Oh, the Places You'll Go!

Being snowed in has finally given me time to do a bit of blog catch up. Numerous reviews, lots of homeschooling and many trips on weekends has kept us very busy this past fall and winter.

I have wanted to share a journey with you that I pray helps you look deeper into your own with new perspective. I will not share all the details but it starts in late summer last year. I started sensing God's urgency to pay attention to what we were learning, what our focus had become along with what we were doing for people with our tithes and offering. Wishing it was my husband getting the nudge I prayed God reveal it to him...this did not happen. Okay...so I go to him and share what God is showing me. He prays and takes some time to think about it and decides he agrees that it is a God thing. Now what???

As we got closer to making a decision people we didn't expect came to us with insight and scriptures that simply confirmed we needed a change. Why now? What were we in for? The hardest part was being led to leave our church...and not knowing where we were supposed to go. We had moved to another church before but we knew our move as we were leaving. Again, learning dependency on God through this was something I THOUGHT I had down pat...fail! I struggled at first trying to find what I "thought" we were missing. We filled the gaps trying churches for a few weeks to come home sandy from the spiritual desert we experienced.

Here is where it got interesting...with each church we tried God showed me something new inside ME. The first, my belief of what we needed was inaccurate and I wasn't trusting God to provide exactly what would benefit us. The second, I had a dependency on the church "model", I needed to focus on my own time in the Word throughout the week. At this point I started to reflect on the previous time that we changed churches and realized the answered prayers that came of that change. I was new in town, the only church family I had known and yet still really didn't have any friends. When we started in the new church family years ago, I had many friends, we had our house full of them on many Sunday's and I finally felt like this was home!

As my husband and I discussed the up and coming Sunday and where we would attend, I couldn't get the church my best friend had referred me to many times wanting to go visit it. I asked if we could attend this one. He agreed and the excitement kept me going all week! I can't even express to you the anticipation I had that morning! Here we go...(hence my title!)

I walked in and the sound of the worship brought tears to my eyes. I sobbed through the whole thing. As we went to pick up our children they looked at me with intent eyes and asked, "can we please come back?". Who doesn't want to hear their children say those wonderful words? Yes, God directed us and we found a loving, nurturing and warm environment that felt like we were home immediately!

So here is my lesson...even after being directed to a wonderful new church home that God had given us, he still taught me. Sharing with me how much he knows my love of soulful worship, this was his gift to me (the place to do so). He shared with me that these services should be my icing and not my food...I need to be fed throughout the week on my own. Although I viewed myself as an adult Christian, God was showing me I was more like an awkward teenager learning how to be independent, boldly walk the walk and talk the talk and learn how to deal with peer pressure, etc.

Oh, the places you'll go! Many months ago I never would have envisioned our journey, the lessons at hand and the strength that we have gained being fully persuaded to stay on the path!