in this world you will have car trouble

Cornfields.

Just cornfields, all around, somewhere in Indiana, after already driving for five hours in rain and traffic, and Dad was telling me on the phone that I needed to find an auto place, maybe a Wal-Mart? Or else my engine was going to overheat. At least, that's what the little needle by the little sailboat thing on my dashboard that was bouncing around way up above the "H" was indicating.

"Get a towel," Dad was saying, "and use it to unscrew the radiator cap, in case the water is hot and sprays up in your face. Then add some water, because you're probably just low."

My thoughts: What's a radiator, where's the radiator, where am I supposed to get a towel, what if the water sprays into my eyes and I'm blinded, where am I supposed to find a Wal-Mart, why is there so much corn in Indiana, who am I, what is life.

The nearest exit was in three miles and I prayed the whole way. Please don't let my engine explode. Please don't let my engine explode.

I told my GPS to find me the nearest auto care place. "Magg's Auto," he responded. Down a country road with more cornfields, to a lone house next to a big warehouse. Please don't let me get abducted. Please don't let me get abducted.

A woman was standing at the end of the driveway with a puppy on a leash. Harmless! I pulled up to the driveway and opened my car door.

"DON'T GET OUT OF YOUR CAR!" She screamed at me like a war buddy warning me of an incoming grenade. I jumped back inside just as a vicious snarling dog came running up to my car like it wanted to eat my face.

"DON'T ROLL DOWN YOUR WINDOW!" She screamed at me again.

I was not inclined to disobey her.

She walked up to my window and I yelled through the glass like an inmate, "My car is overheating and I just pulled off the highway. Is there an auto place nearby?"

She told me to pull into the driveway, all the while trying not to run over her angry dog, which she kept screaming at curdlingly to get away from my car.

As she coaxed her dog inside, I sat in my car and stared at my steering wheel. I laughed out loud at the absurdity. "Nothing's ever easy, is it, Lord," I said.

The woman's name was Deanna. She told me the nearest auto place was at the next exit. Instead of risking it on the highway again, she offered to call her dad to come take a look. Larry. He drove out and squirted water from a hose into my radiator. I know where it is now. And it didn't spray water into his eyes and blind him, either (thank goodness).

Then the woman's daughter, Gretta, came home with her friend Luke, and they refilled my coolant. Because apparently I was low on that, too.

Why do people let other people operate deadly machines without full knowledge of what kind of things happen inside to make them run? Why am I JUST NOW finding out about these liquids that run low and make your car a ticking time bomb?

I told Deanna my GPS sent me here and told me it was Magg's Auto. Apparently her husband owns a trucking company called Magg's.

Oh, GPS, you confused little robot.

Deanna told me that God had sent me there. Then she gave me a gallon of water and a towel in case I had to stop and put more water into my radiator, a glass of ice water because I was thirsty, and her phone number in case I had troubles further down the road. "Text me when you get there," she said.

I have met the nicest people in the midwest because my car is a pooper. (Remember last time?)

Nothing's ever easy.

I've been thinking about the process of moving down to Kentucky from Wisconsin. It has not gone smoothly. Things have not fallen beautifully into place. It has, in fact, been very hard.

And as I sat in Deanna's driveway while Cerberus leapt at my tires, I thought about opposition.

Jennie Allen talks about this in her book Anything:

Somewhere in my life I picked up the idea that if things did not feel right or fall perfectly into place, God was not in them. I thought obeying God should feel pretty easy and convenient. For instance, if God was calling you to Africa, then he would have a buyer for your house in two weeks; and if not, then he likely isn't in it....All my life I thought I had God's stamp of approval because my life wasn't going badly. Now I was faced with the fear that it might actually be the opposite. What if my life was going so beautifully because I wasn't chasing after God?

It makes sense to me that the harder we chase after God, the more opposition we will face.

Remember this blog post I wrote about living life surrendered to God? I am being reminded of that today. Surrender does not mean that we sit around and wait for God to move, or that we give up when we face opposition, but that in every choice we make, in every step we take, in every battle we fight, we are completely surrendered to whatever the outcome will be, and to the reality that God can alter our course at any moment.

So I'll keep walking, and fighting, and surrendering, and I will trust that God will keep making it clear what He has for me.

