Dangerous curves up ahead

Every once in a while I find myself in a place where the road is so completely unknown up ahead I totally resign to trying to figure out what's next. These moments are more a rarity and I think the older we get, the more and more rare they become. Because mostly we want to be familiar with what's happening and in at least be in some form of relative control.

Some people like adventure, the thrill of always living on the edge of the next big unknown. To some people to even think of living that sort of way makes them feel nauseated and light headed. I probably lean more toward the former while still appreciating some sort of comfort and familiarity. Even people who live crazy adventure filled lives develop familiarity with the unknown.

Their constant is change and they become uneasy if things become static.

I am currently in no doubt the most unfamiliar season of my life. Very little of what I do currently evokes any semblance of recognizable feeling or developed patterns. Treading in new waters is exciting and terrifying in the exact same step.

The last 7 years or so in Australia has been a wild and exhilarating ride. I've had a few moments of utter terror and momentary insanity trying to figure what the heck I was doing on the opposite side of the planet. But really those moments have been small in number and for the most part I have been forming a nice niche' in my relationships, in my ministry, and in my calling and identity as a son of God. I have liked what I do and l have liked the people I do it with. There has been lots of change in the people I have done life with and although I am accustomed to that change now, it doesn't necessarily get easier. I'm learning to love the privilege and the torment of reestablishing trust with people on a regular basis, keeps me on my toes. I am realizing that change is constant in life, especially for a guy like me who really wants to always be moving forward.

It's funny though, because even as strong followers of Jesus we can often ask God to keep moving us forward in life and then still act genuinely surprised when God brings situations into our lives that require us to actually change. It's almost like we tell God that he can change certain things that we are willing to sacrifice or give up. We make this little mental sub-conscious list of things that we are willing for God to ask us to give up or move on from. All the while there is an even stronger list of things on a even deeper level of sub-conscious being established that we are unwilling for their to be change in. What happens then is when change DOES come we are shocked and surprised because we have asked God to change our lives but we really haven't done the due diligence internally on what that actually means.

It makes me think about Job. The guy had it all! Wealth, success, family, friends. He also had rich relationship with God but in a snap everything in his life was suddenly gone, vanished, ripped away. The one thing he was unwilling to see change or be taken away though was his unwavering belief in a God who deserved everything in his life. His friends and his wife didn't make it easy for him, he had every reason to look at God and accuse God of changing. It would totally of appeared that way to Job. But he says "though he slay me, I will still trust in him. I will maintain mine own ways before him." Job 13:15

The dude was resilient to say the least.

The danger in change is that we don't allow ourselves to see the forest for the trees. Instead of taking time to appreciate even the most painful circumstances we decide to instantly accuse God that HE has changed.

I feel that I have come dangerously close to pointing my bony, wretched little finger at God and cursing him because I don't understand what's going on. I have been here in this season for longer than I would like. In the past I feel that I have bounced back so much quicker to set backs. I've been asking myself why this season has felt so much more challenging than others?

Why does it feel like God has changed?

I'm beginning to see the forest for the trees... slowly. The reason for all of this is that God is wanting to trust me more. He wants to give me more than I currently have had in the past. He wants to use me in new ways. He wants to give me more of who he is. The change that is required ,IN ME, in order for that to happen is immense and the awkward tension isn't felt by God.

It's felt by me because I am the one who is needing to change, not God.

So this brings up the age old question...

Is it worth it?

Is the tension worth bearing again?

Do I really have the guts to say things like though he slay me I still will trust in him?

Do I really want God to brag about me to satan?

It's like I'm on a road to somewhere. Somewhere great, somewhere beautiful. Sometimes I enjoy the drive, I put my hand out the window just to feel the wind against my palms. The scenery outside the window is captivating and the destination doesn't feel as impressive as the moment. I look in the rear view mirror and see the sun setting behind me and feel accomplished that I have gone somewhere today.

