Well. It’s been awhile, hasn’t it?
I made a trip back to Benin in July. I will post a blog post about
that visit to Arbre de Vie next week sometime. It was a great, great time and I
only wish we’d been able to stay longer! I loved having my niece, Claire, with
me and also Courtney, Betsy and Molly. It was so neat to experience life in
Benin together. It was truly a joy to watch my niece fall in love with the kids
at the orphanage…as my sister would say, “she’s hooked”.
I keep this blog for a variety of reasons. When I started the blog
before my first trip to Benin in March 2012 it was mainly a means of
keeping family and close friends involved in my journey. I quickly realized
that I loved the therapy that came along with blogging during my 3-month stay
in Africa. It was just what I needed, honestly. Since then, this site has been
the place I’ve come to to pour my heart out on occasion and to again keep
family and friends involved in the journey that has become much more than I
ever dreamed.
This past week has been rather crazy. And if not for anyone else’s
sake but my own, I want to write down the events so that I can always come back
to this post to remind myself of the God I serve.
As most of you know, my house in Broken Arrow is currently being rented out. I packed up and moved out in April and a sweet
family moved in. They were friends of friends and needed some temporary housing
in transit from Tulsa to Denver. I loved them from the moment I met them and
felt such a peace about having them as my first “tenants”. Their contract was
signed in April and was a 6-month lease that pushed us out to mid-October.
Last Wednesday (July 31st) I was at work on my lunch
break finishing up some charting at the nurse’s station and my cell phone rang.
It was my tenant and in the course of our 3 minute conversation he told me that
they were moving to Denver sooner than expected because he had gotten a great
job offer that they couldn’t resist. They were packing up and moving out on
Friday, August 16th. Two weeks. I thought I had 2 months to find
some other tenants for my house and now my current tenants dropped a bombshell
by surprising me with a 2 week notice. (Sidenote: They have been VERY gracious;
I honestly want what’s best for BOTH parties involved but also didn’t want my house
sitting vacant for who knows how long trying to find renters and also having to pay monthly on the
house when I’ve been planning on saving all that money.) I
scrambled and threw together a little photo advertisement for Facebook and
posted it online…
Over this past weekend, I was not feeling like myself and feeling pretty
down, if truth be told. I think it was just honestly everything crashing down
at once…re-entry into Stateside living (even being there for only 2 weeks can be a difficult adjustment I'm finding), being heartsick and longing
for an African village half a world away, working 80+ hours in an 8 day period,
wondering if my house would rent, debating whether I was making the right
decision to move across a really big ocean, questioning just about everything.
Sunday morning my alarm went off for church and I came up with every excuse in
the book NOT to go but I went anyway…and it was exactly where I needed to be.
Pastor Craig (Life Church) started a new series this week on the prophet Elisha,
from the Old Testament. Before this Sunday, I could never remember who was
Elijah and who was Elisha. Pretty pathetic for having taken so many Biblically
based classes at Southern Nazarene University (SNU). It's my own fault, really. Bible history was never one of my strong points…thankful for January mini-terms!
What Pastor Craig preached on Sunday morning was EXACTLY what my
heart needed to hear. Just an hour before I had been in the shower wondering if
I needed to just call it all quits and stay in Tulsa and only visit Benin often. What if this is a
terrible decision? What if I have no funding and run out of money 4 months in?
What if I never, ever, ever have a job as a nurse practitioner that I love as
much as the incredible job I have now? What if I never get good at driving a moto and
always almost die everytime I’m on the red dirt road? WHAT IF? (These were
serious fears racing through my mind Sunday morning. Pathetic. I know.)
Elisha was just an ordinary man. In fact, he was a farmer who was
plowing a field when Elijah came to him. He was extremely ordinary but God
raised up this ordinary man and did something extraordinary THROUGH him. And
the first point that Pastor Craig taught on literally penetrated deep into my
soul and spoke so clearly to my doubting heart…a
lesson we can learn from Elisha is this:
You
don’t have to understand fully
to obey immediately.
