About a year and a half ago a new chapter began in my life. I was working in ministry and for the first time ever, could see myself in that same context long-term (10+ years, which is REALLY long term for me, as I generally think of anything over 2 years being an excessively long time to stay put…). And then I found out I was being laid off and the organization would no longer be supporting the stuff we had been doing, the relationships and lives we had been investing in, the movement of God that we got to be a part of in our neighborhood. The team of people I was “doing ministry” with had some difficult decisions to make concerning our commitment to what we were doing, regardless of if we had the backing and resources of a large organization.
Personally, I was additionally faced with some fairly enormous decisions as well. I believed that God had led me to this neighborhood, had established the relationships I had developed, and wanted to continue to use me in the context He had placed me for the past couple of years. And so that is what I have done.
This chapter in my life has been marked by God’s intimacy and faithfulness, He has provided abundantly, though from the outside it may seem otherwise. It has been an intensely difficult season, with a lot of loss, brokenness, confusion, fear… and yet there has been no other time of my life that I have felt more sure that I am walking in step with the Spirit (Galatians 5:25) and growing more and more into the likeness of Christ. And I also don’t think I’ve ever been so aware and cognizant of all that God is constantly doing in and around me.
There have been a number of significant “lessons” I have learned these past 18-ish months, and I believe they are so important that it is like they burn in my heart. So I’ve decided to start my first “blog series” and try to articulate some of what I have been learning.
First installment coming soon: "When God speaks, LISTEN."
No comments:
Post a Comment