Sunday, August 12, 2012

He's Worth It

The last few months have been nothing short of a whirlwind. We had a baby, added number five to the mix and in the midst of making that transition, God calls us to plant a church. "Really God?" That's what we were asking. When the answer kept returning yes and the provisions began pouring in faster than we could process them, we stopped fighting and decided God was moving in this direction whether we liked it or not and  the sooner we got on board, the better off we'd be. Was it scary? Yes. I will be real honest and say that there were many days I couldn't "think" about it. I just had to continue to trust in God's direction and ignore my own doubts and fears. The reality was, I didn't want to plant. At least not now. It wasn't on "my" radar. You see, Ryan and I like structure and order. When you run a house with 5 kids 5 and under, you have to have structure and order. Something that I use to love about myself was that I was really spontaneous. When I moved to Texas from Ohio, my conversation with my bf went like this "do you want to move to Texas?" she said when, I said now. So we told our jobs and in a week we were gone. I thought back to those days often as we planted the church. With moving so quick from Ohio, we never had a chance to think about it. We just did it. And as we began planting Praxis we had to stop "thinking" about it. We just had to continue to listen to the Father. The best part of this season of our life is that we are closer to Him than we have ever been. We were forced to live on our knees in ways that we had never done. We began to see God so differently and began to experience His presence in our life in ways that have absolutely rocked our world. I never in a million years imagined that my relationship with God would be what it is today. Where I thought I was close to Him before, I now realize I wasn't even tapping into a tenth of what He wanted for me. And it's simply A M A Z I N G.
Praxis Community Church is still a small growing body of believers that has been so blessed by Mayfield Road baptist Church. The Lord has called us to minister to the East Side of Arlington. In our short existence, 4 1/2 months, we have grown more than I thought. I remember in our early days, we had on a Sunday an average of 12-17 people. It was our church and the Lord began to open our eyes to a hurting world and everytime we saw a need, we met it with no hope in a return that they'd join us. We simply wanted to share what Christ had shared with us. Over the last few months, we have grown quicker than we had imagined with a majority of our people experiencing church and Jesus for the first time. Praise God. We are hearing stories from our people who have never served the community and are now experiencing it's life changing power in their lives.
Praxis is God's church. It's His idea. It's His place that He has called into existence to serve a small portion of this hurting world. Today, I sat in church tearing up at what He has done. The best part of this for me isn't what He's doing on the East side of Arlington or even in the people He's changing in our own congregation...it's what He's done in me. I thought I knew a lot. I thought I had a lot of things figured out. But I realized early on in this that I didn't. While I professed with my mouth I trusted Him often in the past, I have learned over the last few months what that really looked like. More importantly, I have learned to trust in the workings of the Holy Spirit in ways that I never had before.
I don't know what all the Lord will do in Praxis over the next few months or years. What I do know is that the Lord is good. I have said that many times over the course of my believing years, but I now say that from a different place. In the past, I would say the Lord is good when good things happened to me or my family. Planting Praxis was one of the hardest seasons I have endured in my life. Coming out of that, I wanna shout He is good! He's better than anything or anyone! And the reality is, the beauty of this is, He's all those things and more not because of me or how I am feeling but because I see Him changing lives of people in ways I never knew were possible. Getting to watch so many learn about Christ and fall in love with Him, makes it all worth it.
And I'd do it all over again if I had to because He's worth it.

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