As pretty much everyone knows that knows me, I am a planner. I plan everything, and it is all done in the most practical way possibly. My decisions are usually based off of what makes the most sense. This is a strength that God has given me but at the same time it is one of my weaknesses. This year I have been learning a lot about not just doing things from my head but rather from my heart. I have found that the greatest tool I have for making this switch is God’s voice.
Throughout my whole life, I have heard crazy stories about God speaking to people like Moses, Abraham, the Virgin Mary, the Apostle Paul, C.S. Lewis, and Brother Yun in China to just name a few. I have always thought it was amazing that God would speak to them and specifically speak to them directly. Over the course of this year, God has taught me that He still speaks today – even to me. I have learned how to silent my own voice in the flesh and the voice of the enemy to in turn listen to the voice of God.
Well, that is what happened about two Sundays ago. I just laid down in my bed to spend some time praying with headphones in as all my teammates and I were settling down from the weekend. Then the Lord spoke to me more clearly than ever before. What I heard wasn’t something I never expected to hear or wanted to hear. He told me to not go back to school in the fall…yes, you did read that correctly. My spirit knows that I heard the Lord correctly because I immediately started crying. I wept for pretty much the next hour. I literally felt like my insides had been shattered; everything I had been planning and thinking about upon my return home was gone.
I kept questioning (and honestly keep questioning) if I heard God correctly. Why would he want me to do such a thing? I wanted to doubt but I couldn’t and can’t as my spirit knows that what I heard was from the Lord…my flesh just doesn’t want to accept it.
By the time fall comes around, I literally will not have been around my friends for over a year. I have been looking forward to being with them again. Why would God want to take that away from me? I love learning. I love diving into academics? Why would God want to take that away from me? I love being a Peer Leader at Georgia Tech. Why would God want to take that away from me? I love the fellowship of believers at Tech. Why would God want to take that away from me?
But after I go through all the questions full of doubt, I must do what is required of me. I have no other choice than to do what my Papa told me to do. I already chose to follow Him, and when I first decided to follow Christ, I said I would follow Him wherever He would lead me…even if that means not to school this fall.
I think the Lord had some humor in when he told me to not return to school in the fall. His timing was funny because literally that Sunday morning at church I preached about dying to live (Phil 1:21). I shared in front of hundreds of other Christians about how to die to own our desires and plans and instead take up the Lord’s, and that is the only way to live as Christ. It was like God was just slamming it back in my face asking me if I was willing and going to practice what I preach.
So after I accepted the fact that I am not going to school in the fall, my head just started spinning about what I was going to do instead. Where am I going to live? Atlanta? Dahlonega? Somewhere else? What am I going to do? Work? Work where? Coffee shop? Restaurant? Which one? How many hours a week should I work? Or should I do fulltime ministry? Should I work with a ministry? Which one? Should it be with the homeless? Should it be against human trafficking? Where should I go to church? Should I lead a bible study?….the list goes on and on.
However, in the past week I have learned how to shut off those questions, doubts, and fears. At first, I questioned what was going on and why my heart literally didn’t feel shattered like it did for the first few days after the Lord told me. My teammates helped me realize that the Lord is just comforting me. He is turning my HOW into WAIT.
This is another humorous way the Lord showed me how to have faith. One of my teammates doodled on my arm the word – WAIT – which is one of the Hebrew words for faith. However, the word that I first read on my arm wasn’t wait it was HOW. There were these little doodle drawings that looked like a H and an O and added to the W from ‘wait’ the first word that stuck out to me was HOW, which is what I kept on asking God. But the word what the Lord wanted me to hear was WAIT. He wants me to WAIT and have FAITH.
Well, I know this is a lot of information to drop on people, especially for my friends who are excited for my return to Tech in the fall. I want to let you know that I am sad. I really did want to come back to classes and be with you all again, but I guess Papa has something else in mind. I have no clue what I am going to do, and you are going to have to bare with me as I start on this rollercoaster because I know there are more freak out moments to come where I forget to wait and have faith.
I keep saying just this fall, regarding not going back to school, because that is all God told me about. Therefore, regarding after the fall, I have no clue. It is just like what my life will look like this fall, I have no idea. But I have trust and know that Papa does know.
So as for right now I am declaring what I put as the heading for my blog last summer. I think when I put it on my blog it was God’s prophetic humor.
I am forgetting my plans. Stepping into His dreams.