Sometimes the journey is grueling and it's cold and foggy and I can't see anything out my window. Sometimes I am less familiar with the drive and none of the roads sign make any sense. Sometimes the destination is the only thing that matters to me and all I can do is complain about how long the drive is taking.

Right now it feels like all the road signs are saying "Dangerous curves up ahead." Like the drive is uphill and I am stuck in the fog. It feels like I've had to slow down just to survive and not fly off the road. I normally like to drive fast so it's killing me be on such a windy drive. I feel like right now, in this moment God is telling me that the curves aren't for forever and that if I keep driving through the fog, it will eventually clear. He's calling me to keep going up the mountain past the clouds and bear the cold.

I was reminded of the many drives I've taken up the volcano on Maui growing up. The drive up Haleakala is a long, windy and cold journey and it's tradition to drive up early in the AM to witness one of the most beautiful sunrises to be seen anywhere on the planet. EVERY SINGLE TIME I used to do it I would complain as me and the group of friends I would go with would get up at 4 AM, pile into one of our cars ( always with no A/C or heating), drive up the switchback drive and huddle together in the pitch black at 10,000 feet with the one blanket we brought for all of us. It would always seem that it wasn't worth it until the first sign of pink would peek itself out. All of the sudden the hundreds of people gathered would come to a small moment of silence as the sun rose over the crater of the volcano and the sky was filled with more vivid color and beauty than you would even know how to describe or understand.

So I have decided to keep driving, cause this road is taking me somewhere.


(Haleakala sunrise, yeah... it's this amazing!)

There's no "I" in team... but what about "we"?

There's something about unity that makes it so hard to grab a hold of. Sometime's we trick ourselves into thinking it just comes naturally to those that are serving God in some sort of ministry. We like to view it as a free gift that God just gives away, or at worst like a starbucks gift card we buy last minute for someone we forgot to get a gift for. No time or effort necessary.

We can treat team building and even our core relationships like this sometimes. That the pieces will just fall into place and those that we have the strongest connection with will just come our way and fall into our laps.That kind of unity will probably not last and at best is most likely very superficial.

It's very easy as a leader in ministry to gather people around us that agree with everything we have to say. Anyone who doesn't agree with us right away is automatically 'unteachable' or too difficult to work with. We treat the word disagreement as a threat to momentum and even at times as an attack on us personally. Therefore the core group of people we end up gathering around us in this scenario, unfortunately, has very little diversity and will seriously lack creativity. As our team grows and people begin to be attracted to the life that is being manifested in our ministry, we can look around and do a spot check of the unity within our ministry at any given time and genuinely feel that it is strong.

The reality in that scenario is that the unity we think we have, is really no unity at all. All we've achieved is a carbon copy of ourselves and a small dose of what God actually desires to do through our lives.

We need people around us that bring the most out of us. People who challenge us and ask a lot of questions. People who are good at things we're not good at but don't make us feel silly for not being as good as they are at those things.

These people don't always just appear out of thin air. These kind of people are a bit harder to come by. They're the ones that might not vote the same way you do, or listen to the same bands that you do, or dress the same way you do. They are the kind of people who at first may drive you absolutely crazy. They are the ones who may take a lot more effort to establish that trust and cohesion we desperately crave to have in our teams as leaders and the people we want to have in our lives period.

Jesus modeled this really well didn't he?

He gathered those who were brown nosers and just wanted to impress him and those who we're struggling to probably get out of bed in the morning. He seemed to want to gather a team of people around him that would need to value each other in their differences, people that didn't see eye to eye on everything. The one thing he did require of all of the 12 is that they did agree on one thing... that they follow him at all costs. He knew that they wouldn’t always agree. He also knew that if they agreed on the one thing that mattered most, there would be nothing that they couldn't achieve.

A rainbow is beautiful not because each color is brilliant on it’s own, but because they shine together in harmony. Let us strive for unity in diversity. It is not natural and it is not cheap, which is a good thing because neither is the Kingdom of God.