For Such a Time as This

     Recently, I resigned from the ministry I was serving in.  I had thoroughly enjoyed my time there and the students I got to lead, and I will miss them.  But I knew that God was calling me elsewhere and asking if I would be willing to take a step of faith--risking to look crazy to my family and friends who didn't and still don't understand.  I answered the call and said yes.  So over the course of a weekend my parents and I packed up all of belongings and I resettled them in Joplin, MO, and this past Sunday was the first in a while when I can truly say I experienced what the church should be, and yet what so many seem to be missing.  

     It had nothing to do with the sermon or the music that was played.  Rather it happened during a time of prayer, a time that most worship services seem to exclude.  It was the kind of prayer that happens spontaneously; prayer that that happens when people gather together and envelope one another with love and acceptance.  My response, tears.  I couldn't stop the tears that flowed down my face, they just kept coming.  

   I had people who loved me and wanted the best for me, people who have been with me every step of the way for the past year as I searched for what God was doing in my life.  They enclosed around me and prayed over me.  And I just cried.  I knew that God was doing something in my life, but never imagined it would be felt in such a painful and joyful menagerie of tears. 

     The sermon that morning was nothing spectacular, but there was one line, a line that will stick with me as I travel through this wandering I find myself in.  The line is this: "Sometimes we sit around and wait on God, but what if he is waiting on us?"  Profound.  God is at work and has been already in my life.  And as I search for what God is doing already in my life and where he is already preparing people for me, I must move; move in His direction and find what he has been waiting for me to do, to find the place, that when I look back on my life, I can say that God has been preparing me "for such a time as this" (Esther 4:14).

I Have A Dream

I thought what better day then Martin Luther King Jr. Day to share one of my biggest dreams and goals I have for my life.  It was King who once said, "I have a dream," and he worked hard to see his dream become a reality.  He even gave up his life to see his dream come to life.

It was during my second semester of college when an upperclassmen approached me and told me that I have the right personality type and persona to be a church planter, which at the time I didn't even know what that meant.  He gave me a test, I passed, I guess, and we began talking about church planting.  I declared my major to Bachelor of Christian Ministry with an emphasis in Church Planting and signed up for my first class, and I have been hooked ever since.

I have had opportunities to work with church planters in Africa and New York City and northwest Arkansas, and each time my heart continues to pound in my chest that this is what God is calling me too.  I see the need and the importance of starting new churches.  Statistically, new churches reach more for Christ then existing ones, and I want to be a part of reaching people for Jesus.  With that said, I feel God is calling me to work in church planting.  No I don't have the logistics figured out and I have no time frame I'm working with.  God has given me this dream and I can only hope that someday I can accomplish it.

What's your dream?  Has God laid something in your heart so heavy you are about to bust at the seams of not having yet accomplished it?