I asked the Lord for pain, and the pain hasn’t stopped coming. It finally led to a crash.
After crashing, it’s incredible what some rest and time can do. In just the past few days, God has flipped my world upside down, and flipped my perspective right-side up again. Like a distracted driver, I ran off the rode and crashed. Hard. After a little (major) whiplash and growing pain, He is showing me the lesson in it all. Through this latest messy, painful spiritual transformation, God is showing me that I’ve been in Martha mode.
Busy working, striving, and moving. I was confusing activity with purposeful time. Once God gave me a hug and lifted me out of the wreckage, He asked, “What were you looking at?”
God wants me in Mary mode. Resting with Him.
Today, He sent me flipping through my journal to an entry from the 9th of February in Lesotho. I read a few words and remembered the day very clearly. That day, I spent hours in meditative, contemplative prayer and fasting. Eventually, I put pen to paper and asked God to speak. As I read the words today, it was like a letter straight from the Father. I felt known, exposed, and silly for forgetting what God had taught me months ago. But, then again lately, He’s been teaching me a lot of lessons that He’s having to repeat again and again. (“You” is really me, and you, and all of us.) I’m thankful that God is patient.
Here’s what I wrote:
“Too much noise going out means not enough voice coming in.
If you are leading anywhere other than following and seeking God, then you are leading to the wrong place.
We fail to understand the importance of a moment. We are given so many each day, so we take them for granted. We feel power in our plenty, and we watch moments fall by without a worry that we won’t get them back. We forget the power that a single moment can have.
A smile that brightens a mood, that causes a conversation, that changes an idea, that sparks a pursuit, that finds a breakthrough, that changes lives, that change more lives and change the world.
The moment, so small, so quick, so easy to miss. What’s the consequence?
No smile, no conversation, no idea, no pursuit, no break through, no change.
All we have on earth is each moment. For the world to change, we have to change our perspective of the moment. We have to ask God to help us in each moment. Then, the moments are changed, and everything is changed.
You will affect the moment in whatever way your mind and heart are pointed. If they are pointed toward the self, you will either be stuck in place or you may change yourself. This can be a noble aim because we all need to be changed. But, it can only go so far.
The self can only do so much with a moment. At this point in history, we are seeing just how limited a self-focus can be. A self-focus quickly becomes a selfish focus. Difficulty and pain are avoided. Momentary happiness is pursued. Very little change occurs.
You realize this, so you change your focus. Now you point your mind and heart towards others. This too, can be a noble aim. Now others’ change comes before the self. But, again, this can only go so far.
You begin to affect moments for others, and you see a domino effect. Then you see the dominoes falling in a way you didn’t intend for them to. You begin to judge, diagnose, fix with solutions that cause new problems, you envy, you compete, and you lose sight that you are returning back to the self.
But maybe not. Maybe you have a truly kind and altruistic heart. Maybe you keep your focus and don’t lose sight. You keep putting others first in these moments, which affect other moments, and you truly begin to see change.
Then rest of the world begins to affect moments too. The change is undone, and you feel like you’ve taken a step backwards. You continue to give it your best, but the dominoes don’t tip, and you wonder if you’re actually affecting any moments at all.
You realize the the number of moments in the number of lives. You calculate your impact and hope for multiplication into exponential moments. But, you realize that huge number still pales in comparison to the whole that is still left out there.
You wonder why more people aren’t trying to make the same impact on these moments because you know if we all did, then the whole world would change and be all better. You keep telling people this, but they still don’t see it. Hope begins to fade. The moments begin to slip by because you see how small each one is, and you see just how small the moment’s biggest ripple can ever be.
So self-focus didn’t work, and world-focus didn’t work. You try God-focus. You make God the focus of each moment. You begin to see that He not only affects each moment, but He controls each moment.
You start out feeling small and powerless and wonder why you ever tried to affect any moments on your own at all. You see humans’ free will and see that others are choosing to stay stuck at self and world levels of focus.
It hurts your heart to see them focusing on all the wrong things just like you were, and you begin to truly understand the magnitude of these fleeting moments. It hurts. It hurts, and you don’t know how to deal with it. God asks you to give Him the pain, and you do. He takes it, heals it, loves you, and reminds you that it doesn’t matter just how those moments go in your own eyes. He is working them out for the good of everyone.
You don’t quite see it, but it brings you joy. Then, you focus on God even more because you begin to see His goodness. You begin to live better, be more hopeful and optimistic. You help others, encourage them, tell them the truth, and meet their needs. You hardly realizing that you’re even doing it because you’re so focused on God.
Then He tells you to look at what you’ve done. You realize you haven’t done anything besides get to know God better, but you turn around and see what He has done with all those little moments.
You handed those moments over to God, and He used His unlimited power and loving-goodness to affect those moments in exponents of exponents to create unlimited and infinite change.
You just smile because you realize it was never actually up to you to affect any one moment. It wasn’t up to you to change yourself. It wasn’t up to you to change others. It certainly wasn’t up to you to change the world.
All you had to do was focus on God, and get to know Him better. He told you what to say and do, and you said it and did it.
It was simple.
He changed everything.”
With just a few few weeks left on the race, I have made a new blog site for y’all to keep following my journey from post-race, to G42, to the rest of my life following Jesus. I’ll keep writing His story here: Isaiah Carter
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