Tag Archives: Old Testament

Becoming My Prayers

Note from the Editor: This timely word is reprinted from the original February 2014 post

I frequently do workshops on prayer, which I always find kind of odd because I’ve never felt myself to be much of an expert on that kind of thing. Prayer is hard work for me; it’s meaningful, but it’s hard. During my workshops I always focus at some point on intercessory prayer – prayer for needs beyond our own – and every time I do, a cartoon I saw years ago pops into my head: A guy sees a friend across the church parking lot. In the bubble above his head he thinks, “Uh oh! I told Bob I’d pray for him! … Dear God, bless Bob.” Then he waves and says, “Hey Bob! Been praying for ya!”

There are a lot of levels to intercession – praying for needs beyond our own – but every time I think of this cartoon I’m reminded of an important truth: praying for others isn’t so much about rattling off the words of our prayers (even if those words are more genuine than in the cartoon). It’s about becoming our prayers. I believe God responds to our prayers – there’s mystery here I know, but I believe it despite and maybe even because of that mystery. The interesting thing about praying for needs that aren’t our own is that many times God’s response is not as much directly about those needs as it is directly about us.

When I pray for the hungry, I know God responds, but that response almost always includes, “I hear you, I’m working, but what are you going to do about the hungry?” When I pray for people who are lonely, I know God responds, but that response almost always includes, “Okay, Kim. You know I’m a comfort to the lonely, but what are you going to do? How are you going to bring that person comfort?” At every turn it’s the same. “What are you going to do?” At every turn I realize it’s not just about the words of my prayers, even though they’re important, it’s about becoming my prayers.

Now this shouldn’t be a massive revelation; but it’s significant for me as I approach the season of Lent. During Lent we often focus on sacrifice. People give something up as a part of their spiritual discipline. I frequently give up diet coke, which those who know me, know isn’t an easy thing. Often I also fast twice a week. Also not an easy thing, at least for me. So I know that during the next several weeks I’m going to have to decide what kind of spiritual discipline I will undertake to mark the season.

So why is the idea of becoming my prayers so significant for me right now? I’m not sure, but I think it has to do with a passage from Isaiah that seems to enter my mind every time I begin to think about engaging in any kind of “self-denial project”:

Shout with the voice of a trumpet blast. Shout aloud! Don’t be timid. Tell my people Israel of their sins! Yet they act so pious! They come to the Temple every day and seem delighted to learn all about me. They act like a righteous nation that would never abandon the laws of its God. They ask me to take action on their behalf, pretending they want to be near me.

‘We have fasted before you!’ they say. ‘Why aren’t you impressed? We have been very hard on ourselves, and you don’t even notice it!’

I will tell you why! It’s because you are fasting to please yourselves. Even while you fast, you keep oppressing your workers. What good is fasting when you keep on fighting and quarreling? This kind of fasting will never get you anywhere with me. You humble yourselves by going through the motions of penance, bowing your heads like reeds bending in the wind. You dress in burlap and cover yourselves with ashes.

Is this what you call fasting? Do you really think this will please the Lord? No, this is the kind of fasting I want: Free those who are wrongly imprisoned; lighten the burden of those who work for you. Let the oppressed go free, and remove the chains that bind people. Share your food with the hungry, and give shelter to the homeless. Give clothes to those who need them, and do not hide from relatives who need your help. Then your salvation will come like the dawn, and your wounds will quickly heal…

Remove the heavy yoke of oppression. Stop pointing your finger and spreading vicious rumors! Feed the hungry, and help those in trouble. Then your light will shine out from the darkness, and the darkness around you will be as bright as noon. (Isaiah 58:1-8, 10)

I often talk about “speaking faith,” which for me means (among other things) giving life to our ideas and beliefs by speaking them aloud. Moving them from the realm of our personal, interior selves to an external realm where they can become infectious and dynamic. That’s the kind of thing I want to happen to my prayers, to my fasting, to whatever self-denial I decide to undertake. I want to move them beyond my interior self. I want them to make a difference beyond the inner realm of my own personal spirituality.

In Healing of Purpose, John E. Biersdorf writes, “As an act of love, prayer is a courageous act. It is a risk we take. It is a life-and-death risk, believing in the promises of the gospel, that God’s love is indeed operative in the world. In prayer we have the courage, perhaps even the presumption and the arrogance or the audacity to claim that God’s love can be operative in the very specific situations of human need that we encounter.”

