abandon

This week I'm in Cincinnati for the Christian Community Development Conference with a few other social work majors. It's a whole lot to take in, but I'm feeling extremely blessed to be here. Getting to rub shoulders with men and women who have committed their lives to living out their passion for gospel oriented community development is such an encouragment! It's also a tremendous challenge, for these men and women are great warriors of faith. They are fully aware of their weaknesses and their total dependance upon the Lord to do this humanly impossible work of knitting together communities that break racial, cultural, generational, class and gender bounds. These men and women are warriors of faith, committing everything to prayer, humbly and with hope. They support one another and challenge each other out of mediocrity and into a glorious Kingdom that Christ is bringing and sustaining even now!

After some incredible worship with these thousands of brothers and sisters and listening to Jim Wallis speak last night, I began to reflect upon my conflict between desiring to serve God in such a mighty way by loving his people and my fear of unknown plans and circumstances. Fears of loneliness and doubt of success or rejection by friends and family should be easily bushed away in light of such glory, but they aren't. Even in the face of an abundance of opportunities to serve, I doubt that God can really work out all the details. Even as I listen to the testimony and witness of many who have gone before me and are right alongside me, I feel too timid to jump into life with Christ as they have. Even as I consider the ridiculous nature of such concerns, here they are, right beside me. Oh how I need you, faithful savior!

We sang Come Thou Fount last night, and this refrain continues to echo in my heart:

... Let thy goodness like a fetter,

bind my wandering heart to Thee

Prone to wander, Lord I feel it,

Prone to leave the God I love;

Here's my heart Lord, take and seal it,

Seal it for thy courts above!

So today I am struggling with the colliding realities of fear in leaping into the unknown and thankfulness for God's placing a constant aching in my heart to run with abandon into his purpose. I am learning again and again that it is not a great risk to trust in this God, but a leap into a real and unending hope!

Would you, my friends, my community, my brothers and sisters, pray for discernment with me? Both you and I have such wonderful opportunity to rejoice with God in the coming of his kingdom; may the sharing of our lives spur one another on to live out of hope rather than fear, delighting in God's will and rejoicing with all the Saints to know that his will, will be done!

Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is!

1 john 3:2