The Tides of Life

What does the tide do? Well, simply thinking about it brings a whole host of answers to mind. It ebbs and flows. It swells. It drags things out to sea and brings things from the sea to land. It leaves gifts and takes treasures. It creates viscous currents and leaves peaceful pools. The tide is a force and a reaction. It is these and many more. Life has been very tide-like this first month at school. Lots of lows and highs. It is and will be a season of constant change but absolute assurance. Let me give you a few glances at the tide of my life this past month :]

Starting this month was not the lowest the tide's ever been for me, but it was filled with the most vicious current I've ever faced and dragged a lot out to sea. Just before school started I was informed that God called the person I'd been dating for nearly a year to let go of all others and seek Him alone. She let me know that meant me and let go of me, and I am proud of her for that. It also was the worst rip tide I've ever been in. It swirled me around, ripped me from shore, disoriented me, and left me adrift.

I struggled to swim back to shore, leaning heavily on God all the way. He was my life preserver then, the only thing holding me up when I simply could go any farther right then. I got back to shore and found myself at college. I look around the beach and realized how bare it was, the current had pulled a great many things out with it. I knew I didn't have time to stop and get oriented so I  tackled something, only to find that my source of encouragement was no longer there--I've faltered more than once since then. I faced strange things left behind by the tide, emotions, parts of my past, plenty of dead fish, but I had no one I could talk to about it, no one there that I trusted implicitly.

Those first few weeks were strange. I wandered, literally at times around campus, and was shocked at how much of my life was uprooted, torn apart, or left strew on the beach. I walked in a daze sometimes, too numb or completely overwhelmed to even begin to think. It still happens now, I find myself unable to do anything from playing a computer game to enjoy simply walking outside because of the utter lack of anything or the pure overwhelming chaos of everything. I can't even begin to describe how hard it is to be outside looking up at the stars at night and feel...nothing. No closeness to God, no peace, no joy, just nothing because I'm filled with so much there that there's no longer room for anything else. I can't even think. Imagine being unable to think. Yeah, if you'd asked me to do that before now I'd probably have looked at you strange and wondered how someone could not be able to think. Well, I guess I didn't know everything, but I already knew that ;] ...sorry, couldn't help that one :P

Through this whole time I've been actively running after Jesus. He's the only one who can help. He's the only one who can show me where peace is. He is the only one who can give me confidence. He is the only one who knows what will set me on my feet again. And at times I find Him and am at peace for a while as I walk with Him unhurriedly and rest in knowing and being with Him. Then the tide rushes in and sucks me out again, the overwhelming emotions cascading over me. I struggle out of them back to the beach and start my search again. Every time it's impeded by skewed hopes, broken pieces of the past, or my own frailties. But every time He is faithful to lead me back to Him and give me the peace without which I would have lost it after a couple weeks.

Recently Jesus has been doing something a little different. He's still walking with me and giving me peace between the ebb and flow of my emotions, but every once in a while he points to a hole in the sand. I run over and look in. It's a tide pool. Some are deep, almost bottomless, and some are shallow enough I reach the bottom. In every one He shows me things I wouldn't have seen if the tide had just stayed high. One is he confidence He has given me as my own. The ability to rise to a difficult or bewildering challenge and face it with His help. This pool was made with help by a very special person who I remember every time I look at it and God reminds me of it. In other ones I find hopes long buried, possibilities never before seen, and glimpses of mysteries I am still unraveling.

The ebb and flow is still there, not as bad as before, but at times it still catches me by surprise. Yet God is using it to point out where I need to rely on Him more and learn from Him. I'm finding some incredibly difficult things to work on, things that have been part of me my entire life and are not easily changed or surrendered. And even harder is not only getting rid of them, but then filling that empty part of me with Christ and becoming like Him. For some reason my flesh doesn't want to become like Christ...huh, go figure. I think God's said a couple times that'll be how it is... :P

So, how about right now? Right now I am at peace. I have seen some pretty rough places in my life that need changing. I need to learn how to hope again. Pure hope, hope based and focused on Christ, and hope that will not disappoint. I need to start looking ahead to where God is leading me and what I need to be doing now to follow His lead in the here and now. I also need to suck it up and do my work. I have a book to edit, schoolwork to do, a small group to finish planning and start up, and a relationship with my Jesus to seek after. It's a lot, but He's given me the time, strength, and ability to do it; I just have to die to myself and start killing the flesh when it gets in my way.