I believe God’s love can be operative in very specific situations of human need, that’s why I pray. But there’s a very real sense in which that love becomes operative only when I become my prayer, when I become my fast, when I become my self-denial. That’s when it becomes pleasing to God. That’s when God’s light shines out from the darkness and our darkness becomes as light as day.

Elijah: Faith that Acts

Committing ourselves to the Jesus way does not mean that we will be spared moments of crisis —moments when we are filled with fear and paralysis. However, we must be prepared and make use of the spiritual resources that God has provided. Elijah’s experience helps us understand those resources.

God’s directions provide us with insight. God offers Elijah, and us, three specific spiritual resources: visioning, speaking, and acting.

God’s third instruction to Elijah is significant for us: Act on faith.

God tells Elijah to go back the way he came (1 Kings 19:15).

We cannot follow in the Jesus way until we act. Peter was transformed each time he acted on what he knew in that moment. Bit by bit, Peter’s actions of faith shaped and molded him into the true person God intended him to be—when he stepped out of the boat at the call of Jesus during a storm (Matthew 14:22-33; when he declared Jesus to be the Christ, the Son of the living God, at Caesarea-Philippi (Matthew 16:13-19); and when he began to preach to the crowds of Jerusalem (Acts 2:14-42).

Holy Spirit power flowed though Peter when he acted on what he knew—offering the love of the resurrected Christ to all those who had rejected the earthly Jesus. Peter did not need to know it all, but he did need to act on whatever he knew at the time; and when he did so, his life was transformed.

To follow Jesus up close, rather than at a distance, we must base our lives on the reality of faith rather than the reality of fear. We serve an awesome God, a God whose promises are steadfast and whose presence, while unseen, is everlasting. When we keep that vision of faith before us, when we declare our faith aloud giving it a life of its own, when we act on whatever faith God has provided us in the moment, we move to Jesus’ side; and we are able to walk with him in intimacy and power.

Elijah: Are You Willing to Speak Your Faith?

Committing ourselves to the Jesus way does not mean that we will be spared moments of crisis—moments when we are filled with fear and paralysis. However, we must be prepared and make use of the spiritual resources that God has provided. Elijah’s experience helps us understand those resources.

God’s directions provide us with insight. God offers Elijah, and us, three specific spiritual resources: visioning, speaking, and acting.

Elijah obeyed God’s command and stood on Mount Sinai; and as he stood in that place of vision, he encountered God. There was a mighty windstorm; the wind was so strong that it broke rocks from the mountain. There was an earthquake. There was a fire. Then there was a whisper (1 Kings 19:11-13). Envisioning faith, keeping that picture in front of us, requires attending to aspects of life that aren’t readily apparent. God wasn’t in the wind, wasn’t in the earthquake, and wasn’t in the fire.

God was found in that “still small voice” (1 Kings 19:12, RSV).

The voice of God is not always readily noticeable. It is not something we always have an ear for. Yet following in the Jesus way involves attending to things that aren’t readily apparent. It involves listening for the voice of God and placing ourselves in a position to hear it often.

My Belgian friend Mieke has lived in the United States for many years. One time she participated in a program that required her to ride along with a local police officer during an eight-hour shift. During her ride along, she encountered a police dog and heard the officer giving the dog commands—in Dutch! As she relayed the story, she exclaimed, “It was a Belgian dog!” I laughed because the thought occurred to me that here was a dog that could comprehend a language that I am completely unable to understand. A similar thought occurs to me every time I visit Mieke’s family and hear them conversing happily in Flemish—especially the children. Here I am, an educated adult, and I can’t understand a word they are saying; yet there they are—four-year-olds!—and they have no problem understanding whatsoever. I understand that I speak English because I grew up in an English speaking home. Mieke speaks Flemish because she grew up in Belgium, in a Flemish-speaking home. The police dog understood Dutch because its handlers, those who trained it from its earliest memory, spoke Dutch.

We recognize the voices, the language, of those with whom we surround ourselves. We speak whatever language we hear regularly and often. If we are to hear the voice of God, and thus have an understanding of what it means to follow Jesus in real time, we must surround ourselves with the language and voice of God.

