Footprints

During the trying times in life, you can feel that you are completely alone. You're doing everything you can think of to turn everything around. Nothing seems to be going your way. Where is God? Why isn't he helping you? Is he really gonna let you fail? These are the toughest times of your life and you have nowhere to turn and no one to turn to. Seriously, where is God?

According to this poem, he's not only there with you, he's carrying you through it. He's providing you more support that you ever imagined. In the invisible of course. Why doesn't he make himself visible to us? Why doesn't he come out of the shadows and say hey kid, here I am? Don't worry about a thing, I got you! Why is it only after the drama is over do you get a clue that he was there the whole time? Doesn't he realize how many more people would eagerly follow him if he just made himself visible to us?

Most of us spend so much time trying to figure out if he's really there and what does he want from us that we become skeptical. There are millions of people who just don't want to be made a fool of. Believing in something or someone that doesn't really exist. How can you trust in something you don't see? Most people compare this to the air. You can't see air but you know it's there. You can see the effects of it. Can you really feel the effects of God? I mean you have to rely on faith that he even exists and then rely on miracles to say that he even caress.

Day to day you pray to him and ask him to guide your way and bless you. Does he really hear he? Do you ever hear him? Does he ever answer? Is he really moving things or do things just happen? Does he really move in mysterious ways or is that just something we tell ourselves to quell our anger? We're supposed to rely on something we can't see to explain what we don't understand. It makes my brain hurt. I'm sure God knows what he's requiring of us even if we don't think it's fair.

He says that he is with us always, that he knows our thoughts before we even know them. That he knows our hearts and he has a plan for our lives. Why doesn't he let us in on all of this? We spend our entire lives trying to figure out who we are and what the purpose of life is. I swear if those things were revealed I wouldn't have to spend so much time thinking and struggling through life. Of course it's our experiences and our decisions that ultimately determine who we are and what we will be but if there is a cheat sheet I'd love to sneak a peek at it sometime. I'm just saying.

Desert

I have been reading The Dream Giver by Bruce Wilkinson. It's a great little story about the journey of a "nobody" from "nowhere" who has a big dream. In pursuit of his big dream, this nobody ends up in a desert wasteland. He feels angry, isolated, and abandoned. He felt that he was given the big dream by the Dream Giver and he trusted in the Dream Giver who was now nowhere to be found when he needed him most. It hearkens back to the Footprints In The Sand poem.

The desert is bleak, dreary, depressing, soul crushing. This desert represents a time in this "nobody's" life when he already gone through so much. He's take a great leap of faith and he's overcome many obstacles only to come to this point where absolutely nothing is going right. He feels that he's made a big mistake in trusting in the Dream Giver and taking such a big risk only to reach this point where all he can see ahead is failure. He had hoped that all that he had already overcome would be the end of his struggles but now trouble surrounded him.

He's desperate and defeated but what he doesn't know is that he's being tested. His faith is being test and he's being molded into someone worthy to accomplish big things. In many ways all of us who have ever strived to do more and be more can relate to this "nobody". We have set out to do things that we didn't know that we were capable of doing but all we know is that it is what we feel we need to accomplish. We have to overcome many obstacles and setbacks and it just seems that there's too much opposition to you making it through but somehow we did it. We accomplished that goal and we feel great. We feel like we have a new beginning and the life we've always dreamed of can finally begin.

Therein lies the rub. This is a new beginning because life keeps moving forward and you have to keep adapting to it. Unfortunately, as you are well aware and God knows also, you don't have everything you need to be able to do what you dream of. But don't worry God knows what it takes to refine you and he's gonna set things in motion to prepare you for it. The problem is, he doesn't tell us any of this! He just goes to work because we asked for it and now he's giving it to us. Sure, you're thinking its gonna be a nice, comfortable experience but God seems to like that "I'm going to throw you into the water and you have to sink or swim" philosophy.

Wilkinson sums up the desert experience in this one sentence: When God seems absent and everything is going wrong, will you still trust God enough to patiently allow Him to prepare you for what's ahead? He explains that "God's motive and plan in the WasteLand is to prepare you to become the person who can succeed at your Dream."

