Revolution5

If anyone had told me graduation day, as I celebrated the end of my college years, that I would: spend the next six months in a fruitless job hunt before returning home to live with my parents in Colorado, spend 2011 in the same futile job hunt, and I would be applying to enter into a leadership institute for 2012 – I wouldn’t have believed them. My first reply would have been: What is a leadership institute? My second assertion would be that God would provide something. He has to. And my final statement would have been, what am I doing going back into school, if it’s not medical school? I just graduated! God’s plan for our lives rarely matches what convention dictates or what we envision. But through this season in the wilderness God has revealed to me so much of Himself and myself, and brought me to a place of faith I could never have reached on my own.

C.S. Lewis once wrote that the interruptions we experience throughout the day are one’s life and the perceived life being interrupted is but a figment of one’s imagination. It’s always been a defense mechanism for me, something to trick my mind into a sense of purpose or direction or safety – to have a plan, my concept of my ideal life. I suppose this is the first brick wall we’ve got to hurdle and there is no way around it but over it: can God direct our steps? Because He will, whether we like it or not, and it will either be a stumbling block, a source of bitterness, or a wellspring of faith and comfort. But after that brick wall comes another: what if the redirection isn’t to our liking? Being denied a promotion and then receiving a job offer elsewhere for a better position is one thing, but what if we lose the promotion and get stiffed with a pay cut? Or what if, like my case, we make plan after plan but none of them work out? When we’re down and out with our backs to the wall, who do we turn to?

Through all of these circumstances, especially what has transpired in my life the past two years, I have learned more and more to trust in God. It’s one thing to agree that God works all things to our good when life is going well, but when you walk through the valley, everything takes on immediate significance. This season in the wilderness has revealed to me so much of the character of God the Father. When you rise from the couch of comfort and enter the trenches of the spiritual war being fought around us, you must overcome the impasse: it can no longer remain head knowledge but a conviction lived through faith. Is God good? Then live in His goodness. Are the pleasures of God yours? Then chase no longer the fleeting pleasures of this world. Are you a citizen of heaven? Then live as foreigners in this world. And with each of these and more, I’ve found that as I step forward in these truths by faith, God will answer. He may not give a mountain of food, but His daily bread sustains us. He may not fulfill all His promises immediately, but where we are is exactly where He wants us to be.

This life is a journey, a progression, nothing is static. And through this time in the wilderness, I have come to a deeper level in my relationship with Him. In the sense that He has revealed aspects of Himself I never knew, He has moved Himself powerfully on my behalf, and He has brought me into a deeper level of fellowship and intimacy with Himself. The entire tone of our adventure together in this life has changed and just as gold refined by the fire, I see impurities in my physical and spiritual life melting away in ways I never thought possible. When God strips everything away, you’ve got no choice but to confront the nakedness of who you are and the truth of who He is. I am learning to follow Him step by step even when the path is unclear, and for it, the dynamic of our relationship can never be the same. In the absence of a master plan, I’ve become acutely aware of the importance of every day. When your circumstances and heart drive you to the throne of grace every day, everything will change.

In Philippians 4:7, Paul writes that “the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” Many believers have peace, but not a peace which transcends all understanding – a peace that doesn’t make sense. Unbelievers looking in should be perplexed at this great peace, and believers looking in should be encouraged in the truth they know. Truly, He is with us.