Thankful for the journey

I have epiphanies when I run...it's why I love to run..its my mental escape..its where I work things out in my head..just me and God..and it usually results in some great epiphanies.

So yesterday I had an epiphany. Not a new epiphany, just a renewed realization. So ridiculous..God's love for us, for His children. And his timing...is seriously so perfect. I found myself thinking of all the events in my life just even in the last two weeks, and how crazy they've been, and all I could see was the Lord's hand print on them. How he answered my heart's yearnings for more time to spend with people, stripping me of my job. It totally blew me away with how much he not only loves me, but the people that hes brought into my life. I started thinking of particular instances just in the last two weeks that I have been able to meet with and pray with people that I normally wouldn't have if I had been working. I could do nothing but be thankful. Even as I was driving home today in the car that I just bought..so thankful for his provision, but again blown away. Just the people that I've been able to come in contact with due to this accident is so amazing..cuz none of them are by accident and its so obvious. Maybe he knew that the car I had wouldn't have last much longer...so he gave me another...thankful.

There is nothing I love more than sitting, talking, and praying with women. Pouring truth and God's love into their lives. It humbles me so much to think that he chooses to use the words I say and the things I pray to work in the lives of the women in my life. I walk away from conversations everyday feeling so inadequate and overwhelmed...just praying and trusting that the Lord will somehow use me....and so my epiphany continued...#2: How great is our God! That he moves and orchestrates people and situations in our lives, uses random conversations, speaks through people in prayers...all because he loves us, desires us, and has an incredible journey mapped out for us. And thinking about his greatness made me realize my smallness and in turn filled my heart with incredible amounts of thankfulness.

On Sunday, Nathan talked about traveling with people, journeying with them. Nothing gives me greater joy. To walk with people, to live their lives with them. To know the good times and help them through the bad, to pray with them, to cry with them, to laugh with them..to simply love them. It is what God's call on my life is and always has been. To make disciples...aka...traveling with people, loving them, drawing them or pushing them closer to Jesus.

Today...epiphany #3...the people God places in your life are so important! Walking with people is so important! I was thinking about my high school years and how I didn't have anyone who was walking with me...no one calling me out, no one putting strength and courage in me, no one telling me my life was marked with Jesus' love. This didn't happen until later in my life..and once it did..its amazing how it changed me...amazing! I think about those years in high school and just have an overwhelming sense of sadness. I'm not going to sit here and wonder why the Lord didn't bring people into my life earlier, or ask the "what-ifs"...because it doesn't matter. The Lord's timing is perfect..he has proven that over and over in my life. For a long time I struggled with the Lord's timing, his sovereignty, why certain things happened in my life, why I had to go through the things that I did..but no longer. Now I look at my life, and see simply the beauty of God. The perfectness of God's timing, and how he has had his hand on EVERYTHING in my life..and how he has brought it all together to make me the person I am today. So that sense of sadness...its a deep sadness reaching to my soul...as if my soul is crying out with why discipleship IS so important. The sadness that I feel when I think about all the 16-25 year old women sitting at the Stirring..who have never experienced the amazing gift of having someone speak into their lives...who may never know if we don't follow the calling God's given us.

And so I'm thankful...so very thankful for the journey I have traveled so far, for the people that have traveled with me..guiding me, pushing me... for the people I am traveling with now, and for the road that I have yet to set foot on..
Epiphany #4: ...it wasn't meant to be traveled alone