Those are only a few. There are more ones that are small, ones that are all encompassing and can't be expressed in words, and some that honestly hurt too much to share, sometimes even with myself. But here are a few that you can ask me about if at any time the Spirit leads you to. I'll answer honestly, so be prepared to have some time to listen ;]

Right now, I feel close to God, but I know at any moment I could be pulled viciously away from Him by a surge of uncontrollable emotion. It used to be scary, the fear of when and if it would happen made me cling tighter to God and strike out harder to get back to Him on the shore. But now I'm not so keen to. He's brought a passage to mind that has made me stop and think. It is in Hebrews.

"It is for discipline that you endure; God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline? But if you are without discipline, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. Furthermore, we had earthly fathers to discipline us, and we respected them; shall we not much rather be subject to the Father of spirits, and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them, but He disciplines us for our good, so that we may share His holiness. All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness. 

Therefore, strengthen the hands that are weak and the knees that are feeble, and make straight paths for your feet, so that the limb which is lame may not be put out of joint, but rather be healed." - Hebrews 12:7-13

I find myself now sitting where the current's taken me and realizing God Loves me. He wants me to be more like Christ and is willing to put me through my paces so I do grow. I often fight it and just want to be with Him, want to be made whole, want to be at peace. But He keeps letting me be swept out to sea and come in again, then be swept out to sea and come in again, and be swept out to sea and come back again until I stop and realize what He is doing. He is training me by discipline and if I learn from it, I will gather the "peaceful fruits of righteousness."

Now, don't get me wrong. This hasn't gotten any easier, any more bearable, or any more enjoyable. Far from it. We often like to make large of little things and say that they are God correcting us and that we just have to find joy in them and they will pass or we will learn from them. But I don't think so. That isn't what this is saying. It says it's going to hurt! It says, "All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful." Realize that and let it stick with you! Discipline is never supposed to be fun or easy otherwise it loses its sting, its usefulness. Yes, disciple does end in the "peaceful fruit of righteousness", but that's after the discipline is done. Not when we say it's done or we think we've learned what we need to, but when God says it's done. So, take heart! Lean on God and trust that He will carry you through. Not on your time or when you can't stand it any more, but when He has broken you down and readied you to be built back up in the likeness of His Son.

That being said, I could use your prayers. I have a long ways to go with this discipline. And as for me and Alainya, we both could use your prayers. We're still friends and when I get back from Africa the future is still open, but that's the future and we're here now. So pray that we can learn from God's discipline and grow through it closer to God and more like Christ. The tides of both our lives are constantly changing, but God is right there with us and will always be, praise be to God!


Going with the Flow,
Joshua

Breaking Free from the Familiar

Emotions are strange things. They can bring you up from despair or sink you there.

Hope is a strange thing. It can be what makes you wake up and face another tedious day with a smile or what cuts your legs out from under you when it fails.

Desire is a strange thing. It can give you a passion for something or an all consuming obsession.

Faith is a strange thing. It can give you a solid ground to stand on and rely on or what you suddenly fall through as everything around you disintegrates.

I could keep going. Until now my life has always been my own. I had simple desires that couldn't fail, faith in something that couldn't be shaken, only let myself feel emotions I could control, and had only hoped for things within reach and sight. What happens when all that is changed? Well, get ready for a rocky ride!

Have you ever been in a place you are happy or comfortable with, a place where the path forward is known though it might be a little foggy? It's a nice place when you're there. You have certainty. You know what's coming, even if something unexpected pops up you know it will be something you can deal with. That's been my life. Looking back I'm torn that I've lived that way for so long. I've lived confidently plunging ahead into the 'unknown' because I know that the worst thing that could crop up I'd be able to handle.

Something strange happened last year. I looked ahead of me and saw two paths, one was the familiar 'unknown' and the other was completely new and unexplored. I felt God's pull and started down the latter path and trekked through the rough, often obscured, path. All the while I kept trying to get back to the familiar path while staying on this new path. It created a conflict within me I couldn't see then but is so very clear now. You can't have a foot on each path. They diverge permanently and no one can keep a foot on each path unless they are deceiving themselves and blind to the fact they're back to the familiar.

