Shifting Passions

This particular post is going to share 2 purposes.  I want to begin sharing with ya'll where God is leading me as He makes it more clear to me.  And for those of you who know me best, you know I work things out and make sense of things by processing either verbally or in some written form and so here's some of the process.

Over the last 3 weeks I have started to sense God urging me to let go of some things and refocus back on Him and the new things He has for me in this next season of my life...after all, I feel like I've been waiting for forever (or just the last year) to know where He wants me and what this next season will look like and yet, I found myself being scared (again) to let Him show me what that looked like in the off chance (or the very likely chance) that it will look different than my limited earthly view of visions and dreams I'm holding on to.  So I started spending some very concentrated time with the Lord reflecting on the places He has brought me out of, how He has led me, where I am now, who I am as the woman He has created me to be, and where He is taking me.  Last Monday, I posted after a day of spending time doing just that and it led me to start pushing doors I believe God is opening for me (which I will share as I have more information and clearer vision).  But during that time He revealed things that I want to share with you here as I continue to work through them as well.

In Feb I posted about clinging to the cross and how often times I get something stuck in my head and heart (not always seemingly bad and sometimes even something God has promised or revealed to me) and then I hold tight to it with the grubby fat fingers of a two year old that believes if they let go they will lose it forever so focused on what is in the palm of their hand and the moment they are living in.  Blinders fully on to the eternalness of God.  And at that time I KNEW that God was trying to tell me I was clinging on to some vision He had once given me and since that time I had taken it, treasured it up in my heart, and then greedily wrapped by 2 year old fingers around it, making a fist, scared to let go, grab hold of Him, and let Him make that vision a reality.  Monday, God pointed me back to that post to remind me He had been working that out in my heart and getting me to a place where when I sat in the church pew a month ago yesterday I could utter a prayer and fully let GO and let GOD.  In fact, I had even forgotten about that prayer until Monday.  And God brought it to mind as I wrestled with the reality that God was doing something new and I was the one who had finally given Him permission to do it a month ago when I knelt before Him and said I want your vision, your dream, your ministry to be fulfilled in me so my life can point others to Christ no matter WHAT that looks like EVEN IF it means sacrificing and letting go of the visions and dreams I have been treasuring up in my heart.  My past experiences with God have told me time and time again that He is good and will come through on all these things that He has given me but only if I let Him and only in His time and only in the ways He has planned to best glorify Him and bless me in the process....which rarely looks like what my two year old mind can conjour up because honestly....I have such a small, 5 ft in front of me, earlthy, noncreative view of the work He is doing and He says there are no limits or bounds to how He can bless and what He can do....Why would I choose to stifle that?  While I'll never understand that, I'll definately never understand how He can be so patient with me while I continously act like that 2 year old who should know better after all these years.  He never stop pursuing me, waiting on me, calling me, using me, and blessing me.  And for that I am face to the ground thankful.  So as I sat in church that day, I gave it all over (again) to Christ and asked Him to guide my next steps and show me the plan He had as I was ready to serve Him and follow Him even if it looked completely contrary to what I had been envisioning.

And He did.  And after I wrote that post acknowledging that I was going to begin pushing those doors and inviting you to pray with me, He led me to go back and read my post from Jan where I revisited Dino death at the one year mark.  And in that post, the pain was still real and the passion He has placed in my heart that had led me to Mozambique and Iris Ministries was apparent to me.  I remember still daily struggling with feeling my heart divided between that passion and the preperation phase I was in for serving Him again in that way.  And a funny thing happened.  As I sat there reading that post.....I felt like I was reading something someone else had written.  I could remember having all of those feelings and how real they had been, but as I sat there, I didn't have the same passions or feelings and I knew God had moved me from that spot to the spot where I was sitting reading that post and I hadn't even noticed.  So I spent this week knowing that God had removed the passion He had placed in my heart that led me to serve Him those 2 years because He was replacing it with a NEW passion....but I desired to know what that new passion would be and how He was asking me to use it to serve Him in this next season.  So I pressed in and spent this week asking Him to show me.

Tonight as I was in prayer and worship time, I felt God showing me, making it clearer, what He's been revealing to me over the past 2 months or so.  The shift in my passions.  While I was in Moz my passion had been to LOVE the children and Mozambicans and missionaries He placed in my life with the love He had given me so I could see individual  lives TRANSFORMED by Him.  He brought to mind so many images of the children and people I served who were dead inside and out when I first met them....there was no life or light in their eyes and they were spiritually, physically, or emotionally (or all 3) ill.  Through prayer, maybe a little medicine, and a lot of Godly LOVE these people and tiny lives entrusted into my hands for a period had been transformed....their mourning being replaced with dancing; their ashes replaced by a crown.  And when Meghann sends me pictures of these beautiful children and kids a year after I have left I know the sacrifices I made during that period and all God poured into me and I poured out onto them was WELL worth it.  I see their smiles and LIFE and love and light pouring out of their lives and I know so many individual lives have been transformed.  But while I was there, I remember starting to have a change in that passion near the end....a passion to see COMMUNITIES TRANSFORMED in the same way He was transforming these tiny lives and I wanted to be a part of that.  It was one of the reasons I came home in the first place.  To recieve more education to be able to help participate in that.

And now, I feel Him ushering in a new passion (well a renewal of what was started as I was leaving Moz...but like I said, I've been clinging to the old)....one to see communities and countries transformed by Him.  And in that, He's been reminding me of one of the things I missed the most when I was in Moz....walking life and mentoring other women....pouring into people as they found their footing in God and sought to serve Him and attempted to walk with Him while still in the chaos of this fallen world we live in.  I miss sharing those struggles and those joys...the heartache and the tears as well as the celebration and thanksgiving as we would watch God work everything out for good...in fact better than we had imagined it and better than we could have asked for.  And so now I'm seeking Him and watching Him meld those two things, those 2 passions together....walking alongside others and helping them seek to serve God while helping be a part of community transformation in countries that do not have hope or see the light of God because they are daily confronted with heartache and pain and death and cannot imagine a life or even one single day that could be better than the moment they are in.  And I am asking ya'll to come alongside of me in prayer as I seek how God is going to use me to serve Him with these passions He is placing in my heart which are growing daily.  That I will keep laying down those things I had treasured up which pale in comparison to the things of God so that He can fully use me as I cling to Him instead.  I'm praying and seeking through a ministry door I believe God is opening and I cannot wait to share it with you when the time is right and God gives me more clarity on it, as for now, it is just in the beginning stages, but I'm excited to see the next mission field He is opening for me!  Thanks for walking with me!