Do you ever have those moments when you are listening to a rather compelling speaker, but your heart is only mostly there and all of a sudden ZAP! an apparently random sentence said by the speaker lightening strikes it's way to the core of your heart and you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that God just spoke to you? You enter a fog and can't really seem to hear anything else the speaker is saying, even though you know that it's really great stuff, because all you can think about is the impact you just felt from that one "passing comment". When you come out of the fog, all you want to do is run and write pages upon pages of prayers to the Father as you process this one sentence. (Well, maybe you'd rather have an audible conversation with Him, but my way of processing is writing words.) :)
In case you haven't gathered this yet, my heart experienced this tonight and as the title of this post states, MY HEART REJOICES!! During my Perspectives on the World Christian Movement class tonight, we had a really great, dynamic speaker. He spoke on taking the gospel to the unreached people groups of the world and putting it in a context that they understand. (For instance, you don't take all the churchy language like "propitiation for our sins" and things that even native English speakers probably wouldn't have any idea what you're talking about!) :) But he also hit a few nerves with taking it even further. They were nerves that I needed hit, honestly, but I was still only 90% listening. I was loving every minute of what he said and took tons of notes, but what gave me the ZAP! moment, the sentence I feel God had prepared me to sit through this entire presentation to hear, came in the last 5 minutes of his talk. He was reminding us of the spider story his wife had told a few weeks ago when she spoke to our class. (Short version: His wife was DEATHLY afraid of spiders, couldn't stand them. When they moved to Taiwan shortly after they were married, they lived in a hut. She told us about putting up with the heat just fine and even the other creepy crawlies, but then one day she started having spiders in her house. Eventually they were everywhere and she tells of a moment when she sat in the middle of her living room and nearly had an emotional breakdown. At that point she had to decide which was more powerful. Her fear or God? Had God called her here? Yes. Did God have a plan in her being here? Yes. Was God bigger than the spiders? Yes, but it would have helped to have a visual to help with this. :) In the end she surrendered her fear of spiders to God and He in turn has used her, along with her husband, to reach countless for Christ all over the world!) The comment John made about this story was this (my ZAP! moment): "If she (his wife) had surrendered to those fears, her life would have been limited by her fears instead of being opened wide where she got to experience the big, awesome plans God had for her!" Now, I realize this may not give you the same ZAP! moment it gave me, but when I heard this it went to the very core of my being. I was reminded of being faced with a very real fear I had nearly 8 years ago. It was the summer before I left to do Journeyman in China. It was actually the turning point in my decision to apply for Journeyman. The smells, the words, the experiences of that moment all those years ago came flashing back to me (along with all of the confirmations that followed). I remembered being stared fully in the face by my biggest fear: That God would call me to go overseas without a husband. (I know this sounds as ridiculous to some of you as Jamie's fear of spiders, but just as real as that fear was to her, this fear was real to me.) And in the midst of a week designed to reach high school students, God brought me, a college graduate, to a place where He asked me to lay down that fear and walk in faith that He would provide for all of my needs. Including those I thought could only be met by a physical, real person companion. As all of this was coming back to my mind, I began to realize that I have recently fallen back into that fear. I have once again placed a limitation on God and my willingness to serve Him. In more ways than one I've told Him that if He would provide a husband for me, I would then be able to serve Him wholeheartedly. But that's just not true! I'm like the shark at the Dr's office (another illustration John used tonight, trust me this will make sense :) ). I look at my surroundings and I only grow as big as my current tank (with walls built out of my fears) will allow me. But if you drop that same 6 inch shark, that stayed that size due to the constraints of the tank he was in, into the ocean, he grows to his full potential: 5-6 feet long! Am I going to be a cute little 6" Christian? Or am I ready to bust out of the boundaries that my fears hold me in and grow to my full potential? My heart rejoices because I have once again been faced with my very ugly fear and I'm reminded that God has big awesome plans in mind for me! Whether that includes or does not include a husband remains to be seen. But I don't have to be afraid and wait for that chapter in my life to happen. I should be achieving my full potential now!
