “I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life.” Notice it doesn’t say so you can feel you have eternal life it says so you can know. It is quite possible that I have read this passage of scripture or heard it a hundred times and always glossed over it to the next part where it says if I ask God will give, the selfish side of me shining forth. The past few days the cry of my heart has been that I may know not feel, not let circumstances, or other people’s actions toward me define my divine purpose in his kingdom. I am clinging to that hope that better things are yet to come.