For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; a time to tear, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; a time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time for peace. Morning light
The strangest thing keeps happening. Whenever that sun pours through the window or when I walk outside and get brutally blinded by the brightness I'm so not used to, it’s like that light sears directly through to my soul, and it comes, and comes, and comes, and keeps coming. Even when my eyes water with how bright it is, it blares right in anyway. The hand of God keeps reaching into my gray heart and the sharp light keeps cutting away hopelessness and blockading old thought alleys of shame. It presses into the flesh of my heart to forge new understandings and thought paths of truth and hope. Such hope! Yahweh: Breath of Life. I AM: Promise. (I will be who I will be) Shifting SandsFaithful to his name, God has taken my hand and drawn me up. After a season of hard pressing and threatening shifts, I have found a solid ground that I can rely on no matter what. Actually, it’s not a new discovery, I always knew of this solid ground, I just didn't trust it. In a generation where things change so fast, and where truth is so relative, we claim to be hipster, we claim to crave human rights, social justice, freedom, uniqueness, where change is what we take pride in, I found myself looking around at everything surrounding me and beneath my feet, the ground I was taught to stand on was murky. So I revoked my trust. If that was going to shift along with everything else, I couldn’t invest myself in it. See, truly this generation craves an absolute truth. We crave something that won’t change when all the world whirls around us and iPhone 50 Billion is released and and genders alternate. When truth is a bit of Buddhism mixed with Islam plus maybe a tiny belief in Zodiac signs and no one speaks about beliefs for fear of offending someone, and truth today can be different then truth tomorrow based on who I’m with and what I experienced in the last 12 hours, we find ourselves with actually nothing to hold on to. Even if I decide what my truth is, and I stick with it, and someone else does the same, but we differ, then the conclusion is that we can both be wrong, but we’re not both right. That means its fallible. "What is truth?" - PilateWithout at absolute truth, we have no story. Without a story we have no identity, and no purpose. How do you get to know someone? You listen to their story, and it defines them, explains why they are how they are, where they came from, where they are going, their roll to play in the progression. It’s why we study the Revolutionary War and the Civil war. It’s why we study holy scriptures. It’s why we study evolution. It’s why we’re fascinated by family trees, and DNA tracing. If everyone has their own truth, and it really is the truth, then what story is it? When we all come from a different background, where can we put a stake in the ground saying, “this will not change”. What is worth holding on to and not letting go of? Won’t everything just end up changing anyways? Marriages? Friends? Places? Money? Religion? Myself? I change! Always! I can’t even trust me, because ultimately, life happens, I grow and experience new things and hard things, I make new decisions and my perspective is ever changing- and ultimately I am going to die, and then what? After studying the Bible in 2015, and then returning home, I found myself in the midst of all these ideas, which are making up our culture. And the enemy came with 1,000% intensity to my heart to try and push me over and obliterate all the things that I had just learned, in order to convince me that it too, was relative. You experience the peace of Jesus? So also buddhists experience peace when they truly meditate. You experience supernatural healing? So also do the Nepalese when they call upon the Shaman. You encountered a radical God in YWAM? So also lot’s of college age young people are excited about their own causes. It was a season that every YWAMer goes through and now it’s time to settle down and take responsibility for your life. My friends, GOD IS NOT A SEASON. God does not change like all of the things that I can see and perceive with my eyes and mind. God is not man that he could be like one. And responsible is not opposite to radical, and free. Truly, this is what I learned in YWAM the first time, and with it I encountered true freedom, and stability. But like I said, I had not yet learned to make the choice to hold on and not let go, to abide in what is completely counter cultural, a kingdom which cannot be shaken. Instead I let go, because when I looked down and the ground beneath my feet, what I perceived was murky, and I was unsure that it really was what I knew it to be. After all, I am fallible am I not? I am. I should not have doubted because of what I saw. Poor judgment there. God is not fallible. And this is how I know- I tried without him. I tried to make logical sense of everything, I tried to believe the expectation that I was told, I tried to do it their way, every way. I believed their truths, all the truths, and I ended up depressed and with serious anxiety. I was dead inside, nothing was good anymore, and every thing seemed pointless, and it was. Why? There was no absolute story, no where to get to, no unshifting ground. ROck of AgesAs I enter into the third and final quarter of my bible school here in Montana, I am beginning to be able to make sense of all of this, and the healing that has taken place in this school has built foundations in my heart that go way farther and way deeper than I can see. God has taught me that when I look down and it seems that I am standing in murky water, not to trust my heart because above all things my heart is deceitful (Jeremiah 17:9) and instead, to go back to the story, the story that has spanned thousands of years, and millions and millions of people, the story of God’s faithfulness. He has done the impossible….so many times.
So the seasons change, and there is a time for everything under the sun.
But all is not meaningless because we have a story, a story that doesn't change and that doesn't depend on us. Each season amounts to this: To know God more.
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