So it's been a few months since I have written in this thing
My very first post in this blog described God's unchanged faithfulness even when my faith was at its very weakest.
And now here I am with a slightly different story to tell...
Following the most difficult five months of my walk with the Lord, the last four months have honestly been the most wonderful few months of my life. Since February God has taken me to Betel of Britain and taught me wonderful things there, over Easter God was doing incredible things all around me, He took me to Egypt and then He brought me back to college rejoicing over His awesome power and outrageous love.
I sat in church this morning and at a very random time in the service I suddenly broke into quiet tears of joy, I was fortunately sat on my own at the back so my peculiar and sudden outburst remained largely unseen.
It was another one of those moments when my heart was just so filled with thankfulness to my God, my tear ducts decided they wanted to let everyone know.
God has just been teaching me so much recently, and that is what I am so wildly thankful for. One of the biggest things that has come up a lot over the past few weeks is learning to trust Him in all things. Something I have never excelled at.
I am someone very future focused, I am very ambitious, driven and headstrong. This means that in my head I always feel a need to know exactly where my life is going. Every decision I make is usually based upon what I think it's effects will be on my future, where it will take me. I am prone to constantly not only picturing but practically deciding exactly what every stage of my future will look like. For a while I was almost certain my life was going to look like this:
Graduate college. Immediately after that go and live somewhere in the Middle East. After that go wherever is the most dangerous place in the world at that time. Have a crazy adventure, make disciples there. Get really good at running away from terrorists, bombs and guns and things. Get kidnapped a few times, but witness to my captors so they come to know Jesus. Evangelize the whole of the Arab world. Die as a martyr whilst singing a hymn.
Seriously. That was the plan.
Perhaps that is not what every girl dreams her life will look like. But that really was what I wanted for my life.
But what I didn't realize is how I had made myself god of my future. My idea of what it would look like was fixed. Perhaps my motives weren't all wrong, I believed God had called me to all those things, these things were what I thought would honour God and bring glory to His name but the thing is, I no longer came to Jesus like a trusting child because deep down I thought I had it all figured out. What started as a willingness to go wherever He called turned into my own life plan loosely based on the things I felt called to do. Willingness became ambition and then that ambition over took me. And when these ambitions were shaken, it became clear how weak my trust in God was.
I recently spent a week in Egypt, I went for a job interview and to generally spend time trying to scout out the land and discern what God wanted for my future.
One of the things which really hit me while I was there was how flipping hard it would be. This sounds naive I know, but this had honestly never occurred to me before that emigrating at the age of 21 to the Middle East on my own would be a difficult thing. I would always say very in a very blase manner 'Whatever - God will be with me! He'll give me whatever I need!' Which is very true... But that does not and has never meant that it would be easy. The life of a follower of Jesus could be described as many things; precarious, unpredictable, adventurous, mental, wonderful, full but rarely dull and never easy. And that scared me and shook all that ambition that I had.
So for a few weeks after that, despite all that God had done in that week, all that He had taught me, all the incredible people He introduced me to, for some reason it all started feeling very real. Everything I had dreamed about for years suddenly felt so dauntingly near and I felt petrified of every possible outcome of my future. I was afraid to go and be a missionary, I was afraid to not go and be a missionary and have to find something else to do, I was afraid to go alone, but then I was also afraid of having to deal with God bringing someone into my life who would accompany me. I was afraid of going to the Middle East with such little life experience, but also afraid of having to stay in the UK after college. Nothing anyone could say would make me less fearful, I had somehow managed to convince myself that there could be no good outcome of the future and that nothing could prepare me for it.
Only God can bring the peace which makes such daft fears vanish
After being prayed for by lots of wonderful friends I was challenged about my trust in God. I am terrible at trusting Him. But over the last few weeks He has been teaching me more about it. He has been giving me peace about tomorrow and reminding me that I don't need to worry about it. That it is better in every way to reach for my God's hand and trust Him with my future rather than have to have it all figured out for myself. Obedience is worth more than sacrifice
There is beauty in not completely understanding God's perfect plan. It seems for the first time in my life I don't really have a specific plan as such, I'm not really sure what the next few years will look like. There are some open doors but I do not know the specifics and I do not know for sure whether they are doors I need to go through. And I do not need to know right now. But one thing is certain. He will be with me. I needn't fear, for I know He goes before me. I can be carefree in the care of my beautiful Saviour.
He has never failed me and He will not start now. In both the little things and the big things He remains faithful.
I love all the things God is teaching me and all the things He is doing in my life at the moment.
"To You I give my future, as long as it may last. To You I give my present. To You I give my past because Your thoughts are higher than mine, Your words are deeper than mine, Your love is stronger than mine - this is no sacrifice, here's my life." - No Sacrifice by Jason Upton.
God is good all the time
God is good and that is His nature
Thanks for reading, God bless you
Caris x
