Close your eyes. Imagine you wake up and you’re out in the woods. You feel a breeze down your spine and the smell of pine. It’s getting dark. This isn’t the kind of wilderness with a few trees and little light still shining in the horizon from a nearby city–it’s the deep dark woods. Your ears fill with the silence of the wild and the only light for miles are the millions far away in the sky. You feel the thickness of the wood, and the wildness of it. What are you feeling?
Frightened. Your hearts beating fast. What’s out there? You hear a voice whisper you are small.
Unsure. Will I find my way out? You hear a voice whisper you are lost.
Lonely. Does anyone know I’m here? You hear a voice say you are alone.
This is how I have been feeling lately—about the future. This is the first time in my entire life that there’s been no plan. Here’s a little insight to parents, family, and friends of racers…we talk about going home and how much we miss it, all the time.
Don’t get us wrong, we are experiencing what for most of us is the biggest witness to Gods glory that we’ve seen in our lives. We are seeing him move with our very own eyes, and were participating in world change with him.
But here’s a scary fact. The World Race ends. And as someone who is usually content with the present, my heart has been strangely heavy with what’s next for me.
So naturally I’ve been praying a lot of, “Hey papa, what do you have cooking in my future?!” Just say, and I’ll obey. There has been no answer, after no answer.
I have been sitting in the wilderness frustrated with him, jealous of others, and wracked with impatience because I have no light, no map, and no compass upon which to orient myself after the race.
However, the truth that I have realized, is that just because God doesn’t tell you what you want to hear, doesn’t mean he is being silent.
I think that because I have experienced how marvelous, how lovely, and how BIG my Father is—that I feel a weighted responsibility for what’s next to also be marvelous, lovely, and BIG.
It’s easy to look at my future and just try to do what I think God wants me to do, but what is more near and dear to his heart is mine. And WHO he wants me to be. Because if I am me, and I carry his living Spirit inside of me, it doesn’t matter what I’m doing.
And while it felt like I didn’t have any guidance in the wilderness this month, I was dead wrong.
Our hosts had house fellowship and worship this past month in Malaysia. While in the middle of delivering a message, our hosts wife who is an incredible and prophetic woman of God turned out of nowhere and looked at me and said, “I feel the Lord telling you in this moment that He is not done with you, he needs you to trust him. He is preparing you.”
My stomach jolted and I felt God looking at me and saying, “I see the doubt in your heart, trust me.” And as if that wasn’t enough, I had asked a friend to do a listening prayer for me. I was essentially being impatient and selfish.
I had been listening to Lauren Daigle’s song Trust in You for 2 months straight, the chorus goes,
“When you don’t move the mountains I’m needing you to move, When you don’t part the waters I wish I could walk through, When you don’t give the answers, As I cry out to you I will trust, I will trust, I will trust in you”
The squadmate who I asked to do listening prayer for me, sent me a message saying I don’t know why, but the lyrics to Trust in You by Lauren Daigle keep coming to mind, have you heard it?
God’s got quite the sense of humor. Yes, I’ve heard it. I was listening to the song but not hearing the reality of the words. Trust requires you to slow down. Life isn’t supposed to be an ever-elusive race to becoming somebody, it’s about becoming the person God dreamed up, and that takes time. Time to realize that in the very season where I am supposed to be serving God, I am trying to serve my own ambitions. In Timothy Keller’s book The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness he says, “the essence of humility is not thinking more of myself or thinking less of myself, it is thinking of myself less.” Our God doesn’t romance us by asking us to compile a resume, he just wants to be with us and move in us.
The thing I have realized is that I am good at being obedient when God directs my feet towards something, but I’m really bad at trusting in the Wilderness. You know in Exodus when Moses leads the Israelites out of Egypt and they are constantly questioning him, blaming him, and disobeying because they don’t trust in the Lord and his provision and plan? That’s me.
God could have lead the Israelites through the wilderness quickly and effortlessly and quite comfortably if he had wanted to, but he wanted dependence and he wanted them to see his glory and how he could provide, how much they needed him. So right now, I’m learning that I shouldn’t rush through the wilderness. Jesus was there for 40 days, and experienced learning, crucial dependence on the father’s strength and word, and ultimately triumph.
There’s a passage in the book The Little Prince that really jumped out at this idea in my heart. The little prince wanted to meet humans, so he inquires about them. This is the response he gets, “Men? I believe there are about six or seven of them. I caught a glimpse of them several years ago. But one never knows where to find them. The wind blows them around. They have no roots which makes their life rather trying.” We humans are so like that. Blown around by comparing ourselves, ruled by emotions, swollen with pride, never satisfied—it’s because we try finding our home in places and not a person, Jesus.
There is also beauty to be had in the wilderness. If I am always looking at my own feet and where they are going I am going to miss the beauty of God happening all around me. So for now, there’s a “yes” in my spirit, and Jesus is the love of my life—that’s all I know, and that’s all I need to know.
