How Did I Get Here?

A few weeks ago, we were enjoying some girl time, me and a few friends.  We discussed how God weaves His story in our lives....how we all have a story.  A couple of us had a hard time trying to figure out what our story would be.  We can look back  through our lives and see how God has led us and how we've grown, but our progress seems so slow.  We wondered if our stories were worth sharing or if they had any real value.  Even though we each thought our own personal stories lacked value, we could see great worth in each others stories.

And now a new chapter begins in my story.  How did I get here--preparing to go to Uganda?  Sometimes in order to understand where we are, we have to go back and find out where we've been.

The day I told the Lord that if He wanted me to go to Uganda, I would go, I decided that this was a very real, momentous occasion, and I should write it in my journal.  Now you need to understand, I don't journal.  Well, okay, I guess I shouldn't say that.  I have tried to journal off and on throughout the years, more off than on.  What was really interesting was when I looked back at my last entry.  Here it is:

March 5, 2011

After heart wrenching days of reading stories about children in Guatemala and orphanages in Sudan and Uganda, I am completely undone.  I have cried until my eyes are swollen and I'm exhausted.  I am so ready to lay my life down for whatever God would have me do.  But here I am, just a western Kansas wife and mother and I don't know what God wants me to do.  I have a husband to submit to and children to love and raise.

So last night, trying to stop crying and not having much luck, I hear God ask, "Do you trust Me?"  I quickly say, "Yes, I trust You."  God asks, "Will you open your hands and accept with grace whatever I have for you, even if it is to wait?"  "Yes, Lord, I will receive with thanksgiving whatever You give.  I will pray and wait and practice and grow and teach my children.  I will wait..."

The entire rest of the year was about waiting.  I continued to seek the Lord and continually prayed "I will trust in you Lord with all my heart and lean not on my own understanding.  In all my ways, I will acknowledge you and wait for you to direct my path," and I waited. 

I waited to be finished with the job I had at that time.  I knew changes were coming, but didn't know for sure what would happen or when.  So I waited.

When I found out that my office would be closing and that I would continue working that job with a commute to the neighboring town each day until the end of summer, I continued to wait. 

I started searching for a job, still praying that God would direct me, and I waited.

I got a wonderful new job but waited another 5 weeks before starting. 

My new office was under construction, so for a couple months I worked out of the conference room and waited.

We started a major home remodeling project and my house was wrecked.  For four months, I waited. 

Christmas day we moved furniture back into the living room and it was almost like God said to me, "Let's get going, we have work to do."

Now here I am in a place I didn't expected to be.  But I'm learning to know Him and I'm experiencing Him leading me.  Constantly, I look to Him and He confirms His word to me again and again.  I am amazed and overwhelmed at His goodness!

In my search for guidance, I looked to my Dad, right?  Isn't that what a girl should do?  I remembered Dad's article "How To Know Its God" and knew I needed to read those words of wisdom again.  It is way too good not to share, so I will reprint it here in its entirety. 

How To Know It’s God 

When you commit yourself to the Lord and to an intimate relationship with Him, He will begin to reveal Himself to you in ways you never noticed before.  Salvation or eternal life is only found in an intimate, experiential relationship with God.  So, you must learn in time, by experience, to know Him (John 17:3).  God’s purpose is to reveal Himself to you in an on-going relationship as you “work out your own salvation” (Philippians 2:12-13), so you can learn to understand and recognize Him.  And while He’s revealing Himself to you, He’s using all sorts of creative situations to conform you to the image of His Son (Romans 8:28-29).  But, if you’re not careful, you can easily miss God.  

The reason is that when God reveals Himself, it is not usually in ways the world would understand.  This can bring us to a crisis point, as we compare what God may be doing to what we know is the conventional wisdom of the world.  God will not work according to the wisdom of this world.  In fact, He will usually do just the opposite.  The key to knowing whether it’s God or not is found in this paraphrase of

I Corinthians 1:18-21:   

“The lesson that must be learned in our suffering with Christ is that, even though it looks foolish to those who are perishing without God, it is (in reality) the continual revelation of the power of God to us who are being saved.  Remember what Isaiah said, ‘God will turn conventional wisdom upside down.  The time will come when the so-called experts will be the ones who look foolish.’  So, where does that put the one who thinks he’s wise, or the well educated, or the one who understands the ways of the world?  Isn’t God going to expose all of this pretentious nonsense?  The world never had a clue when it came to knowing and understanding God.  That’s why He likes to use the things that the world thinks are stupid or wrong or even unpleasant, to guide those who trust in Him on their way to salvation.”  

For those of us who are learning to know God, we must not look at things with the eyes of our flesh or human understanding.  We must learn to see with spiritual eyes, if we expect to see God.  So, when you look at your circumstances: 

- If it looks totally impossible (it’s probably God)

- If it’s going to cost you something you think you can’t afford (more than likely, it’s God)

- If it’s something unpleasant that you would rather avoid if you could (you can be pretty sure that it’s God)

- If it’s opposite conventional, worldly wisdom (that sounds like it might be God)

- If it’s going to make you trust God and stretch your faith (that’s God)

- If it’s something that makes you aware of your own weaknesses or faults (it’s God)

- If it gives you the opportunity to humble yourself (it’s definitely God)

- If it’s taking longer than you think it should (there’s a good chance it’s God)

- If it makes you look foolish to those who don’t know God (it’s God, again)

- If it makes you look like a failure to those who think they really know God (it’s probably God)

- If it makes your heart ache and makes you cry out to God for help (God’s at work, like it or not)

- If you don’t understand it, don’t know what it’s going to take to fix it, or don’t have a clue what to do about it (look for God, that’s probably Him too!) 

Having a real relationship with God is an exciting adventure.  It’s unpredictable because it will usually contradict anything we know or can reason in our mind.  God wants to teach us to trust Him, and the only way we can learn to do that is to submit to Him and hang on! 

But understand this, the journey will take you places you don’t want to go, force you to do things you don’t want to do, cause you to feel things you never wanted to feel and know things about yourself that you never wanted to know.  If you submit yourself to God, He will begin to tear you down, so He can rebuild you in the image of His Son.  The tearing down and rebuilding process will be exciting, perplexing, excruciating, joyful, fulfilling and depressing.  And many times you won’t understand it – except when you’re able to look back and see what God did and know how you changed! 

Copyright 2001 © Community Fellowship  The reproduction and non-commercial use of this material is permitted.

And that's it.  That's where I am and how I got here.  I cried out to God, over and over and over.  This is a very strange place to be.  I can't say that I particularly recognize it.  It hasn't happened to me quite like this before.  God is stretching me and getting me out of my comfort zone.  But He is also answering my prayer because that is what I asked for.  You can't walk with God and stand still.  Even when you are waiting, you are moving.

The eyes of my flesh say "How in the world did I get here?"  "What am I doing?"  But the eyes of my spirit see this is where God has led me, and I am humbled, grateful, wholly surrendered, trusting, broken and poured out.  There is no place I'd rather be.

Trusting in Him,

Shelli


(For those of you who don't know my Dad, his name is Ken Brown.  He is the pastor of a small group of home churches called Community Fellowship in Colorado.  To read more of his work, visit http://www.voiceofonecrying.com/.)