When Elijah came to Elisha, he found Elisha simply plowing his
father’s land. Elisha knew he was to go WITH Elijah. What did this farmer do in
that moment? He left his oxen and ran after Elijah. He didn’t have to know all
the details to obey immediately.. Something that Pastor Craig said resonated so
deeply in me that I believe someone who’s reading this needs to hear these same
words today: God will rarely give you details, especially all the details,
because if we knew all the details we may not go. We can’t handle all the
details! I am sure if the Lord had made fully known to Jon and Ashley (Barchus Family) ALL that
the past 3.5 years of their life in Benin would entail they would have been
extremely hesitant to jump on that plane and move half a world away. Why?
Because some of what they have experienced over these past years has been
excruciatingly difficult, painful and overwhelming. But they have been and continue to be faithful to the Lord's call on their lives. They
didn’t know all the details and the Lord has been glorified SO much through
their lives and their commitment to serving Him. In the good times. In the bad
times. In the heartache. In the struggle. He has been glorified through their journey through the details.
That’s just what life is, right? A journey. And we don’t know much
about this journey we’re on…at least I don’t know much
about the journey I’m on but I know ONE thing. I want to ALWAYS say yes to Him.
When He says GO, I want to go without hesitation. When He says COME, I want to
come without hesitation. When He says TRUST, I want to trust without
hesitation. When He says START, I want to begin without hesitation. And that’s
just what Elisha did…he didn’t understand all the details but he took the first step.
The second point of Pastor Craig’s sermon was equally as
convicting for me and really spoke to the fears and worries and plans I was
trying to lay out for myself to take care of the “what ifs”.
Those
that God uses the most
are the ones who hold on to the least.
Elisha left his oxen and followed Elijah. If
you read the scripture (1 Kings 19:19-21), Elisha found himself back on the farm but knew that he
was to GO with Elijah. So what did he do? He killed the oxen. Which is pretty
crazy enough in its own right. These oxen were obviously strong and used to
pull the plow on the farm and he killed them. Dead. As a sacrifice? I’m not
sure but what he did next is even crazier. He burned the plow. His plow. The
tool used to prepare the land…let’s be honest, I’m sure his
dad didn’t have a handful of other plows lying around to be used. Why did he do
this? Why did he kill the oxen AND burn his plow and then leave to follow
Elijah? Because for him there was NO OTHER OPTION! He didn’t need the oxen. He
didn’t need the plow. He wouldn’t need to come back to them. There didn’t need
to be a Plan B "in case this whole following Elijah thing" didn’t work out for him…Elisha was 100% committed to what God had in front of him.
This hit me like a TON of bricks. I have obviously given up some
things over the past several months but I have also been holding tightly to SO
much more. What I needed to hear on Sunday morning was this: I need to let go
of everything that spells security in my life…I
must “kill the cows and burn the plows”. I WILL be 100% committed to what God
has in front of me. Do I know all the details? NO. But when God is calling me
to leave where I’m at, I can’t go back because HE is the one calling me
forward. I want to have a “plow burning faith”. I want to encourage other loved
ones and even strangers to do the same.
Does it make a whole lot of sense? No.
But my faith is IN God.
I believe in who HE is.
And He is faithful.
And I am finding more and more that in order to step toward my
destiny I HAVE to step away from my security! There is no other option. I mean,
I guess there is…but who really wants that? Not me. I want to burn my plows: my
plan B’s, C’s, D’s and F’s, to do what God has called me to do.
What is something you need to abandon?
What plow do you need to burn?
Are you 100% committed to what God has in front of you?
What is holding you back?
Who cares if you don’t have all the details,
take the step anyway!
I’m not too far into this ridiculous journey but the past several
years of my life have been an insanely wild ride and I am so grateful for moments,
like Sunday at church, where the Lord boldly speaks to my heart and reminds me
just Who it is I serve. I am thankful that He cares about the details…even though He doesn't give me all the details ahead of time, He
cares so much about the details. In fact, just yesterday, Tuesday, August 6th,I
signed a one-year lease on my house with brand new tenants who just so happen
to need to move into the house on Sunday, August 18th. The same
weekend my current tenants need to move out…
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