Wasn't it beautiful?
This is how I began to see life once I began to live it with God. It's not near as easy as it sounds, and in fact it's downright difficult, moving with God as He's weaving His way into the nooks and crannies and lives and people of the world. Moving with Him is scarily vulnerable, because it requires me to trust Him. This is what it means to have faith: to trust the invisible enough to live for it, to ask God to draw me nearer, deeper, closer so that I may be in the midst of love at all times.
His love has taken me to hard places, for it's a love that will submerge itself in the midst of any and all circumstances. It's a love that has seen tears of a crying barren woman. It's a love that surrounds the broken-hearted ones after an earthquake. It's a love that is beside the gay little boy who is socially ostracized and it's a love that is right beside the girl who has been used and abused and emotionally scarred. It's a love that will draw messy people together in sweet community and it's a love that meets each person, individually, where he or she is at.
It's a love that invites us all to take scary steps of faith.
It's an intimidating prayer to pray: Lord, lead me. Take me deeper into your heart than I would ever dare to venture on my own. To truly ask God to take you out into the great unknown is scary and uncomfortable and exhilarating all at once. In one sense, your flesh is screaming for you to stop, to go back and remain safe and sheltered in your bubble. In another breath, your spirit is pulling you forward.
Because deep down, somewhere in the most sacred part of yourself you know that you are made for such a life.
Made to be adventurous. Made to be bold. Made to be free.
Not that there isn't joy in the ordinary, because there certainly is. It's just that you aren't made for the stagnant life. You aren't made for the dull, dry, eyes-shut-tight, fists-clenched-hard life.
You're made to move with God as He works and lives and breathes His way into this dry and thirsty world.
What if you asked yourself this question: what is my stagnant?
In what parts of my life am I stuck? How is God moving, and am I moving with Him?
I think a lot of us are stuck. We're afraid of living fearlessly and walking into the unknown. We're afraid to walk with God upon the waters.
But Peter did it, so I think we can too.
I've always resonated well with Peter. He was faulty, flaky, flimsy and a failure but at the end of it all he was always faithful. He always found God again, because he knew that the love of Christ was too wonderful to live without. In a mindless, perhaps even foolish leap of faith he jumped out of the boat and into the ocean in which he took clumsy steps towards Jesus. He lost faith halfway through the process, but when God grasped his hand, Peter held on tight.
Peter moved with God, and I think there's a lesson here.
You're made to move with God, love. You're made to live each moment courageously, and yes it's hard and messy and foreign and out of your element but it's glorious.
And its the life you're made for, because it's a life lived with the Spirit.
So ask yourself this today (and tomorrow and every day): how is the Spirit moving? What chains is God breaking? How is God moving and inviting me to move right alongside with Him?
To determine how to live fearlessly, you have to determine what in your life is holding you captive.
Then you have to believe that the God of all goodness is stronger than that which is holding you captive. You have to buy into the idea that Jesus came to break every chain. You have to accept the invitation to live the freedom life.
You aren't made to live the fearful life. You're made for hope and love and truth and freedom so sweet.
So stop believing the lies, beloved.
Lies of confinement. Labels. Stereotypes. Legalism. Depression. Injustice. Abuse. Self-worth. Identity. Injury. Hurt. Anxiety. Pressure. Shame. Expectations. Hierarchy. Oppression. Disorder. Fear.
God is setting you free from such chains. He's inviting you to trust Him, to taste and see that His love is so much better, so much sweeter than the bitter taste of worldly iron shackles.
Step away from stagnant today and move freely into deep freedom waters. Allow grace to be your standard. Find comfort in a God that kneels down, takes your precious face into His hands, and honestly tells you to come as you are. When He says that, He means it. God meets us where we're at, and oh how He loves us all.
Let yourself be loved by the One that is love.
Then move onward and out and breathe that freedom love into others.
