Progress

Last year, while on tour and passing through Tampa, my friend Phil and I felt like we should pray.  We didn't know why or what we should pray about, but we left the crowd and went to a somewhat-vacant room to pray.  

It was one of those nights we knew we were being listened to.  Not just the mental, kind-of-sure assurance that God was listening, but the 100%, know-for-sure attitude that our prayers were going to do something.  We prayed that God would wreck our lives and bring us to a place where we had to 100% depend on Him.

3 months later... Fired unreliable manager who got us (the band) into thousands of dollars of debt, scrambled to find jobs just to barely make ends meet, transmission went out in my car, car got broken into, starter went bad in my car...  The list goes on.  All in a few weeks.

I forget that God is sovereign; That He is the one who is leading me through the fire (yet, not letting me be burned), and it is He who is putting me up to the bottom of my nose in the water (yet, not letting me drown).  It's easy for me to list my problems, and it's easier for me to blame all my problems on other problems.  There's a perpetual blame-game that I get caught up in, and in doing so, I forgot that all the stuff going on in my life is because God is allowing it.  I buy into the lie that I could potentially make things better if I could just do A and B, forgetting completely that it is God who is using the mountains in my life to show me that I am a complete being, not lacking anything, who is meant to live in the light.

I had a dream the other night that I was standing in the middle of a huge, frozen river in between miles and miles of mountains.  I would start to settle in one place, and then, just as I let all my weight rest on the frozen surface, I began to hear and feel the ice cracking underneath me.  For fear of falling through, I would run away.  Just as I settled in a new place, the cracking began, and again, I would run to a new place.  

I'm beginning to wonder that, instead of running, I should just relax, let the ice break, and let the river underneath sweep my body away.  And, though the torrent will smash me against rocks, freeze my body, and steal the air from my lungs (almost to the point of death), it will eventually lead me to still waters surrounded by a landscape of ceaseless new life blooming at every direction.

I'm scared of standing still, you know?  I'm afraid of the possibilities that being still can provide.  I have to remind myself that I was created for the stuff beyond the surface; that, if I stand still long enough, I will see that I was made for the cooler, rougher waters... that lead me to stillness.