Little Box

There are moments when I feel like the Father speaks so clearly. A divine encounter, a burst of faith, where I am amazed and blown away with the Fathers goodness. Those glimpses into His personality and His divinity are what make life feel so full and complete in his presence.

At the beginning of my summer vacation in 2013, I had this exact feeling. I was so sure of what was coming up next in my life, and I knew that I had heard The Father so clearly. However, I failed to realized that it is what I do with His words afterwards that matter the most. I went from being fully expectant for the future, to being fully frustrated about the future.

Have you ever seen a child want to shove a special toy or blanket into a tiny box for, safe keeping? If you have, then you know it is a beautifully hilarious sight. There is no possible way that their toy or blanket could ever fit into their tiny box. We know it, but they have a slightly different perspective on shape and size. They try and try, and after they have reached their last attempt. They gaze back to you in frustration and disappointment. This is essentially what happened to me.

In the year of 2013-14, I had the privilege of taking a full year of my life to learn more about God's plan for my life. I joined a discipleship training program in Waco, Texas in a church called, Antioch Community Church. Along with a group of about eighty people, we jumped into teachings about the heart of God, learned more about spiritual discipline. Such as, prayer, fasting, sharing the gospel of JC, reading His Word, and loving the nations of the world, and we grew more in our faith. When the year was coming to a close I had a clear plan of what I was going to do next. At least I thought I did.

I knew that God had placed a desire in my heart for people globally, and at the time I felt like I knew exactly where that would be, Dubai. Dubai, is a booming metropolitan city, and people from all over the world travel to Dubai for business, culture, food, and amazing vacations. That was my vision, and the plan was in place. I was moving to Dubai, and nothing was stopping me. I have a background in Early Childhood Education, and I knew that American teachers in the UAE were in high demand. Everything was in place and the plan was lifting off according to plan.

Little did I know that my so called "plan" was going to change and fast. The short version of the story is, when the year long program came to a close I no longer had the job position that I hoped for lined up. I didn’t have my family’s financial support anymore, I was falling into debt, and plans for the fall were becoming very unclear. There were times when I felt like God had failed me, and doubt flooded my mind. Questions began to rise within me, and I couldn’t help but ask, “why?”

Eventually, after several wrong turns. I realized that I needed to redirect my attention from my own plan and I needed to join His. He was in complete control, and what He wanted from me was faithfulness and love for him regardless of the outcome. My focus began to change, and I stopped asking, “Why is this happening me?” and started saying, “I choose to trust you.”

You see, sometimes when God speaks to us, we put all of our hope into the picture we create in our own minds to help us understand what he's spoken. We fixate on what we want the plan of God for our lives to look like, and in doing so, we forget that He's inviting us into a journey of knowing and trusting Him more. I know I have been guilty of wanting the immediate evidence of what I'm praying/believing for countless times.

It's been about the molding of my heart, the depths of His heart stretching within the walls of my own concepts and ideas, and about drawing nearer to Him.

He is constantly speaking. He doesn’t just speak once and then leaves me to fend for myself. He never ceases to communicate, because He loves relationship. He guides and leads along the way.

It’s like a child who tries to force the colored block shapes into the shape sorting toy box. Many times, we take something God has spoken, and in order to make sense of it. We attempt to mold and force it into our own vision of what we think it needs to look like.

I get a sense that He knows this about us. He knows that from the moment He delivers a promise to our hearts, we immediately try to make sense, and essentially want to find the mold that it "fits in." He knows that we cannot fully grasp all of who He is, but He loves it when His children take part in knowing Him more.

Proverbs 25:2 “It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, and to search it out is the glory of Kings”

It's the invitation that is always awaiting.

“Jesus! Never stop challenging the box of paradigms that I naturally put you in.”