If we desire to attend to the things that aren’t readily apparent, to hear the voice of God that molds and shapes our vision of faith, we must hang out in places where God’s voice can be heard, where we can consistently see people who are further along on their journey of faith and can energize us to push through in times of disruption and paralysis. God offers Elijah the spiritual resource of faith visioning in order to help him push through his state of paralysis and follow more closely: ”Stand before me on the mountain.”

Then God offers another directive: “Speak.” God tells Elijah to find Hazael, Jehu, and Elisha and tell them about what he has experienced, anointing Hazael and Jehu as kings and Elisha as the next prophet. God’s directive to speak is a significant directive if we are going to push through our difficulties in order to follow in the Jesus way.

If we hold an idea or belief within ourselves, it will always remain an idea; it can never become a reality. Only by speaking our idea or belief aloud, by sharing it with others, is it empowered to become a reality. In speaking, we give life to our ideas and beliefs; they begin to exist outside ourselves, becoming infectious and dynamic.

That is why the apostle Paul included both speaking and believing in his instructions to the Romans: “For if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is by believing in your heart that you are made right with God, and it is by confessing with your mouth that you are saved” (Romans 10:9-10, NLT).

Like the experience of many of us, my adolescence was rocky and difficult. My classmates spoke resistance and disruption: “Nerd,” “Brain,” “Loser”; but my mother always spoke faith: “Your day will come, you will shine, you will blossom, you will flourish.” She was like Moses in the wilderness. There was adversity all around. But Moses spoke about the land that God had promised, a land flowing with milk and honey. Speaking faith grows faith. It creates and solidifies our faith visions and those of others around us. It enables Jesus to work through us to work miracles in the lives of those around us. It moves us forward through adversity, fear, paralysis, and resistance to keep us following Jesus.

When we speak, we make ourselves accountable. We expand our sense of following from a solely internal project to an external one. As we speak faith, the vision we place beyond ourselves takes on a life of its own. Speaking faith keeps us close to the fire, enabling us to follow Jesus side by side even through periods of paralysis and fear.

Elijah received three spiritual resources to aid him in pressing on despite his fear and spiritual paralysis. God asks him, Why are you here? And then instructs Elijah to stand before God on the mountain— to envision his faith. God also instructs Elijah to tell three others about his experience with God—to speak his faith. God asks Elijah a second time, “What are you doing here?” (1 Kings 19:13, NLT).

I believe that is a question for all of us.

Elijah: Do You Have a Sustaining Faith Picture?

Committing ourselves to the Jesus way does not mean that we will be spared moments of crisis — moments when we are filled with fear and paralysis. However, we must be prepared and make use of the spiritual resources that God has provided. Elijah’s experience helps us understand those resources.

God’s directions provide us with insight. God offers Elijah, and us, three specific spiritual resources: visioning, speaking, and acting.

As with our life picture, God desires us to have a faith picture.

God wants us to have a vision of faith always before us. God tells Elijah, “Go out and stand before me on the mountain” (1 Kings 19:11, NLT). When we talk about life-changing experiences, moments that have such a great impact on us that we can never forget them, we often describe them as “mountaintop experiences.” This is because mountains are places of vision. Our sightlines are expanded when we stand on a mountain. Our perspective changes when we view our surroundings from a mountaintop. When Elijah stood on the mountain, the Lord passed by; and Elijah was given a renewed vision of faith. Just as recognizing God’s picture for our lives can be difficult because we focus on our limitations, envisioning faith is difficult because we limit ourselves to what is visible at any given time.

But that is not what faith is all about. Hebrews 11:1 tells us that “faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see” (NIV). “It is the confident assurance that what we hope for is going to happen. It is the evidence of things we cannot yet see” (NLT).

Faith isn’t about the reality we perceive around us. It’s about the reality of the unseen presence and promise of God.

When we reach points of difficulty and resistance on our faith journey, when we become fearful and paralyzed, our inclination is to focus on the visible. Elijah was focusing on the circumstances that surrounded him. Jezebel had threatened him, and she had the resources to carry out that threat as was evidenced by the visible bodies of those she had ordered killed. Our inclination is to focus on the visible. But following in the Jesus way is not about the visible. It’s about the invisible promise of God.

