Ever since I was a little kid, I have wanted to hop a train. I have had this fantasy of jumping in an old box car as the train chugs along, and riding it as far as it would take me. I imagine the train taking me to wild adventures and places I could only dream of. It is one of the few adventures I haven't lived.
There is something symbolic about the whole thing. As I reflect on my life now, I realize that the drive to jump a train has diminished considerably as I live out my life as a grand adventure. It keeps me alive just trying to keep up with what God is doing. Because every day is a new turn - the scenery that passes by the box car door of my life is always changing, always stretching me, always pushing me to new limits, and then breaking those limits. The adventure of faith has kept me more than entertained.
It is sad to see the numbers of people who settle for sitting in the seats safely in the station. It sure is a lot less dangerous, but it also lacks in stimulus to make you want to get out of bed in the morning.
If I were to throw down one challenge to my readers, it would be this; enter the adventure. Jump on that train that God engineers, and let Him take you where only God knows where. It will make your heart beat like never before. And it will stretch you beyond imagination. But what a grand life to live!
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
About 15 years ago, in one of the blackest financial periods of my life in business, I found myself regularly sleepless at nights.
It was not as though I was distrusting God for my future, and it was not that I didn't know His peace. It was simply that as much as I could surrender it to him, my imagination was running wild and I couldn't slow it down to a walking pace.
One night after waking again in the middle of the night, I sat up and said to the Lord. I am fed up with coming home and having all this going round and round in my head, and not being able to put it away. I know you are Lord over everything, but Lord, will you just give me something else to challenge me, so that my focus can move away from all this trouble.
I felt such a peace from the Lord and went to sleep knowing that this was in his hands.
At that time our business debt was considerable and we hadn't paid our mortgage for nearly a year.
Over the next few days, events avalanched down upon us at such speed that by the end of the weekend we had agreed, jointly with a couple of neighbours we hardly knew, to buy two new houses to rent out.
All this happened by clear rhema word of the Lord, even down to the amazing way we were able to arrange the finance despite the huge arrears on our own house, and business debt.
Only at the end of the weekend when we climbed exhausted but exhilarated into bed, was I reminded by the Lord of my prayer a few days earlier.
That weekend was the start of a rollercoaster ride with God which transformed many things. A short while after the house purchases, I was falsely but publicly denounced and thrown out of the church which I had belonged to for 18 years.
Being in a small town we also lost all of our friends, so these unbelieving neighbours became a very God given strength for some time. (Needless to say they didn't have a high opinion of the church).
Risking things with God is indeed exhilarating and very challenging. I have prayed that sort of prayer again many times, and have always found that Papa God loves to take me on a journey into the unknown. I have learned far more of the chharacter of God outside of the church than I ever did in it!
Post a Comment