What have we learned today?

My son Micah is a VeggieTale fanatic...... Ask anyone in our family. His birthday is tomorrow and he is turning the big 5!!! My baby is 5! Amazing. Ever since he was about a year and a half old he has been in LOVE with the characters. Bob, Larry, Junior, its become an obsession. Everything green is Larry, everything red is Bob. He loves his vegetables because of this, for that I am grateful. We keep waiting for this obsession to end, but there doesn't seem to be an end in sight. For now I enjoy it. It's what makes Micah, Micah.

If you haven't ever seen a veggie episode, one of the things Bob and Larry say at the end of every episode is "So kids, what have we learned today?".... Every episode highlights some feature of God's Word that will enrich their lives and make them better people.

I was thinking of that this morning. If there is one thing about life it's that it gives us many, many, many opportunities to learn more about our world, each other, but most of all about God. 

One verse that we have had quoted to us a lot is - well you know the Lord says "my ways are higher than your ways, my thoughts than your thoughts..." and they say that with the idea that somehow God is trying to teach me something as he's given me this illness. I would agree with that in one respect, God is teaching me something, but I think it's in a different way than they think. I can say that because Psalm 25 :10 says "All the ways of the Lord are loving..." Not a twisted love, but a love that is pure. All of this we've already discussed.

This morning as I was reflecting on these last 9 months since the diagnosis and more than a year of battling the symptoms, and almost 9 years of living in this valley. I was thinking of all the amazing things I've learned. Some things I never thought I'd learn.

Last night was our high school graduation. I was reflecting that it's been 15 years since I graduated! The kids that graduated last night were 3 years old when I graduated! Wow, that makes me feel old.... but we won't think about that. We had two of our youth from our church graduate last night. Right now we have 6 youth total. One is moving and with the two that graduated that leaves us with 3.... For those of you who don't know, we actually moved here to start a youth church, almost 9 years ago. If someone had told us then that in 9 years we would have a whopping 3 youth.... I think we would have packed up and said, "Well, that obviously isn't the place for us"... Thankfully nobody did.

You see God's ways really are higher than our ways. We thought that was why we were coming here. We thought we were going to change the youth of the Valley. When we graduated from Bible school we felt like we could do anything and it would turn to gold. We had all the formulas, all the right verb-age, all the right help, and for a while it did work. We had groups of kids that came and then they left. They got saved and on fire for the Lord and then the cares of life stole so much of that initial joy away. Some of it was their fault, some of it was this world, a lot of it was us.

Now that we are on this side of the years and looking back I think the only thing we would have done differently is to love more. But the Lord was speaking to us the other day and was showing us that our long term call here wasn't necessarily the youth it was us. He wanted us. All of us. He wanted to mold us and shape us into something he could use. Before we had it all figured out. It was a nice neat package with all the i's dotted and the t's crossed. We "knew" where we would be in 10 years, we "knew" what the outcome would be of laying down our lives. 

I'm so glad we didn't really know.

I think one of the reasons so many people get discouraged (including us) is because they think they know why they are on a certain path and they know what the outcome is going to be and how many lives they are going to impact or how their lives will look in a certain amount of years and if it hasn't happened exactly that way, or even somewhat that way, discouragement sets in and a sense of hopelessness or failure and it clouds us from being able to see the things the Lord is doing and teaching and accomplishing.

After about 4 years here people began asking us "what we were going to do now." The offers from different ministries began coming in. People that really love us, who saw that we have "so much more to offer" began looking around for somewhere else for us to go where we would be "used to our utmost potential". By the way, if you are one of those people, we really do love you and we are grateful because we understand your hearts. But everytime we would pray about an offer the Lord would say "no". 

I was ready to go. About 5 years ago I was ready to blow this joint. I wanted to run away. I wanted my amazing husband to be used to his utmost potential. I wanted to be more comfortable, I wanted to be more loved and appreciated. Thankfully the Lord didn't let us go. I feel like we've learned so much about His heart that we wouldn't have learned if we had sought our own ministry instead of Him. 

The only thing the Lord asks us to do these days is love the one in front of us. He has given us very near sighted vision because he needed to. I heard a quote the other day that says something like:

 "if I work on changing myself then I can change my neighborhood, then I can change my city,      then my state, then my nation, then the world". 

I'm really only responsible for today, loving the person who knocks on my door. Loving the lady at the grocery store, the man at the gas station. If I'm tuned into His Spirit then I'll know what each person really needs and since Christ is in me I have what they really need everytime. Whether it's encouragement, a prophetic word, a smile, a prayer for healing, whatever. This isn't easy, especially when I am on a crazy run to the grocery store with two wild kids that insist on walking instead of riding in the cart. I tend to tune out the Holy Spirit and I'm lucky to get away with my sanity. Sometimes I succeed.

Daniel just called to say that the man he prayed for yesterday that used to work with him who has brain cancer, passed away last night. So we are so sad that he died, but so grateful that he was obedient to go and pray for him to live and be healed. Daniel prayed with all faith believing that what he has inside of himself would be enough to see this man healed instantly. This time he passed away, but I guarantee that next time we are asked to pray for someone sick we will because Christ in us is greater than he that is in the world. If I never pray for another person then I know no one I pray for will be healed, but if I keep praying, keep pressing, keep knocking, I know that heaven will come to earth just like he said.

I think I'll keep pressing in!