February 25
Stephen MattsonDay 258: Where We Need to Be
I was in Anchorage earlier this week, enjoying the company of other pastors and wives. Some are newer friends. Others are long time and very dear friends. Even best friends.
We gathered on Tuesday to pray. Each church represented was given space to share their current experience, joys and heartaches. We then prayed for each church. We also identified and prayed over 10+ Alaskan cities, asking God what He would have us do to see a greater gospel presence in each place.
Tuesday was an all-day event, a prayer summit. We labored in prayer, and it was a joy to do so. But the day was marked with a tone of vulnerability, authenticity, honesty.
Everyone who gave a status report did so out of brokenness. Church-planting expectations unmet. Family struggles. Partial vision impairment. Fatigue. Personal and leadership failure. And surprisingly, all of it was healthy and good.
I read this morning from the story of Ruth. She the young woman redeemed by a man named Boaz. But in the first chapter I saw something I may not have noticed in the past. One little sentence.
"I went away full, and the LORD has brought me back empty."
Naomi and Ruth were beginning a significant life's transition. The widowed Naomi returning to her homeland and people. The widowed Ruth, the foreigner following her mother-in-law.
Things had been so good in Moab. Until they weren't. They had both experienced abundance and joyful marriages there. Now they had neither.
But I sense God wants us to read about Naomi and Ruth, and realize something. We all want to know what's next, and that the next will be good for us, and to us. We want God to reveal whatever is next for us, and we want it to be good.
I read a quote in a book last night. "The price of revelation is surrender. The prize of surrender is revelation." To know, be in and follow God's will requires we begin that journey empty.
All of us talking with and praying for each other on Tuesday were and are broken and working to be surrendered. We each know God loves us and our churches enough to lovingly force us to surrender to Him.
We surrender our dreams and expectations. We all had visions of how our churches would be, and we've had to relinquish that to. We each realized we even need to surrender our futures to Him.
And that is exactly where our Lord wants us to be. Needy, not in control. In His hands.
I have ideas for my future. I can paint a mental picture of what my next season will and should look like. And I could be so totally wrong.
It may be better for me, and for you, to see ourselves as kites in God's hurricane. Not knowing when or where we will land. But all the while knowing Who holds the string to our kite in His firm loving grip.
We ended our Tuesday with a firm and unshakeable assurance. None of us will ever hear these frightful two words from God: "Go Away."
Even though we may be broken kites caught in a hurricane, we rest assured He will not let go. He will not cut us loose. He will not tell us to go away.
For when we surrender it all to Him, He has us just where He wants us. Where we need to be. Surrendered. Empty. To be filled with Himself.
