In or Out?

One of the things I have come to realize about the Lord is that he speaks to us all in a magnitude of different ways. One of the best ways he speaks to me is through visuals. Sometimes they are visual representations that he places in my mind as I am trying to understand something (for instance, when I was teaching in El Salvador about why it is important to have your own relationship before trying to help others, I used the metaphor of putting your own air mask on in an airplane before you put on others - totally from God because until about three minutes before I spoke, I had no idea what I was going to say). Other times, God literally places something in front of me that I need to see.

At church on Sunday, a young man sitting across the aisle from me caught my eye during worship. He was raising his hands to the Lord, even dancing at times, but every few minutes was interrupted by a text on his cell phone. He would read, respond, and then dive right back into worship. I feel like that is a perfect picture of my life (and probably not just me).

 

There seems to be this in between place that I live in. I'm half in and half out - like when I can't decide if its cold enough for covers or not, so I have one leg under the blanket and one leg on top. I know the Lord, and I trust the Lord, but I still struggle with how to fully and completely hand my life over to him. I still want to step outside of Jesus every once in awhile and live here on earth even though I know living within his will is a much better place to be.

 I wish I had some big realization or piece of encouragement to end this with, but I don't. I simply wanted to share, and maybe challenge you to think of what things pull you away from Christ (as that is what it caused me to do).

And because I couldn't think of any good graphic to go along with this post, here's a puppy.