Paying for School

My ongoing adventures in life and the pursuit of more...

Tuesday, May 29, 2012

The Calm Breaks


I’ve been living in a bubble.  This past week the bubble broke.  And when I write, “broke” I mean “exploded”.

There’s been a gap between the last paper I wrote and getting the reading list for my next school module.  It’s been like a rumination bubble.  I’m still digesting the trip to Egypt, Jordan and Israel.  But this week my new reading list arrived for just one of my classes in the upcoming module.  As I looked over the list my first thought was, “I should’ve started on this last year…”  My second thought was about how much I’ll miss my friend Kim’s reading spreadsheet.

I’m excited about the books as we’re going back to the beginning and reading from the first few hundred years of the Church.  It’s something I’ve dabbled in but now I’m forced to actually dig in and read for content, not just quotes.  I know it will be rich and my facebook status will be full of one liners from dead saints who were closer in time to Jesus than I am to the Mayflower.

My bubble has also been living in a job that was literally made for me.  This past week I resigned from the senior pastor role here at the church I helped plant a decade ago.  I left a cushy job to come to this one and now I’ve quit this amazing job to load a u-haul truck and embark on a whole new pilgrimage.  As you may or may not have heard, the Elusive and I will be moving to Raleigh, North Carolina where I will become the senior pastor at the Raleigh Vineyard. 

I have never been more excited, terrified, happy, sad, confident and feeling inadequate in my life!  I’ve never felt a greater opportunity for an epic fail than I feel with this new adventure!  I’ve also never felt a greater opportunity to see God do amazing things in me and for me to do in Him than I do right now.  It’s an amazing group of leaders and friends that we’re saying “later” to here (not good-bye) and an incredible group of leaders and new friends we’re joining there.

The Elusive and I have never had an experience where God gave us so many assurances and signs that we were right where we were supposed to be.  There were nudges, words, dreams, visions, "coincidences" and most of all a deep connection of the heart and spirit.  And that scares me too.  Often such clarity comes for a reason.

This explosion actually started back in my first module as God increased the internal pressure in the prayer exercises and discussions.  I’m hoping the two remaining modules will help re-order my interior world for the rest of the journey ahead.  I’ve still got a lot to learn but I’ve learned in all this that it’s best not to limit God either by expectation or by previous experience.  May God increase the internal of whatever bubble you've been floating in for the greater things that are yet to come!