What a journey this has been. I've been honored (and not a little scared) to have had the opportunity to share with you some of our most deeply personal and spiritual moments in this three post series about Being Still. I am so stoked to finally be writing the portion where we get to share some of the results from nearly a year of intense journeying.
What we know is that God had beautiful plans for this world, and He still works to usher in his kingdom on earth. We cannot help but to desire wholeheartedly to be a part of His kingdom work. Because what he desires for us are lives of power and beauty made radiant in relationship with Him. My new favorite image from scripture of God's hand upon the earth is from Psalm 85: "Love and faithfulness meet together; righteousness and peace kiss each other..." He has not only the power, but the deepest of desires to bring restoration to broken lives and a broken world to make this image a beautiful reality in our cities and homes.
This is our drive. Through a phase of humbling ourselves we came to focus on this vision, solely on God's work in and for the world, allowing our role in that work to become hazy and unfocused on the edges. From this we've had a change in trajectory from European missions, which has been on our hearts for so long, to domestic missions. We are on a path to head back to the Northwest, probably the Seattle area, to begin a church plant (after another year or so in Nashville). Six months ago if presented with the opportunity to plant a church in the NW I would have said (OK, not would have, I actually did say) "Nope!" I'm not even sure if I could explain why I felt that way. But through a beautiful, and seemingly impossible, process God has closed doors to London and opened them to Seattle. The impossibility of it all, based upon where we were several months ago, is that we are both ecstatic about it. And the beauty of it is how our path to London was the perfect path to prepare us for work in Seattle. So much of our preparation for London fits not only well, but better.
There are, of course, a million different odd and ends about this process that have led to this decision, but I'm not going to get into specifics. We obviously spent a long time (nearly a year!) heavily discerning whether what we were facing was a holy discontent from God or an attack by Satan through which we needed to persevere. We struggled through the emotions of what a change in direction would mean and the lies Satan took the opportunity to whisper to us: "This is just taking the easy way out" or "You are a failure." By God's grace we were able to cling to His words and promises in order to drown out the doubts from Satan. And now those accusations seem so absurd! First, making the decision to go to Seattle instead of London was definitely not the easy path. Believe me, it would have been much easier to stick with our European trajectory. And second, our brief venture into and away from London is honestly the most powerful and radiant part of our story. It's propelled us forward in ways nothing else could have. We are happy (and indeed eager) to have further conversations with any of you who want to know more, but this is all I want to leave you with for now. We can't wait to share more about our small role in God's kingdom work.
Oh, and you'll definitely not want to miss my next post in which I will hopefully be introducing our son to you! There won't be any of this heavy stuff, only really cute pictures that will make you want to snuggle something sweet and tiny.
What we know is that God had beautiful plans for this world, and He still works to usher in his kingdom on earth. We cannot help but to desire wholeheartedly to be a part of His kingdom work. Because what he desires for us are lives of power and beauty made radiant in relationship with Him. My new favorite image from scripture of God's hand upon the earth is from Psalm 85: "Love and faithfulness meet together; righteousness and peace kiss each other..." He has not only the power, but the deepest of desires to bring restoration to broken lives and a broken world to make this image a beautiful reality in our cities and homes.
This is our drive. Through a phase of humbling ourselves we came to focus on this vision, solely on God's work in and for the world, allowing our role in that work to become hazy and unfocused on the edges. From this we've had a change in trajectory from European missions, which has been on our hearts for so long, to domestic missions. We are on a path to head back to the Northwest, probably the Seattle area, to begin a church plant (after another year or so in Nashville). Six months ago if presented with the opportunity to plant a church in the NW I would have said (OK, not would have, I actually did say) "Nope!" I'm not even sure if I could explain why I felt that way. But through a beautiful, and seemingly impossible, process God has closed doors to London and opened them to Seattle. The impossibility of it all, based upon where we were several months ago, is that we are both ecstatic about it. And the beauty of it is how our path to London was the perfect path to prepare us for work in Seattle. So much of our preparation for London fits not only well, but better.
There are, of course, a million different odd and ends about this process that have led to this decision, but I'm not going to get into specifics. We obviously spent a long time (nearly a year!) heavily discerning whether what we were facing was a holy discontent from God or an attack by Satan through which we needed to persevere. We struggled through the emotions of what a change in direction would mean and the lies Satan took the opportunity to whisper to us: "This is just taking the easy way out" or "You are a failure." By God's grace we were able to cling to His words and promises in order to drown out the doubts from Satan. And now those accusations seem so absurd! First, making the decision to go to Seattle instead of London was definitely not the easy path. Believe me, it would have been much easier to stick with our European trajectory. And second, our brief venture into and away from London is honestly the most powerful and radiant part of our story. It's propelled us forward in ways nothing else could have. We are happy (and indeed eager) to have further conversations with any of you who want to know more, but this is all I want to leave you with for now. We can't wait to share more about our small role in God's kingdom work.
Oh, and you'll definitely not want to miss my next post in which I will hopefully be introducing our son to you! There won't be any of this heavy stuff, only really cute pictures that will make you want to snuggle something sweet and tiny.
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