The importance of being earnest
( not to be confused with the play )
Today was one of those “long” days, but all in all it was quite amazing… I got up at 5:30 this morning to go meet with some christian brothers of mine and had a God filled wonderful time of fellowship. I cherish these moments and literally came to tears this morning while meeting with them when we spoke of my eminent move. I also bought a house today, well, I filled out a ton of paperwork, for all I know I might have bought a fire truck… I worked onsite for 5+ hours, deployed the website Dan and I have been working on for months (on top of an nginx/mongrel/rails stack, configured to use ssl), and did a ton of other things. This evening Nat and I had a wonderful dinner with my fam and then took a walk for an hour.
It used to be I would come home from a day like this and all I could think about was having a beer and relaxing (mind you, not at my parents house). God has changed my heart though. Everything I did today I did for His glory and wow did the day go easily!
So, the news… As you know if you read my blog, I’m getting married August 2nd in Florida… Since that post the Lord has provided a house in Elkhart Indiana, two blocks from their hospital (hopefully Nat gets a job there someday!). Doing the paperwork today, deciding FOR SURE that I’m moving away from my comfort zone, would have been a nightmare to me just months ago. But now I couldn’t feel better. For the first time in my life I’m giving it all up, well, as best a saved sinner can do…
My title for this post refers to two things, the first being that I had to send “earnest” money to get the house Natalie and I wanted, and I just thought that it was kinda funny. The second, and more important reason, is from my devotions this last week. In Matthew 11:28 Jesus tells us “Come to me”. I am learning more everyday that the more I come to Him, and put on His yoke instead of the yoke of this world, the easier it gets to do anything. As I come to Him He changes the desires of my heart to match His Will, so life changing decisions, whether to stay or to go, whether to do this or do that, become infinitely easier. All I have to do is follow His command “Come to me”. I don’t need to stress and deliberate indefinitely, I focus on Christ and the rest falls into place.
Prior to finding this verse (again) I ran across James chapter 4. I was in the middle of making plans to move and I read verse 13 and 14, “Come now, you who say, Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit – yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.” WOW, I read that and I was like CRAP! am I doing the right thing? Thankfully thru my devotions the Matthew verse came to light the next morning and I was able to refocus and let God change me, show me what desires to hold on to and run with.
This is a disjointed post I know… I just thought I would offload my brain into a blog post before I lost it all, I’ll try and do better next time.
…nuf said