Shapes and sizes

A week ago Sunday I had an amazing conversation with a few close friends. We shared vision for the Church and the ministry. I then shared with my brother Ryan the bizarre and wonderfully unpredictable story of how God brought me from high school through college into marriage and adulthood to the exact place I am today... I've had similar conversations with likes of Kyle and others and have been blessed to see how my story has encouraged them as they wrestle with identity and future and purpose... I am where I am today, not because I made all the right choices and planned my future step by step to be at a particular place at this particular time in my life. I reached a point in my life where I realized that to search for all of those things--identity, purpose, life--outside of Christ, who is the very author of my life, was a hollow pursuit. Letting go of all our plans for the future and all our dreams to trust Jesus with them is the beginning of a wild and dangerous ride that sends us up and down through life like a roller coaster, unsure where it will take us next and uncertain when it will end... But man, what a ride!

I read an article in Youthworker magazine yesterday about students and career counseling... something I never had much interest in as a student. Don't get me wrong, I think there is value in seriously considering where God might be calling you in regards to career and ministry, but part of figuring that out is in the shaping and seasoning we experience in those uncertain seasons of life when have no clue of what the future holds and all that we can do is trust Him and His promise that HE does indeed have a plan for us--"plans to take care of you, not to abandon you, plans to give you the future you hope for." [Jeremiah 29, the Message]

The revelation that popped for me in reading this article went something like this: The most important job that youthworkers have with students is helping them to find their identity in Jesus Christ and to experience, learn, and truly believe that they are a deeply loved child of God... My identity, your identity should not and cannot be found in what we do, but in who we are. And who you are is a deeply loved child of God. Do you believe that?

"Oh yes, you shaped me first inside, then out; you formed me in my mother's womb. I thank you, High God--You're breathtaking! Body and soul, I am marvelously made! I worship in adoration--what a creation! You know me inside and out, you know every bone in my body; You know exactly how I was made, bit by bit, how I was sculpted from nothing into something. Like an open book, you watched me grow from conception to birth; all the stages of my life were spread out before you, The days of my life all prepared before I'd even lived one day." [Psalm 139, the Message]