Leap of Faith

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You stumble up the rocky path. You have this sense of piercing déjà vu and yet...will the terrain be different ahead this time? As you climb, you feel shortness of breath. Is it the thin atmosphere of the heights around you...or the growing terror pressing within you?

You stop. Again. Procrastinating. Waiting, honestly, hoping it will go away, that you will not have to make this climb at all. Can't you just pass on it this time? Or try...later? Is there a way back down?

You return to placing one foot before another. Around another bend you go where you can't see what is ahead. And suddenly, you're at the top. Sooner than you thought, yet it took so agonizingly long to get here. There's no more waiting. You want to run...away, but the only place to run is...ahead.

And right off the cliff.

Into nothing but air.

You close your eyes against the screaming within, the resentments that tear at your mind that God would allow you to be here again; the memories of deep gashes of the past and the scars that are still tender; the tempting seduction of the martyr complex that tells you there is security in playing the victim;

And the seemingly simple suggestion that to stand still is the only safety. Close your eyes long enough. Stop breathing long enough. And yet...

There is the voice of One who calls, commands, to run ahead. Now. You inhale slowly, exhale a quick, quiet prayer, and

RUN.

LEAP.

And...

FLY.


Have you ever taken a leap of faith and obedience to God while every fiber of your old self desperately screamed for you to turn away? And it felt like jumping off a cliff into nothingness? And then...you're grasping at handfuls of air and rising, an eagle on the wind, more alive than you've felt for some time? And God is so much more alive to you, too, than just moments before?

And a joy, a different kind of joy and release, liberty, fills you...seems to be the very air you breathe? And a heaviness, a greyness, suddenly falls away like a great heap of iron, and you know this is who we truly are hidden in Christ, were made to be, and are being re-made to be...?

I have. It happened tonight.

Beloved, there are no words to convey how the Lord of all can and will redeem every heinous and messed up thing in our lives and create beauty, peace and joy from them--jewels for our tears. Who can understand His ways, giving beauty for ashes? What incredible honors the Lord bestows upon us when we choose in faith, relying upon His strength, to pursue godliness, to obey His commands, to do what He asks of us, even when it costs us so very much! We do not know what He has in store, what He is doing. We know not what we forfeit when we choose our own way, rationalizing as we go.

I plead with you...Take the Lord God at His Word. Follow His path. No matter where He leads you, no matter how hard and heart-breaking, the joy around the bend is way beyond the very best that you can imagine. It is so very beyond what you think you need or desire. The crosses we bear are so very burdensome...until we cross to the other side and see what He has prepared for us. There is a yoke to bear, but it leads to our rest. True rest, for the soul.

A saint's life is in the hands of God
like a bow and arrow in the hands of an archer.
God is aiming at something the saint cannot see.
He stretches and strains
and the saint cries,
"I cannot stand any more!"

God does not heed.
He goes on stretching
until His purpose is in sight.

Then He lets fly!

-- Oswald Chambers
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