This is not a blog, this is a journal entry. This is written by me, to me, and for me. There are some times when facing trials that you must stop and look back at every time God has been faithful in order to have faith that He will overcome. This is one of those times, and I am writing this for this current trial, and for the many more that will come.
Michael, your entire life is a miracle. Your name literally means “Who can compare with God” because you were born by a mother who was medically diagnosed as barren.
You were given the gift of restlessness from day one. Growing up, normal was never enough. Throughout elementary and high school, God kept you from becoming stuck with the ordinary because of that restlessness. God knew that you would be spiritually dead if you were allowed to have a normal life, and kept you from being satisfied with anything.
All those jobs and those career fields; every time you so desperately wanted to fit in and be satisfied with your life, it was shaken. Shaken violently and deliberately.
The military scholarships that disappeared, the recruiter that could never get things right?
Deliberately planned to keep you from the military.
Your bonehead actions after high school that took a whole year of legal battles to fix?
Deliberately planned to keep you from college.
The incompetent college advisers who messed up your college curriculum?
Deliberately planned so you had no credentials to call your own.
Your Eagle Scout achievement?
Deliberately planned to create your current conflict of control versus giving it to God.
Your addiction to pornography that hurt yourself and others?
Deliberately planned to provide motivation to leave Ohio and give you a battle story and testimony of freedom to encourage others.
Your crazy boss who put you 30 miles from work then bankrupted the company?
Deliberately planned to place you into a community of strong believers that would encourage you to grow.
That awesome dream job that paid more money than you dreamed of that you had to leave because the boss was dishonest?
Deliberately planned to break you down and lead you toward the World Race.
Meeting the first financial deadline of the World Race without fundraising?
Deliberately planned…..I don’t know why.
Making every one of your fundraising attempts fail and result in currently having no possible way of making the next deadine?
Deliberately planned……I still don’t know why.
Now, you have no steady income and no way to pay your bills. You cant go get another job because you leave in a month….if you are able to raise the remaining $5,000 in 3 weeks. You feel stuck and incompetent and you’re frustrated with God for putting you into this lose-lose situation of everything failing around you. Deliberately planned.
Michael, you get it, life sucks and seems like a sadistic choice between holding onto your basket of eggs or dropping your entire basket and grabbing for security.
But look back Michael. You’re exactly where you’ve always wanted to be, where you were made to be, where God planned from before birth to be.
This is the initiation, the testing ground of the extraordinary. You’ve gone through BUD/S, now it’s time for hell week. Stop putting a picture on the extraordinary, stop putting a picture or expectation on what God is going to do.
If God allowed you to do/be what you wanted to do/be, you’d be at a dead-end job, dissatisfied with life, and stuck.
God has made you dissatisfied with the status quo, shaken you from everything secure, given you a restless heart, and called you to follow Him; now He’s asking if you will.
He shaped your life to this point despite your best efforts at messing it up, just abide.
Look back Michael, then look forward, and never look back again.