Because God will not waste a surrendered life. He waits eagerly for a surrendered life. Oh, what purposes God can accomplish with a surrendered life!

And you can trust that, no matter the opposition, He will accomplish them.

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone. - Thomas Merton 

God's Provision, pt II

This is the month that my life changed in a lot of big ways last year. Job changes and church changes and relationship changes and city & state changes. Enough change for a whole lifetime, thanks. I think I'll resign from changing and become a statue.

It's been a year, and I think that even amidst my wondering "how long, O Lord?" I've always thought it wouldn't be too long. I've always had this idea in my mind that, once I figured out what God was trying to teach me in one season, He'd move me into the next season. I'd end up at my destination and look back and say, "It was all leading to this!"

But I've learned a lot in the last year, and my season remains.

Yes, most of the fluctuation has ceased (thank You, Jesus). I have a job and I live with my family and things seem to have finally settled down for a little while. The part of physical bewilderment around every turn has ended.

But the part where I'm still not sure what my purpose is or why that had to happen or what I am supposed to do and where I'm supposed to go from here, the part where I've been stripped of everything and it feels like I've taken 50 steps backwards with no known reason why...that part of the season I'm still in. I still have no answers and no real direction. I still feel like I'm in a wasteland of sorts, very far away from (and sometimes unsure if there even is) a "destination." I still deal with shadows and echoes of pain and loss.

So I write this post because my most-read post last year was one about God not providing. I don't know where you are, you who read that post last year. Maybe you're out of that season, or beyond it, or just beginning it, or still in the middle of it. Wherever you are, I wanted to touch base with you.

I emailed my friend Justin with lots of facts about my current life, like random puzzle pieces dumped onto the table in hopes that maybe he could piece some things together and give me at least an idea of the picture they're supposed to make, so that I could make sense of what I'm living.

No pressure.

Instead, and thankfully, Justin said this:

It may seem like everything you've come through looks like it's not the right fit - but it may not be the right fit because God needs to change your shape instead of the situation. God changing you is more important than God using you....We can't discount the fact that God puts us in remarkably frustrating situations sometimes not to change them, but to change us. Surrender in these situations looks something like, "God, I surrender to a season, that while I might not be able to change the circumstance, I will allow you to let it change me."

I have been praying that prayer a lot. A lot.

Because during the first part of this season it was all I could do just to endure, to simply hold on for dear life and pray I make it through. But now that I've endured and had quite enough of this season and am ready for the next one and am ready for it now, I find I must surrender.

The new Bethel album has a song called "It is Well." They sing, "Through it all, it is well." I listened to the first half of the song and admitted to the Lord, "I have not thought much of this last year has been 'well,' Lord."

But then I realized that singing "it is well" does not mean "I am happy with this." God doesn't ask you to be "happy" when He leads you through suffering and difficult times.

Instead, I think "it is well" is a prayer of surrender. The same as "so be it" or "not my will, but Yours."

Even if everything I don't want to happen, happens, it is well.
Even if I am somewhere I don't want to be for longer than I want to be there, it is well.
Even if I don't know where You're taking me and You will only light one step at a time (or sometimes just ask me to hold Your hand through the dark), it is well.
Even if I have no idea when this season will end, or if it ever will, or what the purpose of it is, it is well.
If you want to change me, transform me, break me, and reshape me, it is well.

The second half of that Bethel song goes like this:

Let go, my soul,
and trust in Him
the waves and wind
still know His name

So this part II of my "what if God doesn't provide?" question from so many months ago is not a "be encouraged, friends, because I have arrived and God provided and He'll do the same for you!" post. 'Cause I haven't arrived. I'm still very much adrift at sea.

But be encouraged, friends, because the waves and wind still know His name.

Be encouraged, friends, because there is no one more trustworthy to be surrendered to.

And be encouraged, friends, because this is what the Lord speaks over me, and He speaks it over you, too:

I'm not done.
This isn't a mistake. 
You didn't mess anything up. 
And you aren't messed up.
Nothing is beyond My redemption. 
I've known from the beginning where I want you to be and what it'd take to get you there. 
I'm working on it. 
I'm not done.

all to Thee, my Blessed Saviour

What words or images come to your mind when you think of "surrender"?

