Sunday 8 March 2015

Faith, fear and costs

I was thinking of not writing this, but then I decided that I should, if only so that I would remember.
I don't know where to begin.

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The point is to not let your fear keep you from where faith wants to lead you. (Paraphrased from Pr Greg Devries.)
But that is where I live sometimes; camping out in past miracles, too afraid to move on to the next thing because I don't know where I'm going or what it will look like. Because I cannot yet (properly) split who I am from the things I do. And I am afraid of how spectacularly I will fail and how that will destroy me.
I don't know why I'm convinced I will fail. Probably because I don't have a workable plan.

And bang into my paranoid, kiasu (afraid to lose), kiasi (afraid to die), Asian heart came also this word that from eternity, God plants a seed in time - he sees a need on the earth and creates a person to deal with that problem/need... and takes into account your psychological need to plan, to think, to change your mind a gazillion times, to stress out about the future, to go crazy thinking of plan A and plan B and plan C and dither and then shrugs and goes "off you go now." (Super paraphrased from Pr Quoc).

It's freaky that when you finally go for prayer (because you've been subconsciously avoiding it for a while) the pastor quotes "Satan has asked to sift you like wheat" in his prayer and then goes on to pray for freedom from depression, which is what you've been denying for a while. Because you're not even sure what depression looks like. Because you're living just fine and everything is carrying on as usual.

And somewhere in the midst of this is where I come to the point of this post, which was really the culmination of the notes I wrote in church one Sunday:
Do not jump from security to security. It's okay to be insecure while you trust God. Because that's trust.
And along with that gem comes the feeling that the time is coming to say goodbye soon. Not to say that it will happen very immediately, or that I've figured out what's going to happen, but that the word positioning and timing are becoming very, very important and relevant, especially considering that I've been reworking the notes for Following Jesus in the Real World for Cley discussions. And that maybe if the goal is to make an impact in the arts in Penang, as you've prayed about, as you've written about and talked about, and moaned about, it might be time to count the cost and position yourself where you need to be. Even if it's a pay cut and an end to free trips to the US. Even if you don't know yet where that is going to be or what it's going to look like.

Because you need to live in the here and now. Because your heart cannot be divided across geographical space and your life cannot be divided over segmented time. Because your tenuous focus needs to be refined and refocused and not spread over a gazillion things at once, because frankly, you are a pretty horrible multitasker.
And your call, for now, is here until God says otherwise.

The dream sustains us through the process.

But your heart also needs to respond.
Be it unto me according to Your Word. 

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