Thursday, July 3, 2014

Step, faith; step, love; step, hope. What are we to fear

" I know the plans I have in mind for you," declares The Lord; they are plans for peace, not disaster, to give you a future filled with hope."

So says The Lord.

Have you ever looked around you and asked, "Lord, are you, uh, taking to , uh, me?"

It sometimes takes more than a simple reading of scripture to get it, if you know what getting it means. We can read about God holding us in the palm of his hand, but when we're drowning emotionally or spiritually, dang if it don't take HIM holding us in the palm of his hand for us to get it, whatever it is.

I mean watching the blood and water flow.
I mean watching the pierced side.
I mean watching the body go into the ground.
I mean watching the body walking in the same room as us, piercings as evident as our pain.
I mean understanding that he really had to die for us.
I mean getting it, whatever in the holy heck it is.

I know He knows what the plans are. I see it feel it know it at a gut level that I can't possibly explain. But I must admit have I honesty to be found that I do not know what those plans are quite often. There is, as Paul said, a war going on inside of me.

His war was this notion of good and evil, battling like something from a pro wrestling organization. Paul wrote, "I don't know what I'm doing, because I don't do what I want to do. Instead, I do the thing that I hate. ... I know that good doesn't live in me -- that is, in my body. The desire to do good is inside of me, but I can't do it. I don't do that good that I want to do, but I do the evil I don't want to do."

Good guy Paul versus Bad guy Paul as first billing Saturday night.

Mine is more, can I possibly do what God has called me, quite apparently, to do? It's kind of like, "Seriously,dude. You sure I didn't raise my hand when you were actually getting the attentiion of the guy at the table behind me?"

Have you ever felt that you were runing in circles you  didn't even know existed, and to mix my metaphors quite willingly, have you ever felt like you were drowing? Like someone said, "it's not the drowning that gets you; it's the breathing that takes all the work."

The point is this: Can you keep walking, step after labored step, till either you catch up with the planned works of God or can you just keep walking till the planed works catch up with you? If you're going to do the will of God, it becomes quite apparent that you must at some point step out into the faith that has been lapping up against the bulkhead that is your life for quite some time.

Faith, that we do without being able to see the outcome somewhere down the road, requires nothing more than the next step.

Can we draw on whatever resources remain when we are in the last hours of the hammering storm to take that step? Doesn't have to be all that successful a step, I gather. Just a step.

Look, I've discovered at a very advanced age that I am a church planter. Didn't know they came in my size or my squiggley-lined face.But apparently, apparently they do. Though I'm so far out of whatever is my comfort zone I can't see a comfort zone, I must journey on.

Step, and love.
Step, and hope.
Step and faith.
Step ...

Pray for all new church starts, friends, and let the pastors of those beings know you're praying. It's a lonely, terrifying institutiion.

Step

1 comment:

Kevin H said...

Thanks, Billy. It's good to remember that we get where we need to be by taking one step at a time. I have prayed and will pray more for you and Sione and for the church that's in your hands -- your loving hands.