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I can’t even tell you how much I am in love with the kingdom of God. Every time I talk about it, I bubble over with excitement. I start talking faster and faster, and my ears heat up and turn red, and sometimes my hands even shake. Today I even started crying. The kingdom of God does weird things to me.
I have learned so many things and grown in so many ways in the past week. I can’t even begin to attempt to share it all with you. God’s been weeding things out of my life lately, more than ever before you might say. He silenced the Enemy’s voice in my mind last week and gave me tools to combat it in the future. He healed a very tender open wound and purified my heart of any of its ugly remains. He removed my feelings of urgent frustration over an extremely difficult relationship. He reassured me that my basic needs will always be met. He revealed a couple of next steps in His plans for my life. He gave me confidence in my decision to stop being anxious for a romantic relationship and instead wait for Him to arrange it. He essentially took all the junk that’s been crowding my head and heart, boxed it up, and threw it in the spiritual woodchipper.
Now, to fill the empty spaces the junk once occupied, He is teaching me constantly. Lessons like the value of accountability and what it means to FULLY trust Him. I’m learning the simplicity and importance of casting all my anxieties on Him and what my identity as His daughter means. He’s beginning to show me what the scope of the ministry He has prepared for me is. He is asking me to give Him more: more trust, more faith, more love, more sacrifice, more worship. He is asking me to expect Him to show up everywhere, to expect Him to do miracles around me. He is asking me to set my eyes on Him and forget that peripheral vision exists. It’s exactly like the song (as of course I relate everything to one song or another):
The cross before me, the world behind; no turning back, raise the banner high! It’s not for us; it’s all for You.
That is the perfect picture of my life at this moment. I long for it to always be the perfect picture of my life. There is nothing else worth gazing at but the cross. I have not a single urge to look back and even consider what things would be like had I not chosen to accept this calling, had I never written “COUNT ME IN!!!” on my bedroom wall. Any beauty that my heart reflects, any wisdom that passes my lips, any love that flows forth from me, is all because of Jesus. None of that is Courtney. I absolutely love that fact. Dying to self is an incredible experience. Each time I surrender another part of me to Him, He grows my maturity, and suddenly I am producing His fruit. It’s a beautiful gift; He rewards us for our submission by making us look more and more like Him. There is no way we can lay any claim to that kind of character, because it isn’t us. It’s God in us! How awesome is that? The God of the Universe wants to be reflected in us!
My life has taken its craziest turns in the past 3 years. I graduated high school at the tender age of 16. I moved to Canada all by myself and lived there for a year. I danced among some of the greatest professional ballet dancers in the world. I returned home with a severe injury. I started college (something I literally thought would NEVER happen). I finally fell in love with Jesus. I discovered Christ-centered friendships and the importance and beauty of church. I stopped talking to my dad for 8 months. I received a call to full-time ministry. I changed my major a hundred times (or so it seemed). My relationship with my dad was miraculously redeemed. I moved out of my mother’s house (much to her chagrin) and into my father’s. I stopped dancing for the first time in 16 and a half years. I quit school and then decided to go back.
And then there were the firsts. I was surrounded by all non-Christians for the first time. I experienced truly having more than just a “crush” on a guy and then got rejected, big time. I flew internationally by myself multiple times. I didn’t dance for six months. I didn’t guard my heart and fell in love. I began to rebel against my mother. I got asked out on a date for the first time and then it never happened. I was at the heart of a major “drama.” I dated someone. I dyed my hair and got my nose pierced. I became a night owl. I miraculously got over my first love. I knowingly hurt a friend deeply. I dated someone again. I got a piece of my heart broken.
Through all of these events, I could have been completely broken. I could have lost my way and gotten caught up in the rollercoaster of action that seemed to be the new normal for me. Instead, God moved. He gave me a gift of faith, and that is the only way that my relationship with Him is where it is. He used each one of the things to refine me and grow me- even the blatant mistakes! He redeemed all of it. On top of that, I have come through all of that chaos peaceful and assured of God’s plan more than ever before. I am so in awe of Him that I hardly have anything else to say. My only hope and prayer is that someone reading this will begin to believe in His power for their life as well! There is power in testimony.
(Again with the songs) There have been 2 songs that have struck me as perfect descriptions of my life. The first is “I Will Waste My Life” by Misty Edwards. Word for word, I could have written that song. It is my experience and my heart. The second is “I Don’t Regret” by Barlow Girl. Again, a song I could have written. I don’t think there is any better way to convey everything I’ve been trying to say to you than for you to simply listen to these, so I’ll close with this (couldn’t find the Barlow Girl one anywhere, sorry):
Ahhh it makes me so emotional! :)
Little pangs of fear have been surfacing lately, usually at the prompting of text messages from my mother.
What if I’m wrong? they say.
What if I was supposed to keep dancing, and pursue a “real” career? the random thoughts suggest.
And then, You appear.