Its up to you to recognize that you're in the desert and its up to you to learn the lessons and develop the tools that God knows you need.

Risk

One definition of risk is the possibility of incurring misfortune or loss. Possibility is what makes us take a chance. Yes, there is the possibility for loss but there is also the possibility for gain. Some of us are definitely more apt to taking risks than others and some of us like to play it safe. I'm sure you've heard the phrase big risk, big reward. To a large extent that has been my life for the past few months.

I quit my job to help someone start a business. I was careful to try and make sure that no matter what we would at least give it a good effort. We were getting very positive news which made it look like we would be able to go forward and branch out on our own. I didn't know how successful we would be so I really just wanted to get some experience and education from it. For the first time in my life, I would have a job where I wasn't exactly working for someone else. I would have an ownership stake and I would be my own boss. I eventually wanted to be self employed and this was a good way for me to buy some time and get the necessary experience in running a business.

I didn't know how qualified I would be to run a business but it was a risk I was willing to take. If it didn't work out well there, I would still have gained valuable knowledge for the next time I decided to run my own business. So after learning that we had already gotten our first big contract, after our business loan had be approved and scheduled for dispersement, after I had given my previous employer a months notice, after I had told all my family and friends what I was planning to do, after I had prayed repeatedly for this to work out, the day finally came when I was free. This was supposed to be the start of the beginning of a more enjoyable life. I expected some hard times ahead but as long as we tried our best I saw it all as a win.

Well, I had one plan and my partner had another. After I quit, he fell off the face of the planet. Wouldn't answer his phone, wouldn't return my calls, wouldn't return my texts. I'm just left to think, "Is this guy trying to screw me? No, why would he? I've never done anything wrong to him. We were in this together. I'm only trying to help us both out. I'm not trying to screw him. We've talked about this for months and there's so much riding on this. If he's going to screw me I don't know what else I'm going to do. This has to work out."

In the end he did screw me. He would occasionally answer the phone to make more promises about moving forward and actually getting to work but I later find out that he was lying. How are you going to start a business when you've put everything related to it away in storage? How do you just decide to not do something when you get someone else to rely on you and you know they have nothing else to fall back on? What kind of person does that? Why would anyone do that when this person is supposed to be your friend? Not a very good person, or an honest person, or a true friend that's for sure. So in this circumstance, big risk, big failure.

I used to be one of those safety minded, risk averse people. Recently however, I've been really wanting to see big positive changes in my life so I've taken more risks. I've taken these risks after careful thought and deliberation.. and prayer. Even though there is the possibility of loss involved I preferred to think optimistically about my risks. More should I say, I've stepped out in faith. Faith that things would work out well and that God would watch over me and protect me. Faith that God was bringing something good my way.

Taking a leap of faith is scary, terrifying really. I've never been on a trapeze but I imagine I could get the same feeling from flying through the air on a glorified swing with nothing below to separate me from the ground. I've never been locked in a cage with a hungry lion either but there is a similarity in knowing that your life is no longer really in your hands at that moment. It's scary but if you keep doing the same thing, you will keep getting the same results. As much as we would all like to avoid risk, it is necessary to facilitate change.

My risk still hasn't resolved itself yet but I'm trying to pick up the pieces and keep moving forward. Even though that business partner still hasn't returned my calls from months ago I'm working on forgiving him. We will never be friends again but I'm going to forgive him. Honestly, I think, and I hope I'm right, when people screw you over is the time when God really steps in and says, "My child, you have been treated wrongly and I will bless you because of it."

I don't know if you ever listen to Dmx but I love this verse where he says "... I'd hate for you to think I took a loss when all I did was shook it off..." It's not bible scripture but it's words to live by. When you suffer this kind of loss because of someone else just shake it off. There's something bigger than you or that loss out there. Maybe I'll stop being as risky from this point forward and have a more solid backup plan but I still want big rewards so I will still take big risks.