"In America, God is an accessory, not a necessity," my friend Chichi told me over pancakes.
I stared at her in mild amazement before lunging to grab a pen. The need to write that phrase down somewhere BIG, somewhere where I could see it was unsettlingly large. I settled for my to-go box.
For the last few days, every time I opened my fridge, her words have stared back at me. I've been carrying them around through my days wondering at the simplicity and truth of such a statement. Having only lived in western cultures (US, UK, & Germany), I have never experienced the hardships generally only associated with "developing" nations. I've never looked hunger in the face or been homeless (as in, without a place to sleep for the night). I don't know what it's like to go without health insurance, let alone live in a place where doctors are virtually non-existant. Really, it could seem that I don't need God at all in my day-to-day, rather that He's a convenient place to toss requests and concerns. It could easily appear that He's as much of a necessity as my purse– carried when I want to look pretty but left behind if it gets cumbersome. I believe in the LORD, have a relationship with Him, want to know Him… but do I act like I NEED Him? As if He's NECESSARY?
What would it take for God to be necessary for me? What would He have to do in my life in order for us to be stitched together at the seams, so I am obsolete without Him? What would I have to give up in order to become a woman running towards Him at full speed, full of grace and love and faith and hope?
What would it mean to be a woman full of the Spirit because I'm in constant conversation with the LORD? Because I hold on tightly to who He says I am, rather than who my past has dictated? Because He has called me "Beloved" and I've responded, "Lover, I'm yours" and meant it. Because everything else really is worthless if I can't be near Him? Because it wouldn't matter if I were truly intelligent or wonderfully poetic or breathtakingly lovely if He hadn't already called me by name and I'd answered?
I want to be the woman of grace and freedom and redemption that eight seperate people at Training Camp prophesied I would be. I want to be the weather vane, pointing people towards the truth. I want to be the mirror, reflecting the good in the people I meet. I want to be the loaf of bread, lifegiving and full of nourishement.
I hope to become all those things, but more than anything, right now I feel like the journal my Team Leader described seeing when he prayed over me: "Blank right now, but filling up. All the words and stories are written straight across and upside down and along the edges until there's no more room. And it seems like chaos, but it makes sense."
I'm praying that the LORD would wreck me this year. That'd He'd take away the sins I struggle with, the lies I believe, the fear that keeps me captive, the belief that says I'm unloveable and that noone will fight for me. That He'd make me a blank journal, ready to be filled by the words He speaks to me, songs He sings over me, love He pours into me, works He does through me, identity He bestows upon me.
This is His calling for me, not only to discover the nations, but to discover who I am in Him, to Him and because of Him. Hosanna.
Kaleo: v. (Greek) "to call" or "to invite"
