Every story, regardless of genre or length, has 6 parts: an introduction or exposition, a conflict, the rising action, the climax, the falling action and, finally, a conclusion or resolution. The most important of these is the conflict. Without it the characters don't develop and the plot doesn't move forward. The conflict is important because it is what grabs and holds our interest in the story. Sometimes it happens early in the narrative and other times it takes a little bit longer to get there. In the story of my life, it has taken a little bit longer to get there, especially if I consider the last several years of my life to be the introduction. As the story of my life has unfolded during this introductory period I developed, through learning the teaching of the church, conversations with friends and people smarter than me, and my own personal study, a certain worldview, a bounded set as one of the speakers at training camp put it, that, I will admit, put God in a box, a very tiny steel-plated box. (This is not the fault of those I talked with and learned from, please don't here me saying that. It is the fault of my own misinterpretations and misapplications.) The odd thing about this bounded set is that it was often contradictory. This big soveriegn King of the Universe that I said I believed in was, in practice, really nothing more than a jack-in-the-box that popped out when the pressure of my life forced me to turn the handle. I said that I believed he could heal the sick but wouldn't turn to him until things got desperate. I said that I believed that prophecy (defined here as hearing and speaking God's truth, much like the prophets of the Old Testament) and teaching existed but limited them to the preacher's sermons on Sunday morning. I said that I believed all of these things but rarely experienced them, until last week. Over the course of 7 days I experienced friends being healed from difficulties that they had dealt with for their entire lives. Open wounds, deafness, eye irritations, and celiac disease, all gone through a simple touch and a powerful prayer. People that I had just met spoke truth about who I was and who I could be into my life and God began to poke at scabs that I had allowed to cover up my own wounds, hindering my relationship with him. Over the course of the week freedom began to find its way into my worship as I began to open up to those in my squad and allow them to pray over me, with me and for me, something which I didn't expect to happen in just a few days. God showed up at a retreat center in rural north Georgia in a way that I hadn't seen him do in a long time.
It's been said that the Lord works in mysterious ways. After last week, I'm inclined to disagree with that statement. The Lord works in very obvious ways we just choose to come up with alternate explanations and it is those explanations that are at the root of the conflict that I feel myself facing now. As I have come back to my regular daily life and begun to prepare myself for launch the temptation to return to that previous bounded set has been sutle and rampant. Of the many battles that I fight every day, this might be the most difficult but it may also provide the most opportunity for growth because I think that as I see God working in my everyday life it will confirm the events of training camp and confirm that God lives and works on a whole other level outside of anyone's box.
Below is the testimony of my friend and squadmate Jacob. He had been mostly deaf in both ears since the first grade but not anymore!!
