Just breathe…

Time just doesn’t slow down, I’m learning, and my life is filling every moment of the time I have at a pace that is hard to keep up with.  My mind is always racing, always thinking.  It makes it hard to be still…hard to just soak in the Lord…hard to just be quiet and listen.  That’s the challenge to us as Christians isn’t it?  To live in a world that pushes you from every corner to go faster, to do more, to work harder…to play harder.  And in the midst of that, He tells us that we need to be still.  That we need to sit at His feet, rest, and just listen.  Not for 5 minutes, not in only my carefully scheduled allotment of time.  All the time…any time.  We have to fight for His voice amongst the clatter that surrounds us.  So that’s the tension we live in.

It’s been very difficult lately for me to wrestle in that tension.  I’ve fallen heavily on the side of go, go, go.  I’ve made 4 trips to Haiti this year alone, and my responsibilities in AIM are increasing all the time.  It’s an interesting situation to be in where your “job” is ministry.  I’ve never been the workaholic type…AT ALL.  If anything, I feared I was too lazy at times because I seldom cared about what I was doing.  It’s not like that now.  I truly love what I get to do every day.  God made me for this.  But I’m finding it hard to “turn off” work.  It’s an unfamiliar feeling.  The problem is that this is no ordinary job – it requires supernatural wisdom, strength, discernment, and the voice of the Lord to speak into it.  

I find myself lately often praising God for the fact that I absolutely can’t do this job on my own strength and wisdom – and in the same moment feel the frustration rush in as I still want to try to do it on my own.  It’s habit.  I’ve learned through the years to rely on my mind, to trust my instincts, to trust my abilities.  I’m used to ALWAYS being able to do something.  If someone says “it can’t be done,” something rises up within me to figure out how to do it.  I remember years ago when I was going to night school to try to learn computer programming.  I had been in this class for several weeks and was really struggling.  I had called up a friend to process this dilemma, and after several minutes of ranting about all the things that were perplexing me, I said, “it’s REALLY hard!”  She said, “…you didn’t think it would be?”  No.  Of course not!  I just assumed that I could walk into a certification course on advanced programming, having no programming experience since high school, and I’d just figure it out.

But not this.  This I can’t come up with anything within me that can accomplish what is my task to accomplish.  This organization I’m a part of is about doing God’s Kingdom work.  God is constantly doing work everywhere in the world – but what He is doing is unique to each place, and each person in that place.  It’s about what He wants to build NOW and do next in a particular place or person and in AIM.  How can I speak into that if I’m not getting clear individualized guidance from God…and how can I get that guidance if I never slow down long enough to hear all that He is saying?

I feel an urgency in my spirit that my reliance level on the Lord must change if I will go forward.  He’s let me experience a flood of emotions as I’ve weathered this time of transition, and after only a few months in, I’m very aware that as much as I’ve grown and matured through the years, I need to grow up in a hurry in this area.  It’s His desire to pour all of Himself into me to do exceedingly far beyond what I can think or imagine.  I want to walk in the complete freedom of walking in His strengths and not only my own.  Mine are looking increasingly insignificant these days – praise God.  Lord break off the ties that still bind, the weights that still hold me back, the inhibitions that I still agree with!