mapquest fails me

As many of you know, I’m coming home soon. It will be two weeks from tomorrow that I board a plane in Siem Reap and make my way home to Cleveland, Tennessee. It’s really strange. I’m excited and devestated at the same time. My heart burns for the impoverished nations of the world, for the people that don’t know Jesus and are willing to listen to what you have to say. It different in the US because people don’t want to listen to your words, and even when you try to demonstrate Christ’s love, they undermine your genuineness. Anyway, I will miss Cambodia, but I’ll write more about that later when I’m actually saying goodbye.

So coming home…. I’m not sure what I’m going to do yet. There are many options: graduate school, teaching English in South Korea, getting a full-time job; but I’m just not sure which direction to go. I don’t feel pulled towards one way  more than another. I wish that I could say that I am. I have written about this topic before, but I still need prayer. I need affirmation from God of my next steps. I could easily take a “good opportunity” by the horns and wrestle it down to the ground, but what good would it do if it wasn’t God’s best?

I think so many times we short ourselves of greatness and accept goodness instead because it’s appealing, it’s timely, and it’s easy. It’s so easy to think the first good opportunity handed to you is God’s, because God is good, so we think it MUST be His will, right? Yeah, we always somehow justify our actions with some Biblical reference rather than allowing God himself justify our actions.

If we only had…The patience to wait. The eyes to recognize the right way. The ears to hear the call.

Rather than… A schedule for God. Eyes focused on what is appealing. Selective hearing.

I am entering back into the US soon with nothing. No plan, no job, no money to speak of, no idea of what’s next. I trust that God is going to reveal it somehow. I just wish I’d get a letter in the mail from the big man telling me what to do. Wouldn’t that be easier? God’s road cannot be mapped. I wish I could take my iphone and GPS the next place I’ll go with every twist and turn at my fingertips. BUT….His road is unpredictable. Winding. Curvy. Rocky. Smooth. The terrain is ever changing, and I love it. If our next opportunities could be easily pinpointed and our destinations foretold, what faith and trust would that require?

1 Corinthians 13 says, “All I know is partial and incomplete…” God intended for us to have limited knowledge to develop a relationship with him. We must trust him to love him, and vice versa. He goes on in verse 13 to say “And these things remain: faith, hope and love, but the greatest of these is love.”

May we have faith in Christ’s power. May we have hope in the future. May we love him most by showing him we trust him.

~ by Kristen Pace on April 17, 2009.