Prayer, and Praise, for the Journey




The LORD your God himself will drive them out of your way. He will push them out before you, and you will take possession of their land, as the LORD your God promised you. (Joshua 23:5 NIV)

The past few months have been trying.  Losing my job, looking for a new job & now getting ready to start a new adventure.  Nothing has been very easy, but there hasn't been anything too bad, either.  I cannot say I needed anything I did not have.  I have had opportunities to spend time with people I cared about, to meet new friends, and to rest-emotionally, physically, and spiritually.

But it has also been a time when I have had to walk thru a lot of sadness, frustration and fear.

What if unemployment didn't come through?  What if I couldn't find another job?  What if my husband had a complete cow?  What will I tell a prospective employer?  How would we make it?  Why did it happen at all?  Why couldn't I just be who God wanted me to be?  The fear was overwhelming at times.  While I knew God is always with me, that wasn't enough with this anxiety.  I needed God to go before me.

I believed that God had plans for me that were good. I knew God was never surprised, like I was by my job change, because He was, is and is to come.   I knew God cared about me, was caring for me, but I had no clue where the good was.

As we studied the stories of the Exodus, I began to find a prayer and a confidence.

God chose this dysfunctional, powerless family to be His people.  Using His power, not theirs, God freed them from the slavery of Egypt, led them thru the wilderness, fed them in that barren land, and brought them to the land He promised them.  They merely had to take possession of the promise; God was driving the inhabitants out of the land.

And that became my prayer and my confidence: if God would go before me and make the way, I would, could, follow anywhere.

I admit that it isn't easy or natural, but I am in training.  Each time I see God at work, each time He lets me in on His mission, each time He makes the way for me, I learn to rely more on Him as I exercise my faith.   I figure it is practice.  In many ways it is more about the journey than the destination.  It is really cool to learn how to walk with Jesus...well, except I am pretty sure heaven has to be really cool, too.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Early on in this process, a friend asked me if I wasn't excited about what God had in store for me.  Altho I was curious about the next adventure, the pain of rejection was just too close for me to be excited about the future.  This week, when I told a friend that I had gotten a job, he responded with a, "Praise God!"  I suppose I sounded underwhelmed, but it wasn't because I didn't believe He deserved praise.  He gets the praise for all of it- for the lessons of this journey, for the life He has given me, for who I am becoming, and most of all for just being my God.

Comments

Peter P said…
We have to accept that we're disfunctional, don't know it all and have our failings and limitations then we can allow God to work and lead us where he wants us to go.

This is a great post, Jaimie!
May 30, 2010 at 5:29 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Christ in His Distressing Disguise

Image
When I was much younger, I learned about this remarkable woman, Blessed Teresa of Calcutta, then simply known as Mother Teresa. As a teenager herself, she had chosen to serve God by leaving her home in the former Yugoslavia to go practically around the world to India and become a nun. There she taught school, but she was distracted by the poor on the streets. Longing to care for them, she needed to be released from her teaching duties. Eventually a new religious order, the Missionaries of Charity, was formed by Mother Teresa to serve them, the poorest of the poor. I wonder today what attracted me to her. I didn't know much about India. The pictures of the suffering, the cachetic bodies that barely resembled humans, puzzled me. Growing up with movies and air brushed photographs, as well as a skepticism of news and government organizations, it can be hard to believe. How can there be such incredible suffering in my world? Mother Teresa was doing God's work; I know that was exciti
Read more

Blog Carnival-Seasons

Image
It was all so much simpler in my spring.  I suppose it is for everyone.  That is why babies and puppies and newness are squealed over.  I have been struggling.  Spring has long gone.  The leaves are falling. I loved what I had, what once defined me. Without it now, I feel like a crab without a shell-              vulnerable...                            homeless...                                           dry in spirit. I know, that all is not lost. I know, things change. I know, that God,              who brought me from there to there once,              will bring me from here to there again. I know, the story is not over. I know, the season will change, again. I wish my heart knew all this as well. Check out more blog entries on Seasons at the Carnival .
Read more

Blog Carnival: Community

Image
Blog Carnival: Community Community is getting to be a buzzword that hardly seems recognizable.  It has become permanently connected with a metrosexual worship leader at the hip church which has an outreach into some impoverished place.  But is that community? Yesterday I wrote about Facebook's social networking site.  Did you know that there are more than 300 million active users and that 50% of their active users (returned to the site in the last 30 days) log on to Facebook in any given day and that the average user has 130 friends on the site? Is that community? Do we really have a community or do we talk so much about it and request friends by the busload because we desire it intensely? We were made for community.  Creator said it was not good for that first man to be alone.  Even Creator was not alone.  We need to walk with others.  We need our village.  We need them to not only walk with us and love us and share our burdens, but to challenge us, to force us to grow.
Read more