Suddenly it’s as if You put Your hand on my racing heart and steadied it to a slow, even pace. I am okay. I am right where You want me. I have indeed been listening to You properly, and everything that I am focusing on is real and meaningful. I didn’t create a fantasy life because I didn’t like the looks of my responsibilities; I listened when You called me to do some scary things.
I’m not holding out for a silly dream; I’m having faith in Your promises. I’m not working for a pointless goal; I’m devoting my life to an eternal cause. I’m not throwing away my talent; I’m freeing my heart to be more passionate in other areas.
I’m right where You want me. And that is all I need to know to give me peace.
Ministry sometimes feels exactly the way my mother thinks that it is. It sometimes feels like an excuse not to work hard, to just hang out all the time and take the “easy route.” Like, all I’m doing is talking to high schoolers, college students, and struggling people. All I’m doing is singing my lungs out on a stage. All I’m doing is stuffing programs, hanging stars on a tree, tidying the Venue room, making videos, programming songs. It’s all just fun and games; it’s not reality.
These thoughts have been starting to hassle me. They sneak up on me when I least expect it, and whisper in my ear, “What are you doing? Shouldn’t you be getting a degree that is actually truly necessary for a real job? Shouldn’t you be doing less hanging out and more working?” The sneaky little thoughts try to make me feel like I’m really making no difference in this world in which I exist. I start to feel like, really, it could be any girl with a half-decent voice up on that stage and the effect would be the same. I start to feel like anybody could lead a Celebrate Recovery open-share group. I start to feel totally and utterly replaceable.
And not only that, I start to feel like I’m not actually doing anything now that will see me into any kind of career in a year or so.
Lies. All of them, lies.
It’s not about what I’m doing; it’s about what God is choosing to do through me. I’m just His vessel, His channel through which He accomplishes His purposes amongst His people. And it should feel completely contrary to the “rational, normal” plan for life. It should feel like my goals and values are the total opposite of what they are “supposed” to be. Instead of working towards the American Dream of a nice house, car, career, husband, and two kids, I’m working for Love. Literally Love itself. God values odd things. He values eternal things. It’s not about the paycheck or security offered by the world. Jesus was (is) a crazy radical guy. What is important to Him looks like child’s play to the world. “What? You are saying that I should be investing in relationships more than a stable financial future? You’re saying that just hanging out with people could have eternal benefits? Are you nuts?”
In a conversation I had with God about two months ago, He tried to get me to understand His love. He told me I’d been ignoring Him and not taking His love seriously. When He elaborated by giving me a tiny peek at the size and strength of His love for me, I simply had to take Him at His word and accept the full extent of His love even though I couldn’t understand it. I told Him it was crazy and irrational, and then He interrupted me: Who says I’m rational?
Honestly, I would have no interest in a rational god. I would have no interest in a god whom I could understand, whose purposes made sense and were all plain before me. I would have no interest in a god who wasn’t crazy, who didn’t laugh at me sometimes, allow me to call him sneaky, and take me on a crazy ride of a life that makes everything completely new and utterly unrecognizable. I would have no interest in a god who couldn’t love harder than me, and who didn’t baffle me on a regular basis. I would have no interest in a god who gave me what I wanted when I wanted it, who wouldn’t make me wait for the biggest blessing ever to make it that much sweeter. I would have no interest in a god who couldn’t tell me no and who couldn’t allow me to go through pain for my own good. I would have no interest in a god who wouldn’t make me stubborn, hating some of the things he did for me.
That’s why I’m in love with a God who is insane. I’m in love with a God who pokes fun at me sometimes, who teases me and yet gently whispers promises to me. I’m in love with a God who won’t tell me everything, and yet when He does tell me He makes me wait for it until I feel like I’m going to explode. I’m in love with a God who talks to me even when I ramble on and on and really have no intention of stopping to listen to Him. I’m in love with a God who makes me wait when I beg Him to let me have it now. I’m in love with a God who gives me little kisses of bliss scattered over time as sneak peeks of the culmination.
Even as I pour my heart out to Him and tell Him how hard it is and that I feel so pathetic and impatient, He listens and stays with me. He doesn’t complain that I complain. He doesn’t get frustrated at my hard-headedness; in fact, He tells me He made me that way and that it will serves its purpose. Even as I begin to feel like I’m doing nothing by being in ministry, He waits by me and then reminds me that He isn’t that boring, rational god. His work is going to feel stupid sometimes- when I’m looking at it through the lense of the world. If it feels wrong in light of that good ol’ American Dream, then it’s exactly as it should be.
I have an overwhelming feeling tonight that I am exactly where God wants me- longing, impatient heart and all. I’m in just the right position to be instructed and to be obedient, to see major growth in those around me and to share in their joy as they discover Him. I’m beginning to walk through a God-thing with a dear friend, and I’m so thankful He placed this event in each of our lives at the same time. In my plan, I wouldn’t have to wait for much of anything. In God’s plan, things only get dragged out so that they can be greater than we could ever ask or imagine.
I’m so glad God is who He is.