It’s about realizing that nothing has changed, even though our circumstances might lead us to believe it has. God’s promise continues to be valid; God is still present with us. Everything that God has envisioned for our lives remains intact. When God made the covenant with the Israelites, gave them the law, and was preparing them to enter the Promised Land, God spoke these words through Moses: “Watch out! Be very careful never to forget what you have seen the LORD do for you. Do not let these things escape from your mind as long as you live! And be sure to pass them on to your children and grandchildren” (Deuteronomy 4:9, NLT).

God’s message is that it is the Israelites’ faith picture that will sustain them in their new land. It is their commitment to keeping that vision of faith ever before them that will make or break their experience as God’s people. The biblical witness shows how important this spiritual resource is. When difficulties arose for the Israelites, the strength of their faith picture was always a crucial ingredient to the outcome. More often than not, when they lost their vision of faith, when they forgot what the Lord had done for them, their difficulties increased and calamity followed.

Keeping a vision of faith before us is critical if we are to follow in the Jesus way. We have to continually shape it and form it and articulate it in order to push through the times of resistance and disruption. God’s words to the Israelites are also for us:

You must commit yourselves wholeheartedly to these commands I am giving you today. Repeat them again and again to your children. Talk about them when you are at home and when you are away on a journey, when you are lying down and when you are getting up again. Tie them to your hands as a reminder, and wear them on your forehead. Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. (Deuteronomy 6:6-9, NLT)

As we rehearse our vision of faith over and over, keeping it ever before us, it strengthens and sustains us, remaining intact as a source of strength during times of crisis and resistance.

Elijah: Paralyzing Fear vs Powerful Faith

“Ahab reported to Jezebel everything that Elijah had done, including the massacre of the prophets. Jezebel immediately sent a messenger to Elijah with her threat: ‘The gods will get you for this and I’ll get even with you! By this time tomorrow you’ll be as dead as any one of those prophets.’ When Elijah saw how things were, he ran for dear life to Beersheba, far in the south of Judah. He left his young servant there and then went on into the desert another day’s journey. He came to a lone broom bush and collapsed in its shade, wanting in the worst way to be done with it all—to just die.” 1 Kings 19:1-4 (THE MESSAGE)

Following Jesus is not an easy task. There is one distinct block that is particularly important to explore. If you recall Peter’s experience in the courtyard, you’ll remember that it was a very frightening time. Peter had experienced not a few dramatic events, all crammed into a short period. The Gospels record that Jesus had turned the Passover supper on its head with a foot-washing and predictions of betrayal and death. Judas had walked out on the entire project. Peter and the rest of the disciples had fallen asleep in the garden while Jesus was praying, which had led to yet another rebuke. Then Judas led a band of soldiers into the garden, confronting Jesus. Peter attacked the high priest’s servant with his sword, cutting off the man’s ear and prompting Jesus to heal one last time before they led him away. Finally Peter found himself standing in the courtyard, most likely scared to death.

It is no wonder that he lurked in the shadows, away from the fire; fear is an incredible obstacle to faith. (See Matthew 26; Mark 14; Luke 22; John 13–18.) Fear undermines. It blocks faith and achievement. It disrupts our life direction, hinders us from seeing God’s picture of our lives and discovering our life mission. Peter was sidetracked by fear that night in the courtyard.

So was Elijah when he fled the wrath of Jezebel. Elijah was one of God’s mighty prophets in the days of the Old Testament. In a time when the people of God were following at a comfortable distance, Elijah was following up close and in the thick of things. He stood with integrity and spoke with courage and boldness. Elijah knew how to depend on God. God led him into hiding in the wilderness for his safety, fed him for an entire year with food carried by ravens, and then showed him the way to a widow who was able to provide him shelter from his enemies.

Elijah understood that God was in control. He had experienced the power of God working through him to resurrect a widow’s son and bring fire to the altar when the priests of Baal were unable. Elijah was faithful, focused, and obedient. And that is where fear enters the picture. (See 1 Kings 16:29—18:45.)

When we follow in the Jesus way, we will always encounter resistance. The fire can get very hot, and there will always be disruptive events that challenge our commitment to follow. That is what happened to Elijah. He had experienced great prophetic success; but even as he sought to be faithful to God, forces of resistance challenged him, bringing him to the end of his rope. Queen Jezebel had been systematically murdering the spiritual leaders of Israel, and now she set her sights directly on Elijah. He was terrified and ran for his life. (See 1 Kings 19:1-3.) His life direction was disrupted. He was sidetracked by fear.

