Life As A Blank Canvas

In May 2018, I experienced a five-day stretch where I heard from God a lot. But it was the kind of thing where I felt Him challenging me, specifically to grow in ways that felt unimaginable to me at the time. The main bullet points:

• Stop living for yourself / Grow up.
• Apply yourself.
• The Great Commission matters.
• God is sovereign.
• There are going to be suffering and trials (I'm called to it).
• Trust God completely. (Sacrifice of praise)
• I'm not too far gone for God to use me.

At the time, it felt like I was in big trouble with God. And I may very well have been. But then over the subsequent months I saw several key friendships in my life begin to splinter, a couple of whom I'm no longer friends with. And these were situations that, in my opinion, the issues were more about them than about me. (I.e. there was nothing I could've done to have prevented these events from happening.)

And then I met my first girlfriend.

Over the subsequent year from that meeting, how I processed every different event, whether it had to do with a friendship, or a client relationship, or finances, or some other material-related circumstance, was in context with a future that I found myself building toward that had the potential to tear me from everything that was in my life here. Maybe that's why all this stuff was happening. God was calling me "over there."

More recently, as other events came up that has led me to look for work (yes, I'm still looking -- this is not a strong suit of mine), I processed it the same way: how was this working in concert and in context with this future that was certain to happen, one way or another? And how do I need to respond?

That is now no longer the case. For my part, I was tiring of it, tiring of the stress of how to make it all work and to still try to see God in it, especially considering all the things I heard Him say to me in May 2018. Now I don't have to worry about that. But it still leaves me with this picture of life as a blank canvas. Now what?

I'm grateful to say that I've grown enough to see that I don't have to have an answer today or this week or anytime soon. I do know I want to travel. I don't get to travel enough (money being the primary obstacle). I now know I'm an adventurer. I'm planning to embrace that.

I also want to learn more about the Immanuel Approach to prayer. I experienced it for the first time last weekend in rural Georgia, and it was great. In addition to helping lead the worship ministry in the Hope for Artists band, I will also be part of a group where I'll be learning something similar to the Immanuel Approach. So that's a start.

I will be going to Minnesota in a week-and-a-half for a friend's wedding. I'm looking forward to it.