Imagine walking down a sidewalk in the middle of the day. The sun is shining and you can feel the warmth on your face. You can see the path before you so clearly and you can even see what is ahead. Then all of a sudden light turns to darkness. The path you could once see is gone. You only have two options: let the darkness paralyze you in fear or take one step at a time, trusting that there is a path before you…
A few months ago I was in the middle of my second semester of Graduate School. I had this dream of becoming a counselor. I’ve always loved helping people and listening to their stories. After all, I have a Bachelors degree in Psychology so a Masters is the next obvious step. A few weeks into the semester I felt God telling me He wanted me to enter a season of rest. This made no sense to me since I was already 4 weeks in and the semester only lasted 8 weeks. After much prayer and debate, I decided to drop out of grad school. God called me to rest so that’s what I was going to do.
A week later God put the World Race on my heart. “Wait a minute, God…You said this was a season of rest…and the Race seems like a lot of work!” Little did I know my idea and God’s idea of rest were pretty different.
For me, rest means having more time to take naps or 8 hours of sleep at night. It means having the ability to do whatever I wanted with my free time. God’s idea of rest was more spiritual. You see, I’ve never really been able to rest in who God is. I haven’t really needed to rely on Him too much and I’ve always had my life planned out the way I wanted. That all changed when God called me to the World Race.
I no longer have any idea where my life is headed. Yes, I know I’ll be going to 11 countries starting in January, but I have no idea what that looks like. My life isn’t all neat and organized like it used to be.
I think this is how life is supposed to look when we allow Jesus to wreck our hearts. As Christians, we tend to want our lives all neat and planned out- just the way we picture them. We don’t want anything to disturb our day to day lives. God has wrecked what I thought my life would look like and I couldn’t be happier! It makes no sense that during a time where I have no idea what is ahead, God has blessed me with peace. I think that God wants us as Christians to learn to rest in Him so no matter what season of life we are in we will have peace.
I want to encourage you guys to rest in the unknown. Take that leap of faith that forces you to lean on Christ alone. The jump looks scary because you can’t see what is below you, but I can promise you that His Grace and Peace will carry you!
