When you close your eyes and everything gets terrifyingly quiet, you can hear your heart. It’s always there, but I believe you can’t truly hear it until force yourself to be still and get uncomfortably quiet.
Lately, when I’m still and listening for the loudest thing in me, I hear how much I’ve played it safe.
I realize how often I speak up, but only to the point of being bold, never quite radical. I give up some things, only after I’ve carefully calculated that I’ll still be okay without them. I write about my journey in the world this year, but make sure to leave out things like spiritual wars and demons, angels and miracles and unexplainable amazing things, just to make sure the people I love back home will still come pick me up from the airport and won’t think I’ve taken a plunge off the deep end into crazy land!
And as I thought about this recently, I realized that I play it safe sometimes because I just get scared. Scared that I wont be able to explain things well enough to the people that ask. Scared that being misunderstood will cause me to doubt everything and in turn, lose all that I’ve seen and felt and experienced and believe to be real. Scared of surrendering my life and my plans to God because I know that means handing control of my life over to Someone I can’t even see, much less explain.
I know that it means trading in concrete and stable things like my beautifully decorated vintage dream home and a Target and Starbucks in walking distance, for invisible things like angels and heaven and the kingdom of God coming here to earth.
The truth is…I know I love God, but sometimes I love un-invisible things more.
…like the approval of people, the security of money in my bank account, the covering of fashionable clothes, the comfort of Saturday night church with my friends (in english!), and the boost of energy that comes with a mug of real, fresh brewed coffee in the mornings. Nescafe just doesn’t cut it people!
I think God knows that we will just keep chasing other loves until we love him most. We keep searching for the next best thing. We keep spinning in circles…faster and faster, deeper and deeper, absolutely convinced that true joy and fulfillment are waiting at the next turn. But we keep missing all he has for us. He’ll always feel distant, trampled over and shoved in a corner, until everything else fades away and He becomes the only thing.
The funny thing I’ve found about believing in God and supernatural things is that the invisible stuff is actually the most trustworthy, the most stable. Concrete things that I can see and touch, like money and people become like the wind. They are the things I’ve tried to catch, yet over and over again they’ve passed through my fingers and my soul, leaving me feeling empty and alone. But when I bring my empty self to God, he actually feels familiar and stable…way more like concrete than wind.
This year I’ve felt this tug on my heart, more intensely than ever before. A constant reminder for me that God is real and life isn’t a game. It’s not about matching my clothes or creating the perfect pinterest boards or how many people write on my facebook wall. It’s not even about church or bible studies or small groups. Heaven is coming. There’s an eternal story happening right now and I really want to be part of it.
For most of my life it’s like I was standing on top of a mountain taking in all the beauty around me, far away from the edge. Life was good and I was safe. I started to hear rumors of more- more of God and more to this life…but I also heard you have to jump off the edge to get there and that did not appeal to me. I mean, I crawled out to the edge a few times and peered over, but all I could see was that rocky bottom and all I could reason was that only crazy people think they can jump off and fly. So I’d retreat back to safety every time. It was beautiful there…my life made sense. Could there really be more out there if I leave the mountain?
Well this year I got crazy and decided to jump. Honestly, at first I didn’t have the muscles to do it. Its like my legs were shaking and I could barely move, even though I desperately wanted to jump. Those first few times I had to be nudged off the edge by some people who really love me and had already jumped off themselves.
But the more I leap off cliffs and see God come alive in and around me, the more I start to jump without fear- and the bigger the cliffs seem to get.
I can’t explain what I’ve seen and how I’ve felt and what I’ve learned about God since I left the safety of my mountaintop. A lot of it has been invisible and mysterious. Things I would struggle to believe myself if I hadn’t been there. I just know that sometimes God feels more real to me than people. It’s rare, but sometimes he does things in me or around me in such a powerful way, there’s no denying that he’s right there. I know that unless I believe the reality of a spiritual war happening around me, where spiritual beings exist and a spiritual plan is being played out, I wont need an invisible Spirit’s help.
And believe me, I’m well aware of how ridiculous this whole thing is.
…unless it’s all real.
I guess the question is- do you believe in the invisible
enough that you’re willing to live for it?
