A time that the FACT of God affects my reality …
So I am DEATHLY afraid of heights. Ironic, I know, that I
CHOSE to go on a mission trip that’s FILLED with plane rides. Month 10 and I’ve
ridden on 12 flights. That is 3 less than the countries I have at least touched
down in, and the exact number of flights I’ve been on my ENTIRE life. I GET
that more people die in car wrecks than in plane crashes BUT car wrecks are NOT
THOUSANDS of MILES in the AIR at HUNDREDS of MILES per HOUR, meaning MUCH less
survival rate, PLUS more people drive cars MORE often so OFCOURSE car crashes
are going to be more common. I make sure to read the laminated safety
procedures chart EVERY time I fly.
When I’m up in the air I feel like I can feel the pull of
gravity on me and at the same time the weightless sensation that flying gives
you. So I get dizzy nauseous, and the fact my over active imagination goes WILD
with possible death scenarios (plane spiraling out of control, nose diving into
obliteration, jet explosion encasing us in flames trapping me on board with no
escape because there is very little room left on the OTHER sides rafts (that
being the ONLY image where I land safely), etc.) only add an eye-watering head
ache to the dizzy-swimming feeling and cause sleep to be minimal or nonexistent. The only way I have found to get past my
disabling fear is with mind numbing movie watching.
Up until this past flight, I found myself petitioning God,
and asking for protection against the THOUSANDS of things that go wrong on plane
rides that might cause MY flight to go crashing to my death. Mind you I still
believe that God can do whatever He wants to do and my praying for it doesn’t
mean that He’ll do it, but I pray for it none-the-less just-in-case He will,
AND to make me feel better (which I almost NEVER do). After I ask God for
protection against the evils of dying in a plane crash, I am racked with guilt
for praying to God selfishly or as if He were a pagan god, there only to give
me what I want, a reassuring knowledge that I will land safely at my
destination. But who WOULD, if you could
choose your own death, sign up for death by plane crash???
This past plane ride was a little different. Mind you I still
prayed against all the evils that might cause my flight to crash, drunk or
unconscious captain, engine explosion or failure, wings falling off, general
bad luck … BUT while I was praying for protection I was reminded that if that
flight was my time to die it would be my time to die, and there was NO amount
of petitioning God that’d get Him to MIRACULOUSLY save the plane. MY TIME. That
is a change of perspective, proof that God is hearing and answering my prayers,
mind you I am NOT praying to die and DEFFINITELY NOT in a plane crash. Some
might say MORBID perspective, but I wouldn’t. I’d call it truth. Isn’t it my belief
as a Christian that GOD has numbered my days, that I pass as vapor, grass to be
tossed in the flames. I am human and I WILL die. I am NOT an ALMGHTY INVINCIBLE
GOD and NOT EVERY time I call upon the LORD will He ALWAYS give me favor, if I
was and I could I’d NEVER die and get ALL I want because I could. I also have
NO CHOICE of how I die. Yes, I can pray for miracles, and yes, I should expect
them too, but NO, I shouldn’t be afraid of dying because God said that He has
released me from that fear … so why am I afraid?
I was reading a book series on my down time this last week of
Swazi Dos and it reiterated that fact. That God has set a time, unbeknownst to
me (yet), for me to die and a way for my death to happen, and THAT is ALL up to
Him for the GLORY of Him, because as a Christian, a BELIEVER in ALL Christ is,
that is what my entire life is suppose to be, for the Glory of Him. And praying
for protection on any ride isn’t a bad thing, NOR is prayer for a miracle while
in the face of death because that is apart of the BLESSING of a loving GOD. The
blessing of COMPLETE CONFIDENCE that you are LOVED entirely 100% to the FULLEST
Nth DEGREE PETFECTLY by THE Creator of the UNIVERSE and can ask for such thing
(Christ did too), but knowing EVEN IF deliverance ISN’T granted to you that The
FAITHFUL God IS walking through it with you NO MATTER what. The blessing of a PERSPECTIVE
that God IS there with you in your fear, in your pain, and is waiting for you
on the other side with a life so much GREATER than this one to offer you – THAT
is not a MORBID thought at all.
So as I sat on this flight, and I still prayed against dying
on a plane or to die of fear before dying painfully on impact, and I still
watched movies to hopefully distract me from the great height, and I still got sick
from a sleep-deprived over-active-imagination- induced pulsating pain behind my
eyeballs, I encountered a possibility to exercise a faith MUCH greater and more
REAL than I have known on my own, that gave God a much bigger and more trust
and faith than ever I thought possible to give, that He’d be there no MATTER
what happened, ANOTHER prayer answered – the beginning of a REAL faith.
My prayer now is that this doesn’t stay a shallow seed of an
idea of a perspective BUT a seed deeply planted and firmly rooting itself
BEYOND may head, past my heart and down in the depths of my soul. To grow into that
beautiful LIFESTYLE of faith and love for a God that loves me so much more than
my understanding. That is what I want – a constant, unconditional faith – NOT
based off of emotional highs and lows, or situational desperation BUT out of a FAITH
firmly rooted and planted, growing and sustaining in depth and strength
“entrenched into God’s truth, into His love, into the Christ that will make His
home in (my) heart” (Brian Shobert, 23 January 2011).
This is my prayer …
“That
He would grant [me], according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened
with power through His Spirit in [my] inner man,so that Christ may dwell in [my heart] through faith; and that [I], being rooted and
grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with
all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know
the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that [I] may be filled up to all
the fullness of God.”
Ephesians 3:16-19
