Floating

What a week it has been.

We had an incredible April 10th as I wrote about on the blog.  It was so encouraging, rewarding, and deeply satisfying to see fruit borne that is eternal.  Then the focus of the week was communicating about the "twins" to family, friends, and a few rubberneckers (those who just can't keep driving by because they are horrified by what they see as lives involved in a wreck.)   One week ago we were feeling excited and encouraged.

Then we began to be bombarded by difficult news, delays, sad reports from home, confidence issues, and negativity.  Gee, wonder where all that came from after our "mountain top" experience last weekend?

While we spend time each day connecting with the One who can sustain us through the storms of life...this week it seemed that the waves were higher, the swells more punishing, and just plain scary.  Yet each day, by grabbing onto the Word, reading the life-sustaining promises within it, we carried on.  For those of you who lift us us, please know how much we depend on that covering each day.  It shields us.  We know that perhaps some of you are in a stunned silence...please, we depend on your partnership in pryr.

The beautiful news is this, that in these times when the storms rage all around us, we find deeper truths that provide indescribable joy.

I told a group just last night that since we've come here, and most certainly in the past six months, it feels as though we've gone from playing little league ball to the Majors.  (Which is sort of a bad analogy as I don't really know or care much about Baseball and on my best day I wouldn't be confused with an athlete.)  There simply isn't a day where we can go on our own strength or abilities. 

For much of my past I lived as a "spiritual anorexic."  I would eat my pastor's or teacher's regurgitated spiritual food on Sunday mornings...and then starve myself the rest of the week.  Ignoring the feast of spiritual food available to me each day in the Word, I lulled myself into the belief that eating regurgitated food from someone else's feasting was "good enough" and that "that's what everybody else is doing."  Now it seems that not only would such behavior be woefully unsatisfying but would leave me without hope of surviving the storms that rage around me.

The feedback from people about the latest announcement about our life has been interesting.  As a person who struggles with "people pleasing" it presses me deeply to find my acceptance in our Lord.  That like one of the words of a song we sing to Him, "all of You is more than enough for all of me, for every thirst and every need, You satisfy me with your love, and all I have in you is more than enough."  He is all-sufficient.

We're so encouraged to know that some of you share our desire to live completely devoted to His calling.  We are indebted to those of you who have, by your example, shown us how to live as believers (not just believing in Him, but BELIEVING Him.)  I also know that there are some who read us who yearn to see devotion to something that is greater than the sparkling things of this World (money, power, fame, beauty, the perfect spouse/children.)  That there exists Someone who can fill the void that exists in everyone's inner self that demands to be satisfied.  And still others of you who shake your heads in disbelief.  I wonder if this is a thimble-full of awareness of how Noah might have felt while building that ark? ;)

For years He has been taking us into deeper and deeper water.  At first the water felt cool on our ankles but he invited us to wade out further.  Soon we had to swim to stay afloat.  Yet at all these stages we could do it under our own power.  We could use our own strengths and abilities to walk and finally to swim.  Now however, we're awaking to a new understanding of the vast ocean in which we find ourselves.  We can no longer see the shore, let alone the bottom, and we can no longer swim...for there is an end to our strengths, reasoning, and abilities. 

Yet we've discovered a beautiful Truth, that when we trust in Him fully and when we surrender in total to His plan and calling for our lives, we can STOP struggling to swim.  Though there are dozens standing on shore watching to see if we'll go under (and thankfully more of you out here in the water with us!)...we give all praise to Him as we report that we are simply floating...

We are surrounded and buoyed by His compassionate presence.  In the midst of the storm...simply floating...