I read Mark 2: 13-17 this morning at random flip after asking God to do something in my heart and make me feel His words. Isn’t it funny how we as believers ask God something and then we are surprised when He reveals it to us? Maybe that’s just me.
In Mark 2, Jesus is going for a casual walk and sees Levi, a tax collector, minding his tax collecting duties and tells him “Follow me,” and the Bible says Levi “got up and followed Him (v 14).” In my mind I’m thinking… “So, what you’re telling me, God, is that Levi didn’t question where Jesus was leading Him? Levi didn’t wonder why Jesus was asking Him to do something? He just did it?” I know this in my heart, that God wants me to be obedient and diligent knowing full-well that He has my best interest at heart with every gesture of guidance. If I know this, why do I question Him when life is weird, when life feels still. The blunt answer is that I think that I know how He should be leading me, with the richest of community and the most intentional of friendships, in the first month of living in a new town. Yes, that would be great but I know that He has never failed me and He never will. As I read scripture from now on, I hope to look for His calling and not promises of what I expect it to be. I want to embrace the quiet seasons of life, and sit in stillness with the Father and cling to Him and nothing else.
Sometimes I feel like a spoiled believer. That of course, includes the beautiful GOODNESS that God has given me throughout my walk with Him that I wouldn't trade for anything. But the flip of that, is my finding my place with the Lord and within His kingdom at college, a completely new concept.
Besides my intentional, faithful, joy-giving, life-sharing friends that I had by my side in the later years of high school that poured into me, I had other friends. Younger friends. Friends that I served and poured into, but in the end they served me. Junior year, I became a student leader with YoungLife for 8th graders through my senior year and their freshman year. My experience with my now-sophomores girls (WOW!) for two years is the richest love I've ever felt or been apart of. I had a guaranteed place and a purpose every Monday and Wednesday night, not even counting the one-on-one more relational time. We’ve cried, prayed, laughed, worshipped, rejoiced, and done life together for two years. Between hard talks at camp and hard talks at home, early-morning coffee hangs and late-night Whataburger hangs, we have lived life fully together. The special place that these sweet friends and sweet times hold in my heart will never leave me. God has done so much more in my heart through them than I could ever claim to have done in theirs, far above my greatest expectations. He's shown me true freedom from who I used to be and the life I used to live with the opportunity to be a light for others, completely renewed in Christ. He’s shown me the purest of loves as my girls accepted me for my brokenness and loved me fiercely anyway. That, I think, is what caught me the most off guard, to feel set free by their love. He’s shown me that pursuing others and giving my time away for the Kingdom and putting it all on the line at the hope of sharing the gospel, leads to the greatest rejoicing I have ever rejoiced!!!
Going from this as my norm, to pursuing strangers to establish any kind of relationship, the stress of class, and the still season that the Lord is calling me into, is kind of like a culture shock but a social shock. (If that makes any sense to anyone besides me?) But I know that it’s going to be so good, in a different and new kind of way. It’s been a long while since I’ve clung to God, Abba, and all of His promises and felt what it means to be in relationship with Him, without distraction and without the obvious fruitfulness that I grew comfortable with. Though I am eternally grateful for the sweetness in the business of co-leading high school girls and making life-long friends, I am ready to see what the Lord has to reveal to me in a different niche. If you take the time to read this, please pray for steadiness of my heart and comfort in following Jesus wholeheartedly in an environment that I’m not used to.