That divergence happened recently, and I was faced with my choice which path I'd truly follow. It's taken weeks for me to understand what is being asked of me. I have taken what feels like a hundred miles of blundering through the jungle of confusion and uncertainty to reach the top of the hill overlooking the divergence of the two paths I've been so skillfully walking on simultaneously. I have had my eyes opened to the fact I have been given the second, final choice which path to pursue...

I've been standing on that hill top for almost a week now, talking with God about what the future of each path holds. He has been remarkably closemouthed about both of them, simply saying that I need to choose what I truly want! The uncertainty has been wrecking me! I have been so used to certainty, even in the unknown I have been remarkably certain of what was coming. But now I was faced with complete uncertainty. God wouldn't tell me if He'd fulfill my newly revived hopes, dreams, passions, and desires if I plunged into the unknown. If He had just given me one, small reassurance that He'd be there with me I could have chosen it in a heartbeat! But that was what He was trying to teach me, to trust Him. I had to choose.

Oh, it was heart-wrenching. I had to let go of everything I am, myself as a writing, a desire for a family, wanting to Love on kids, even my faith that God would carry me through it all. Why did I have to let go of those things, especially the ones which seem part of following Christ? I needed to trust Him fully, not simply trust because I knew I could trust Him but because in spite of not knowing I would choose to place myself completely in His hands.

For me, this entrusting Him with everything I am and not knowing what He'd do with it was the hardest thing I've ever done. The past few weeks have been full of impossibly hard things, but this has surpassed all of them. I, who thrive on knowing, have to know nothing. If you show me how to do something and I then know how to do it, you can trust me to do it with excellence and excitement. That's all I've ever wanted from God, to know what He wants of me so I can tackle it with enthusiasm and excellence! A noble goal, right? But that's not what He wants. He wants us to abandon ourselves to Him so He can mold us, so He can be our strength when we lack the ability or knowledge to accomplish something, and so His light is what shines through, not ourselves.

Just thinking about today makes me thrilled and scared. . .

I am scared.

I am terrified.

I no longer know what God will do. Before, I knew what God would do; I didn't have to trust Him much because I knew what He would do because I knew Him, right? ...yeah...no. I'm now stepping out in action and the only thing I can do is trust God will be there with me; everything is beyond my control from school to my very future.

Trusting has taken on a whole new meaning to me right now. I feel vulnerable right now, stripped of all my own confidence. I feel like I'm walking through a wild country and any moment something could jump out and make me fail a class, which would mean I couldn't graduate in May and thus couldn't leave for Africa! Or maybe I won't even find where in Africa I am supposed to go! I have no control and I am holding on to God like a child with his teddy bear at night as the shadows might hold terrors.

I know it sounds pathetic. it is. I have decided to become pathetic for Jesus. That's the bottom line of it. I am leaving everything I know behind as I step closer to my God.

Now, I'm not saying I am fearful that everything will go wrong, though I would be lying if I said fear isn't a pretty common thing now. But my God is so much bigger! He might not let life work out how I want or am expecting it to, He's already proved that, but I know His plan is beautiful! I caught a glimpse of it as I started down the new, unexplored path. From that brief mountaintop vision I saw some pretty amazing things ahead of me, and I sure you'll see them later on here as I experience them! ;] But now I'm headed into the valley, walking a path where each step is new, unknown, and taken only by faith.

Less than a day on this path feels more refreshing than the past twenty years walking within the bounds of the familiar. This is going to test me to my limits and beyond; I already know that. But I have an infinite God with a beautiful plan ahead of me. Looking back, I think one amazing thing I've learned from the past couple weeks is that hurt heals, pain points us to where we need strength, and loss opens up a space for God to work in.

I would like to engage you right now. Whether you believe in prayer or not, I would appreciate it if you would pray for me. God has amazing things ahead of me as well as terrifying things, and I will need prayer for both. For right now, prayer that God would guide me where to go in South Africa after graduation would be so appreciated!

I am excited.

I am hopeful.

God has shown me how much I leave behind as I start my new journey, but for me that is His way of telling me Has some amazing things I need to make space for! I hope this has helped you see where I'm at right now and maybe encourage you to check out what path you're on. It's easy to be on the path of familiarity and think it's surrender to God; I know. But let me tell you, the sacrifice starts something you've never experienced before; you start the adventure of a lifetime! Quicksand, crazy baboons, losing your way; those are things that will cause you to stumble and fail on the path, but God's bigger than our mistakes and will use our broken, beautiful lives on the grandest adventure!

