For those of you who don’t know. I’m about 99.9% sure I’ll be living in France come 7 months from now. That’s right, in seven months time I should be settled in and getting into the groove with the ministry back in Toulouse, or possible somewhere else around the world. All I care about is that I am able to labor and work for Christ there in a more committed manner then I am now, to be somewhere so that He can be everything through me and these hands. I’ll be there from September until around July. Earlier today I had a follow up call on my application.
Someone called me up from the regional head quarters to fill in some of the follow up questions that my application had left. I didn’t feel like writing out my whole testimony so I just wrote a brief statement about my suicide attempts and then coming to know Christ in a personal way. We also talked about pornography issues I’ve struggled with in the past. It was so nice to talk to someone on the phone who I could relate to and just knowing how much emphasis they place on where that relationship is at. It’s so comforting to know that.
At the conclusion of our phone call we talked for a couple minutes longer and it was really encouraging. I strive to spend most of my time looking forward and not to things I’ve already done (realizing I barely every spend time being nostalgic or in those reminiscing moments, maybe because when I was depressed there was nothing worth looking back on). He told me how excited he was to hear my testimony and what the Lord was doing in my life, and how impressed he was by my references and I’ve spent a large portion of my day trying to figure out why they would see me that way. There is so much I should do and don’t, and then there are the things I do that I know I shouldn’t.
The image I keep coming back to is someone being held back from a fight. That for the longest time I was running from the world chasing me and now that I see things as I should I want to get out there and do everything I can, and the Lord is pulling on me as I am striving to run forward and he is simply aiming me where I should be going, calming me down, and letting me go. I can’t help but feel pain when I see things as they really are, it breaks me down in side. So many things in my life have happened to allow me to see things this way, watching people fall away from Christ, watching others intoxicate their minds away from their desire to know Him, to seeing the actions of nations as planned and executed by God as we rationalize them as human will. I’m torn between wanting to heal wounds and knowing that there is nothing I can do without Christ. That to run from Him and fight would be foolish, I would be trampled until he picked me up again. Only if my drive would inspire Christ to move with me and guide me and be in my hands.
If I could only get there, if only my prayers were strong enough. How I must beseech you.
Held back, revving to go, and waiting in the hands of Christ,
~paul