Don't Shrink Back

There are so many thoughts in my head and I've felt compelled to share this journey, with the prayer that God will use what I am learning to encourage others. I've found it difficult to know where to start, which has prevented me from even starting. So, I am just going to dive in and share bit by bit and hope it makes sense.

The last 10 years of my life have been focused on either preparing to go to Nigeria or actually living there. My years in Nigeria were life-changing. So many times while I was there I thought to myself "This is what I was made for" - loving on orphans and caring for people in their distress. I felt so alive there, so full of God's love for His people. I was constantly amazed that He would allow me to be a small part in the lives of the precious children whom He loves so much. He has given me such tremendous love and compassion for them that it sometimes hurts, it is that powerful - how much I love them, how much I want to see them cared for and protected - it is, at times, overwhelming to me as I considered His love for His children. That love has not been quelled, even though I am not physically in Nigeria anymore.

The intensity of my emotions have made it difficult for me to express into words how I am feeling and what God is doing in the very deepest parts of my soul. I am resisting allowing myself to blend into the fabric of the culture in America. I feel like I have tasted the life God has available for all of His children - a life of adventure, freedom, intensity, surrender, miracles, and power - that I don't want to lose it, but continue to live a life of complete abandon, regardless of my location on this earth. I have wrestled with how to keep feeding the flame of passion the Lord has given me for Him and for His people, in the midst of a culture that seeks to distract me from Him.

Last Sunday at church, a lady stopped me in the hallway to encourage me and she said
"Don't shrink back". When I heard these three words, I felt knocked off my feet. YES! THAT is what I have been praying, crying out to God about - that I won't shrink back, away from the life He desires for all of His children. I don't want to shrink back into a life of self-serving rituals that extinguish the flames, where just cinders of rememberance are left. I don't want to shrink back into a place where I am so surrounded by distraction and meaningless pursuits, that I can't hear His voice and even come to a place where I would rather not hear what He has to say because I prefer to live life on my own terms.

I mentioned to my mom how powerful these three words are to me, and being the amazing and godly woman of the Word, she soon came to me with her Bible opened to Hebrews 10:36-39:

"For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God you may receive what is promised. For, 'Yet a little while, and the coming one will come and will not delay; but my righteous one shall live by faith, and if he shrinks back, my soul has no pleasure in him.' But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed,

but of those who have faith and preserve their souls."

Friends, may I encourage you who have received Christ's sacrifice for your sins and are seen as righteous in the eyes of God...

Endure. Do the will of God. Live by faith. Don't shrink back. Preserve your souls.