I think of submission. I think of resigning. I think of giving up.

When people are struggling, Christians really like to quote Exodus 14:14, when the Israelites are freaking out and Moses says, "The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still." Basically: Quit trying and let God take care of it!

What Christians don't usually quote is the next verse, when God responds, "Why are you crying out to me? Tell the people to get moving!" Basically: Um, hey Lazy Bones, I can't part the Red Sea if y'all aren't walking through it.

Because here's what I'm learning about surrender: it has nothing to do with giving up. Submission does not mean having no will, no ideas, no desires of your own. But surrender has everything to do with humility, and fear of the Lord above all other fears, and desire for His will above your own.

Abraham was completely surrendered to God while arguing that He wouldn't destroy Sodom (Genesis 18); David was completely surrendered to God while begging that his son wouldn't die (2 Samuel 12); and Jesus was completely surrendered to God while pleading that He wouldn't have to suffer (Matthew 26).

'Cause you know how you can tell someone's surrendered? It's not that they don't want anything, don't fight for anything, and don't strive to accomplish anything. It's when what they want, what they're striving for, and what they're fighting for doesn't pan out, and they accept it, trust the Lord, believe that He is good and better than what they're asking for, and move on.

Jesus ended each of His pleas for a way out with the words, "But I want your will to be done, not mine."

When David's son died despite his fasting and weeping and begging, he got up, took a shower, went into a worship service to worship God, then went home and ate dinner.

And I think the reason God let Abraham argue with Him in the first place was because He knew that Abraham respected and feared the Lord even in the midst of arguing with Him.

Surrender doesn't mean not trying or asking for things. It means humbly trying and asking for things. It means having the right perspective of who you are & what part you play in the grand story that is God's (not yours). It means praising God whether or not things turn out the way you want them to, because you know it's not about you anyway, and that even while it's not about you, God still values you and wants to give you the best. What better God to be surrendered to?

I do not mean that I am already as God wants me to be. I have not yet reached that goal, but I continue trying to reach it and to make it mine. Christ wants me to do that, which is the reason he made me his. Brothers and sisters, I know that I have not yet reached that goal, but there is one thing I always do. Forgetting the past and straining toward what is ahead, I keep trying to reach the goal and get the prize for which God called me through Christ to the life above. - Philippians 3:12-14 NCV

morning promises

My alarm woke me up this morning to Will Reagan & United Pursuit. I am naturally a morning person, so smiling when I wake up is not unusual for me. My first thought is usually, "I LOVE MORNING!" (Not an exaggeration.) But my first thought this morning was a little different.

One of my favorite promises that God has been fulfilling in my life recently is that He is all I need.

Sometimes I start to look at who's getting married, who's having kids, who's making more money than I am, who's driving a better car than I am, who has family living near to them, etc. And I wonder at God, "Why haven't You blessed me with all of these things?" And I feel discouraged and discontented and a little sad, like maybe there's something wrong with me or that I'm not as "treasured" or "valued" or "deserving" as someone else.

And once I've thought these thoughts, I've taken my eyes off Jesus.

Because here's the thing about Jesus: He gives.

I'm not talking about the Pollyanna "glad game" where you make a list of all the blessings you have been given (which is a very good thing to do).

I am talking about finding everything and all in the One whose love and grace goes deeper and fuller than any person or thing ever could.

He gives us Himself.

There are a lot of things I want, and a lot of things I don't understand why I don't have. But here is where that Will Reagan & United Pursuit song comes in:

I take all those things that tell me I am incomplete, that tell me I am not where I could be or should be, that tell me there's more that I could have, and lay them at Jesus' feet and pray,

If I give it all to You, will You make it all new?

Because He does. He has. He continues to take what I give Him and make it into something I would not have designed for myself. Sometimes that means giving Him something I really want and telling Him that I trust that whatever He gives will be better.

And it is.

Because when He gives you Himself, it is far better assurance that you are treasured and valued than if He were to give you every blessing on earth.

I do not comfort myself in my "losses" but counting all the blessings He has given me. I allow Him to comfort me and show me that there is no loss when I find everything I need in Him.

"The works of his hands are faithful and just; all his precepts are trustworthy." - Psalm 11:7