Further, Fuller, Deeper In

By Belinda

In one of the excellent sessions at last week's leadership conference, we learned that it is amazing what you learn from people by asking them to finish a few simple statements:

I love...
I hate...
I dream...
I get frustrated when...
I feel joy when...
I fear when...

So this morning when our team of leaders met I handed out pages with these questions on them and asked the team to answer three of their choice. Laughter rippled around the table at some of the answers. Two younger members of my team are "dreaming of" retirement--but I am way ahead of them!

My own quickly scribbled answer to that question was:
I dream...of being part of God's agenda--more fully than to this point. I often think that we skim the surface of his possibilities.
While I didn't word it so well on the spur of the moment, I was trying to express an increasing longing to let go of reason, logic, limitations and dependence on the human perspective on things and tap more fully into God's unlimited resources, strength, power and perspective. I think that's the first step--longing to do so. I don't even think it's very far from getting to it; grasping it fully, because he says:

Acts 17:27

The Message (MSG)
 24-29"The God who made the world and everything in it, this Master of sky and land, doesn't live in custom-made shrines or need the human race to run errands for him, as if he couldn't take care of himself. He makes the creatures; the creatures don't make him. Starting from scratch, he made the entire human race and made the earth hospitable, with plenty of time and space for living so we could seek after God, and not just grope around in the dark but actually find him. He doesn't play hide-and-seek with us. He's not remote; he's near. We live and move in him, can't get away from him! 
All of this made me think of one of the verse in the book of Job, which was used for the title of a book of a collection of the writings of one of my heroes, Amy Carmichael: Edges of His Ways.

Job 26:14

Amplified Bible (AMP)
14Yet these are but [a small part of His doings] the outskirts of His ways or the mere fringes of His force, the faintest whisper of His voice! Who dares contemplate or who can understand the thunders of His full, magnificent power? 
   So I'm pressing in; believing with all of my heart that "with God all things" and anything "is possible!"

I don't want to leave this earth not having lived life fully alive to the fullness of his glory; available right here; right now. I'm hoping to hold off on that funeral celebration I was planning in my last blog post--for now. I'm hoping God isn't finished with me yet.

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