I believe this is an experience common to all of us. We undergo spiritual growth and gain maturity in our devotion and success in our faith. We believe we are living out of our God picture, our life mission. But then the world throws resistance or disruption at us, or we experience a spiritual plateau, and suddenly we’re paralyzed. The forward movement of our spiritual journey is halted.

I have a friend who is a wellspring of faith and encouragement. She has been a significant source of spiritual mentoring for many people. One day, however, she stopped coming. I e-mailed her, wondering what was wrong. She would e-mail back occasionally, but she did not return to church. Over the course of several months, I lost contact with her altogether. Finally, she contacted me, wanting to talk. We met; and as her story unfolded, it was clear that she was experiencing an overarching spiritual paralysis. Despite the depth of her faith and the significance of her ministry in our church and our community, she doubted her place in the Kingdom. Her faith had been disrupted, and now she feared she wasn’t “spiritual enough.” Living in spiritual fear, she retreated from the community of faith— the very people who could support her and carry her through. The further she retreated, the greater the paralysis became. My friend experienced spiritual fear and paralysis and dealt with it by retreating from the community of faith; Elijah experienced fear and paralysis and dealt with it by running away to a broom bush, and then to the dark depths of a cave on Mount Sinai (1 Kings 19:4-9a).

Humans have developed many tools to deal with fear. One of the first tools we make use of is control. When something bad happens to us, we exercise our feeling of control and do everything in our power to keep this bad thing from happening again. My friend exercised her feeling of control by retreating. Elijah exercised his feeling of control by running away. It’s a basic human instinct.

That is exactly what Elijah discovers. He had experienced great victories in his life, but now he finds himself in a state of fear and paralysis; he can’t control the events unfolding around him. He’s under the broom bush; he can’t eat; he can’t sleep; he is so fearful that he even asks God to end his life. When you get to this point, it’s hard to hear God anymore.

This was the case with my friend. She couldn’t discern God’s direction. She was filled with isolation and doubt. Committing ourselves to the Jesus way does not mean that we will be spared moments of crisis like these—moments when we are filled with fear and paralysis. However, if we are to continue to follow, we must be prepared and make use of the spiritual resources that God has provided. Elijah’s experience helps us understand those resources.

Elijah has traveled from the broom bush to the depths of a cave on Mount Sinai. God finds him there and asks a very important question: “What are you doing here, Elijah?” (1 Kings 19:9b, NLT). It is as though God is asking, “Why would you come to this place after all I’ve done? Don’t you remember my power? Don’t you remember my love and care? What are you doing here so full of fear and doubt?”

God asks, but then God directs; and these directions provide us with insight.

God offers Elijah, and us, three specific spiritual resources: visioning, speaking, and acting.

We’ll continue to explore God’s response to followers paralyzed by fear, but for now consider these questions:

What disruptions have you experienced in your faith walk where your forward motion of faith was stalled? How have you attempted to exercise control in your life?

You don’t have to live in paralysis.

Following God Beyond Common Sense

It can be easy to live our lives disconnected from our passion and, as a result, from our God mission. That disconnect is often one of the things that keeps us following Jesus at a distance. But following as Jesus leads requires that we connect—or reconnect—with our passion; that we then discover our God mission, and act upon it. It requires that we be open to a little Pentecost—or a burning bush—in order to receive insight from God as to exactly how we are to follow.

The problem is that our God mission is almost always tremendously bigger than we are.

That’s exactly what Moses discovered.

As he was tending his father-in-law’s sheep, he experienced a little Pentecost. God captured Moses’ attention in a miraculous way— through an encounter with a burning bush—and gave him an amazing mission: “I am sending you to Pharaoh. You will lead my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt” (Exodus 3:10, NLT).

Moses had a hard time accepting his God mission because he, like us, had limited his destiny to what he believed he could accomplish with his own strength and resources. He was no longer an Egyptian prince; he was now a simple sheepherder. Moses tried to convince God to send someone else: “Who am I to appear before Pharaoh? How can you expect me to lead the Israelites out of Egypt? They won’t believe me! They won’t do what I tell them. I’m just not a good speaker. Lord, please! Send someone else” (Exodus 3:11; 4:1, 10, 13, NLT).

We struggle to follow Jesus closely, in sync with our God mission, because that mission is bigger than we can imagine. We are limited by our detailed lists of past failures, our internal sense of inadequacy, the unhealthy level of our self-esteem. We create a picture in our minds of what we will become, and it’s almost always smaller than what God intends.

