not stop short of God's plans for me

I spent some time up at the altar after service tonight. It was supposed to be a time to pray about vision (who God has us to be, what He wants for our futures, etc.) God really spoke to me during that time. He didn’t reveal to me any specific situational things about my future, like what I’ll be doing or where. Instead, he revealed to me a sort of role I’ll have in the church. And by the ‘in the church’, I mean with His people. Or maybe it would be better described as a character trait. That sort of role. Not the way that a pastor or a worship leader has a role in the church, but more so the way that an encourager or a servant has a role. It’s actually pretty exciting because it explains a lot about my personality and a few other things. God is so awesome. Just because the Bible was completed so many years ago, that doesn’t mean that God stopped working in the same way that He used to. I think we forget that sometimes. We forget that God is the same always. He never changes. That God you read about in the Old Testament? Same God as today. That’s an incredibly powerful thing to realize. And all I have to say is this:

Dear God,
If all my dreams come true, I’ll be spending time with you. Oh, I love you more today than yesterday. But not as much as tomorrow. I love you more today than yesterday. But not half as much as tomorrow!

I will never stand still [spiritually speaking].
I will be on the move, I will look for opportunities, I will make opportunities. I will look for where my God is moving and I will be encouraged to move myself. I will ask for God’s direction and He will tell me where and how to move. Jesus will be the direction I move toward and the catalyst to get me there. I desire not only movement, but also momentum. I want to see movement erupting all around me. I want to see people grasp hold of this vision and run with it themselves. I want to see people start to actually live what they believe and take it to the streets. I want to see you MOVE!

I will tattoo MOVE on my heart and never let it be forgotten.

The moment I’ve been waiting and praying for. The moment when I really and truthfully wholeheartedly without hesitation or holding anything back put everything into God’s hands. It’s strange to be saying that because it feels like I must have done that a long time ago. And in any person’s eyes looking in at my life, I did do that a long time ago. But both God and I knew that I still held tight to a few things I wanted for myself. It’s not that I wasn’t letting God take control of my day-to-day. It was more that when I thought of my future, I had a few ideas of what I wanted to happen. And I let those ideas affect how I lived my life now. I let them affect my thoughts and even in some cases my relationships with others. But tonight, I finally hit a point of complete trust in whatever God has for me. Sometimes I’m a little slow or stubborn (or both) and things take a while to click in my head. The good thing about this is when they finally do click, they usually become permanent fixtures in my brain as opposed to something that I hear once, eagerly grasp onto, and forget about a few months later. That’s the good thing about it. The bad thing is the plain fact that sometimes I just take so stinkin long to grow up and move forward in some areas. I mean, what the crap? Why have I been trying to keep control of those parts of my life for so long? I’ve known and believed without any doubt that if I just put my life into God’s hands, He’ll take care of things. I’ve known that His plan for me is so much better than anything I could conjure up myself. I’ve known these things, but it’s taken me forever to actually live by them. It’s funny because I’ve been talking a lot about this lately. I’m pretty sure that just the other night, I left a comment on one of Shelby’s goals talking about trusting God and letting Him have control. Even tonight at Steadfast when I prayed after worship I said quite a bit about that. I even said something about how His plans are so amazing. And the really funny thing is that I didn’t have this moment I’m talking about- the one where all this clicked until just a few minutes ago, after I got home, more than 5 hours after I prayed about this after worship. God is seriously amazing. More and more every second. Seriously. So, long story short, my own plans for my future won’t get in the way of what God has planned for me any longer. I will NOT stop short of His plans for me.