I get motion sickness in just about anything that moves.
I had a long day of being in an airplane to get to Colorado Springs and I felt nauseous the entire flight.
I stuck my headphones in my ears and listened to some podcasts to pass time and take my attention off my nausea. It's funny how even in our weak intentions of distracting ourselves, God has grander intentions of revealing and convicting deeper issues within our hearts.
"God is not a duplicator, He is a Creator."
Francis Chan spoke these words while I was flying somewhere over Texas.
This struck a chord in my heart as I thought about my own life and the lives of others' around me. How often do we strive for duplication rather than new creations? Because SAME equals SAFE.
Same job, Same house, Same relationships, same friendships, same body as hers, same abs as his, same old comfortable life.
But he brought up such a great point: "Jesus didn't save us out of our sin and death so we could stay the same." WHOAH.
Life Change is not only natural when it comes to falling in love with Jesus, but it's necessary to move forward. Not just adding things in like Church, Bible time, Prayer time, or Evangelism. But taking things out.
As Christians, it's common and all too simple to assume that the things we need to take out go as far as "sin". We try to push away the big obvious "no no's" as much as we can and once they're gone, it's easy to think that's about as far as we need to go for a decluttering of our hearts and lives.
But then as Christine Caine so beautifully pointed out somewhere high in the clouds, "Just because your friends and activities are NOT harmful, if they aren't HELPING to push you towards your destiny, you need to let them go."
I cringed when she said those words.
As I thought about relationships and activities that have remained the SAME for quite some time. They are not necessarily hurting me, but are they pushing me towards my overall purpose in life?
Because you better believe that there are a lot of people out there who have no interest in moving forward, they're interested in remaining the same. But as Christians, Christ is constantly calling us to MORE. More heart checking, more self-sacrifice, more loving, more crazy, more challenges, more growth, more dreaming, more impossible, more MORE.
It hit a sensitive and painful knot inside of me when I realized what God was speaking into my life. Because letting go is never easy, and it is always painful. Because same is easy and same feels good. But Jesus saved us to be different.
And we'll never find the GREAT that God has planned for us if we're still holding onto the GOOD that we've always had.
There has to be a sacrifice somewhere. I fought with God in my head for awhile until surrender was close to finding me. I remember feeling so much fear and worry about inviting all this new unknown into my life if I left behind the "same". And I kid you not, in that moment, our plane found the sunset and the Rockies right ahead.
All in one moment as I stared into the beauty ahead of me, I heard the resounding word whispered into my heart: DAUGHTER.
My eyes filled with tears as I held onto that promise. I am HIS. He will always provide and take care of us. He will only do infinitely better and even more beautiful things with our obedience to surrender. But He can't create something NEW and GREAT if we are constantly trying to duplicate our GOOD.
He is making ALL THINGS NEW.
But we have to let Him.
So give up your good, so he can create GREAT.
-Han
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