One Step at a Time

I have spent the past couple of days reading a blog which God has used to inspire me. Please allow me to ramble and release thoughts that are trapped inside of my mind. I think this will be beneficial to both of us. I will be able to process what I have been reading, and you may gain some insight that may inspire you. My time has not been fully spent reading a blog online. I have been working and visiting with friends, but my work has allowed me time in between calls at the resort to read someone else's thoughts that God is using to fan his flame inside of me.

I sit at my desk in my cold room and ponder the purpose of life. While living in Tennessee less than a year, I have come to realize in a more concrete way that life is walking around in circles if God did not provide that purpose. God provides the answers to my questions. He looks at me and calls me beautiful. He is my fixed foundation. He is what I need. Everything else in this world is unstable, changing, and fleeting. Life brings heartache, stress, and difficulties. Only God can bring me through this. It is not just that God saves me and allows me to get through life, but that God desires me and desires to be with me. It is a relationship. It is a popular saying to think "not my will but God's will be done". What does that mean? What does that look like? How easy it is to want my will even though I know the consequences. It is easy to forget about future consequences and then live with regrets.

While reading this blog I mentioned earlier, there was a reference to a grave that had the inscription "known but to God". It is sad to think that no one knows who is buried there, but I want to take this statement a step further. How would my life look differently if I lived as if I were known but to God? It is easy for me to say that God is my center, on my horizon, and my everything. I see my life changing if I lived like it. Yes, we live in community, but what if I lived like I was only living for God? You may be thinking well of course we need to live like that! We need to die to self and live for God. Sometimes words can be words and not a reflection of our actions.

I am sitting in my cold, clean, and quiet room pondering life. I moved here after college for reasons that included a change of scenery. I placed the idea of seminary, teaching, and ministry on the back burner or allowed it to take a different form. Instead of working directly in missions or ministry, I am seeing opportunities where I currently work to reach out and opportunities with my change in location to grow. I sense that the time for change is near and wonder what that it will look like. I think I will be accepted to be a graduate student at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, but I do not want to limit God. I do not want to be going after what Rebecca wants, but go where God wants me to be. I am re-reading Rees Howells: Intercessor. He had an intimate relationship with God and allowed himself to be used as a channel for God to reach the world. Wow! Rees Howells' life is an example of what it looks like to be dead to self and alive to Christ. What would that life look like in me? How will I know unless I take time to listen and then take steps of faith?

So now as I work four or five days a week at the resort since it is slower, I am looking for additional work. I need to pray and seek God for guidance for my job, school, my location, and life. I do not know what 2009 will bring me. The unexpected has already occurred with my car. May I stay focused on God and live like he is the only one I am living for. It is a step by step process.

Show Me Your Ways

The following is a response to Psalm 119 I wrote during the School of Biblical Studies with Youth With a Mission in Wiler, Switzerland in 2002. I decided that it was time to share it with you. It is a prayer.

Show Me Your Ways

Show me your ways
That I may follow.
Reveal you Word to me
So that I may understand.

Your Word is the basis for life,
Answers for life's problems discovered.
Bring your Word to life
In my life so I may testify.

Your love is seen well
In your words and your ways.
May I know it full well
So I may share it with others.

Who fully understands you character?
Who fully understands your love?
Who desires to know more - not satisfied?
Open my eyes that I may walk with you.

The world is such a dark place.
People are blinded without realizing.
They think life is struggle, sorrow, and pain.
How can they know if people don't go?

Your heart is so big!
Reaching out to the world!
May the world be on our hearts.
Send us so we can go!

Go bring life to the lifeless.
Go bring hope to the hopeless.
Go bring direction for the lost.
Go bring sight to the blind.

May we know what we bring.
May we be able to communicate
So people understand.
Turn people's focus to you.

Show me your ways
So I may understand.
Send me out
So I may go!

In Too Deep

The day began in all the usual ways. I woke up early and departed from North Carolina after a great trip visiting friends and family. I was refreshed and ready to face life once again in Tennessee. The drive was over all very good. The weather was nice in North Carolina and South Carolina. The traffic was not backed up north of Atlanta. Though once I got through Atlanta, the day began to change. There were thunderstorm warnings, tornado warnings, and strong wind warnings throughout the area. I decided to stop in Chattanooga and visit my friend who was teaching during a church meeting. There were wet roads, pouring rain, and it was dark. I was told that I needed to turn into the second church parking lot. I turned into the wrong parking lot and in the process of turning around the front of my Toyota Camry starting to go under water. I thought: Not Again!, grabbed my purse and my cell phone before pushing the door open releasing a gush of water into the car. I waded waste deep out of the water and showed up on the doorstep of the church soaked asking for help. People thought that my car needed a little push, and they were shocked to discover the front of my car in water and my back lights advertising the peril state of my car. I saw the great character of the people at the service as they rescued most of my stuff from the car including the dry change of clothes in my suitcase. I talked to insurance and AAA during the service, stayed at the pastor's house, and received a phone call from the collision place that my car is totaled. Now I wait to have confirmation from my insurance. I guess that it is time for a new car! To top it off, this is the second time I totaled a car in 12 months. In April 2008, I ran off the side of the road and hopped over a big hole in the ground. What a year!