I'm starting that adventure today, no maps, no predefined end or treasure to find, but a perfectly Loving Guide, a tried and true compass, and companions I am going to trust! Will you join me? Will you join this adventure? Pursue God with everything you are and live with abandon! It's the hardest thing for us as humans to do; I know. I am going to slip up and try to find my way back to the familiar at times and only God's correction will bring me back. Yet, I have hope and faith that without a doubt this is the best choice I could ever make!


Taking the Path Less Traveled,
Joshua

One Push Can Start an Avalanche

What happens when God arrests your life? I fell down on a concrete sidewalk. What happens When God gives you a little push? An avalanche has just started for me

The past two days have been intense. I have been confronted, confused, and challenged in so many ways I feel like my life is getting pulled in every way possible. I wasn't ready for classes the day I walked onto campus, the past week focused on bringing other things to God, and now I feel like I have been spending the past two days to get ready for other things. So, I still am not ready for classes tomorrow.

Tonight stood out though. After a long day of my heart being tugged around by God, I felt Him pull in a very specific way. I rebelled, thinking I would appear creepy or at least strange but not in a good way. I kept going, coming up with an infinite number of reasons for why what I felt pulled to do wasn't right. Everything from I heard Him wrong to I might creep someone out. God kept on pushing, reminding me of everything He had been pouring into me that day until I finally stopped dead in my tracks.

I couldn't go another foot farther. I wanted to just close my mind out to this pull that felt wrong in so many ways! I didn't want it to be right, not because I didn't want it but because it goes against me. It would be stepping outside my comfort zone; it would be denying myself for someone else; and it would be taking what God says both in His words to me and in His Word as just that, His words. I felt myself pulled to my knees as an internal struggles raged. I was unwilling to admit this was God pulling on my heart, wanting it to be just me wanting to do something 'nice' that would end up being weird.

I stayed there on my knees for a few moments. I finally told God I would do this. I stood up and was shaking as I went back. I asked God something very simple, if this was from Him to give me a peace about it.

Breaking thoughts but not topic, I am horrible with words. When put in an awkward situation or a place unfamiliar to me(or sometimes even one familiar) my mind will spin at a million miles an hour attempting to figure out what to say. I struggle with even basically figuring out what to say, even so much as how I will even start talking. I almost never come to what I will say and have to just start saying when I do get there.

Yet, carrying on, as I was going back I felt God's peace. I knew He wanted me to go back. I didn't know how everything would go or if I would find the right words, but I knew God had asked me to and He proved it by putting my fears and worries to rest.

I won't carry on any more, but to summarize what happened I lived out what God has been calling me to the past couple days. I have been wondering how I can be the one to lead when I am seeing how far I have to go, but God showed me a couple things.

One, He can make up for my inability. When I would have carried on, pushing the pestering thoughts eventually out of my mind, He kep them there. When I could have stayed standing and eventually just rolled off as I shut my brain off, He brought me to my knees until I listened.

Two, He has chosen me. The times I think I'm nothing special I am both telling the Gospel truth and Satan's lie. I am nothing special, in and of myself, but God has taken this broken vessel and picked it up, setting it in a place among Kings. He showed me through this that He had decided I, weak, hurting, and knowledgeless me, am part of His plan!

I was humbled and still am. I don't know what will become of what I did. I am hoping it wasn't simply a test by God and that I was used to maybe help someone. But either way I will rejoice in what God did and does do!

I honestly wish I could escape His calling. I would overjoyed to serve Him in a quiet place where I could spend the rest of my life with Him, getting to know Him as I served those around me. But I know that was never His plan. I know He has something far more uncomfortable, painful, and intimate for me than that. He's calling me to all people. First I start here, where He's placed me and what He's put in front of me to do. In the future, it will be to a people I do not know, in a place I have never been, and with a goal He has yet to lay before me.

After tonight I'm excite dto say the least. I know it will be hard and trials will stalk every foot of the way, but I have a faithful God who is and will be taking care of me so I know it's all good! I'm praying, as promised.


Taking My First Steps,
Joshua