Sacrifices

Many are the plans in a man’s heart, but it is the Lord’s will that prevails. – Proverbs 19:21

I’m going to sing the praises of the AWANA program for a second. When I was in the 3rd grade, my mom enrolled my brothers and me in AWANA at a local Baptist church where she did Bible Study. It was the greatest gift she ever gave me. Through the six years I was in the program, I memorized too many scriptures to count. It was also the place where my brother, JT, and I publically accepted Christ. I truly don’t know exactly what my relationship with Christ would look like had I not been in the program. And now, whenever I am talking to the Lord, Scripture that I memorized in those years is always the way he begins talking back to me.

For this season of life, the scripture at the top of this blog has been a constant whisper (and sometimes a shrill scream!). Andy and I have a little less than five months until our wedding, and I am still waiting on God’s timing to see what all the pieces for next year (and the next five months!!) are going to look like. My house officially goes on the market on Tuesday, and it is hard for me to pull up to the “For Sale” sign in my yard. It is equally as hard to not know where I’m going to live if the house sells before we’re married or where I’m going to live after we are married!! Or what kind of job I’ll be doing next year… But we all know those concerns from my previous blog, so there is no need to harp on them. The thing I do know is that I want to be with Andy.

I bought his wedding band a few weeks ago, and I picked it up from the jeweler on Thursday. Inside they engraved Ruth 1:16 which says, “Where you go, I will go. Your people will be my people, and your God, my God.” I toyed with various scriptures before picking this one, but ultimately, I wanted it the verse in his ring to represent my commitment to him – just as the ring does. Today is Andy’s birthday, and during my quiet time this morning, I was thanking God for putting him in my life and that during this season of great change, at least one thing is for certain – I will be with Andy next year and that is the greatest joy of all.

As I was thinking about the one certainty in my future, I felt God whisper that following him was very much like following Andy – though on a much greater scale, of course. I was very young when I accepted Christ as my Savior, so I didn’t leave much to follow him, but every time I grow in my faith, I have to leave a little something of my (to use a very “Christian” word) sinful nature behind. Right now, God is trying to teach me to trust him when the way isn’t clear. That
involves leaving behind my obsession of making plans because it is the Lord’s
will that prevails. Every time we make steps to follow the Lord (in big or small ways), we have to sacrifice something. We have to leave something that we think we enjoy (or something that is at least familiar) to find greater joy in him. The Christian life is all about dying to ourselves so we can live for him – and that process is so scary. I don’t really love making plans –I just love living under the illusion that I have some control in my life. But if I’m being honest with myself, I love knowing that God is perfectly in control so much better than the lies I tell myself. I admit that I’m scared of where he will take me next year and how he will do it, but at least I know that the reward at the end of this journey is being in his perfect will – and as my friend Marianne put it so perfectly yesterday, isn’t that just where I want to be anyway?

Even though change is much scarier for me than other people, I am willing to do it for Andy. I’m willing to leave my home and my cute house and my job and my friends because I want to be with him more than I want to be with all those things. And goodness knows that God is million times better than this man I love, so wouldn’t I want to make every single sacrifice I can to be closer to him?