Unfortunately, rather than picturing an unbelievable future, we often choose to place a limited picture in our mind’s eye. The picture that I held in my mind when I attended the evangelism conference was limited to the way I was doing ministry at that time. I couldn’t comprehend what God had in store for me because it was bigger than I could imagine and went far beyond common sense. That’s significant. As we seek to follow in the Jesus way, we need to recognize that more often than not, rather than being rooted in common sense, the Jesus way defies common sense.

How many times have we limited ourselves to the pictures created by common sense? “I could never do that; I’m too old; my children are too young; I don’t have the right degree.” Jesus shakes his head and says, “Didn’t I tell you that you will see God’s glory if you believe?” (John 11:40, NLT)

We follow an awesome God! A God who can do great things with limited resources. This means that our life mission isn’t about what we can imagine about ourselves. It is about what God imagines about us. When we imagine ourselves, our response to the mission God sets before us is often: That’s impossible! I’m not smart enough! I’ve been divorced! I’m in recovery! I’m this…I’m that…I’m not this…I’m not that!

But God says that none of that matters. None of that matters because our life mission isn’t about what we can do for God. Our life mission is what God is going to do through us.

Remember Moses? “Who am I to appear before Pharaoh?” (Exodus 3:11, NLT)

God says, “It’s not about what you can imagine about yourself. It’s what I imagine about you.” God says, “It’s not about what you can do for me; it’s what I am going to do through you.” That revelation was at the heart of Moses’ burning-bush experience. We follow an awesome God; and when we choose to follow side by side, rather than at a distance, we experience God’s power to take the ordinary and make it extraordinary. That’s what happened to Moses and to the disciples, and that’s what happens to us.

Moses tells God that he can’t speak well, that he gets tongue-tied, that he stutters (Exodus 4:10). What is God’s response? “Who makes mouths? I will be your mouth. I will give the words” (Exodus 4:11, NLT). Similarly Peter, who before Pentecost barely knew what to say or when to say it, is empowered to speak eloquently to the crowds all over Jerusalem (see Acts 2:1-42).

God takes the ordinary and makes it extraordinary. God puts words in our mouths and transforms the ordinary elements of our lives into powerful tools. Moses’ biggest weapon, the source of extraordinary signs and miracles as he argued with Pharaoh to free God’s people, was an ordinary shepherd’s staff. Moses went up against Pharaoh, ruler of the most powerful kingdom on earth at that time, armed with the stick he had used for forty years herding his father-in-law’s sheep.

The reality of following in the Jesus way doesn’t consist of what you can do for God. It consists of recognizing what God can do through you. The question we must ask ourselves is not, “what can I give God?” but “what is God doing? How can I be a part of what God is doing?”

When we follow Jesus side by side, we don’t wait until we have everything figured out. We don’t wait until our life picture has been filled in with every detail. We act on what we know and trust that God’s picture is infinitely greater than our own. We act on the glimpses we receive of the light of God’s truth, trusting that God is working through us. We follow at a distance when we hear the truth of God and wait rather than walk; but the Jesus way involves action—breaking ranks, risking the radical, attempting the impossible.

Moses’ life mission was about achieving God’s purpose for God’s people. Moses lived in sync with that mission, not by focusing on self-fulfillment or self-actualization, but by allowing God to work through him. Jesus promised that “rivers of living water will brim and spill out of the depths of anyone who believes in [him]” (John 7:37, The Message). We follow in the Jesus way in order to serve: to become a source of refreshment and healing and creativity to everyone around us.

Perspective comes when we refocus on God, who has promised to be with us, to be our mouth, to be our resource, to be our strength. Perspective comes when we refocus to see that following Jesus with integrity makes each of us a witness; and witnesses cannot hide in the shadows. Witnesses tell the truth about what they have seen and experienced.

God has placed a purpose within you, a life mission. Following Jesus is about discovering that life mission. It’s guaranteed to be bigger than you can imagine, but God has surrounded you with all the tools you need to accomplish it. God also desires to work a miracle through you for another person. We may not have it all together; we may have pain or shame. But it’s not how we imagine ourselves, it’s how God imagines us. We walk in the light—now. We don’t wait. We simply take our ordinary lives, add our experience of Jesus in real time, and allow God to create a mighty work through us.