Since writing that last blog, I’ve heard from my bestest friend, Denise, who lives up in New Hampshire. We’ve been friends since New Kids on the Block and Barbies. Yes, it’s really been that long. I know she’s made her way into past blogs, but her last email to me warranted a new post.
In that email, she wanted to let me know that God was doing the same thing with her that He was doing in me, just on other sides of the globe. Interesting how he would choose to have us learn the same thing at the same time, in completely separate circumstances.
In my last blog, I explained that God was forming a vision in my husband, and I know I’m in for a wild ride, an adventure, to say the least. Well, Denise said she’s out on the same ride. It entails not knowing where you’re next step is going to fall. You just know you have to take the step.
At debrief, Tom Sipling talked about passion versus emotion. It’s great to have emotion over God, over the relationship you have with Him. It’s great to raise hands, clap, cry, shout, kneel, lie prostrate, or dance for the Lord. But it’s passion that drives you there. It’s passion that makes you a follower of Christ. It’s passion that shows others that you are sold out for the Gospel. It’s passion that invites others to this life of freedom.
I’m in the middle of reading a great book by Erwin McManus called “Uprising,” and I’ve just finished a section about faithfulness. The best way I can equate passion is with faithfulness. That faith in God may compel us to raise our hands in worship, but faithfulness through life, through the good and the bad, is the stuff of followers. And so I choose a life of passion, a life of perseverance in faith.
I choose God’s vision for me, not my vision for me. My visions are so short sighted and require little faithfulness in the journey. And so, in my last couple of blogs, the vision has become so much bigger than anything Scott or I could conceive of on our own. It will require God to come through for it to come to fruition. And it’s out of our hands completely as to whether it’ll be successful or be a total failure. But it’s up to us to follow God, to have passion for where He’s guiding us. To be passionless is to give up on God’s guidance, and to choose to live a small insignificant life, full of “security”.
So I get excited. I’m excited because my friends at home are living lives of passion, following someone bigger than themselves. I love hearing that others in my life are struggling with the nervousness of stepping out of the boat onto the stormy seas, but ultimately, they want to walk on water, their eyes are fixed on following Jesus. I love that God is planting big visions in my friend’s life (I just hope that someday the visions will be interconnected… you never know, God’s pretty cool like that).
And what will keep the visions alive? Ultimately, the fear of the Lord. If we fear God, we will fear nothing else. We will live miraculous lives, because the only one we’ll fear is God, and so we will end up living lives of gratefulness and generosity as a result. And the people we used to be will be but shadows of who we’ve become. And the people we’ve become look more and more like the image of the One who made us.
So keep going with it Denise! This is a life of passion! It is scary, but it’s more fulfilling than anything you could offer yourself. You’ll be living on the edge of yourself for the rest of your life, and it may look like failure sometimes, but God still has you in the palm of His hand, and you can rest in that. (I have to keep reminding myself of this too).
