"... Walk ahead, because if you look back you will go back."
{mother teresa}
So I just spent time searching this blog for what I thought was the first post in this blog, the beginning of abbaschild as a blog in May of 2008. I thought it had to be the first post because I remember how much this line spoke to me and embodied all that was the beginning of a new journey and new chapter of my life.
I thought it had to be the first post or at least the first few posts because I will never forget where I was and what happened to me when I first heard those words that felt so near and so real, I kept looking over my shoulder wondering if someone had just said them aloud.
I also remember where I was and what was going on when I first heard a call and tug He was placing on my heart when I realized where and what He wanted to to now trust and “go” and be sent.
I thought it had to have been the first post of this blog, also representative of another separate, but intertwined journey I was on, the journey of living and truly being simply, Abba's child.
A journey where I remember all the ways in which Jesus was wooing and speaking to my heart. Speaking to me about my worth, my value, my life. My life in Him.
Where slowly more of the shame and wounds from my past were continuing to be healed. Healed, mended and restored by His touch.
A time where I began to live in the fullness of a life lived in Him.
Where my heart and my soul were set free.
Where for the first time I could hear and believe the truth about myself. Hear, see, perceive and understand the truth about Him and myself as a result. It was crazy that I thought for sure, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the quote I was looking for appeared in the first post in this blog, near to the beginning of my journey begin to raise support to go into full-time ministry with a campus church that God used to transform and change my life in college, The Rock.
But, I was mistaken. It wasn't the first post.
As I kept searching through the archive of June 2008 after an unsuccessful word search for the author or the quote, I finally entertained a new idea. Maybe it was one of LAST posts in my old blog on xanga. And, yes, we have a winner.
It is crazy as I was stumbling upon old posts, while looking for this one below, and even in reading this one, how things I was going through, writing about or experiencing, even three years ago, when my life and circumstances looked totally different, how much some of these posts still captured and reflected where my heart is at now, today, in these present circumstances and in what my life looks like now.
Seasons can change, but our God remains.
My God of great, great faithfulness. My God of great, unfailing love.
May I say “yes” continually to Your voice, Your leading, Your call.
The call to simply that simply responds to the invitation to "live loved;" where all that I am, my identity and my life is Yours.
Abba's child.
Words written on a little more than three years ago and on the evening of my 24th birthday when I was at GCM's new staff training in Orlando. Words that could not express the state of my heart right now more.
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Excerpt from a xanga post, "faithful::a long joyful obedience::therefore, go." Posted on May 19, 2008:
"Put your hand in His [Jesus’] hand, and walk alone with Him. Walk ahead, because if you look back you will go back.”*
I read that opening line of the private writings of Mother Teresa over a month ago yet the entire line was nearly spoken to me by God’s gentle whisper that night.
These parting words from her mother were engraved on the heart of eighteen-year-old Gonxha Agnes Bojaxhiu, the future Mother Teresa, as she left her home in Skopje to commence her life as a missionary. Her lifelong love relationship with Christ is one I desire to have. It doesn’t happen overnight, just as it didn’t for her, it’s in a series of steps, a series of “yes’s” to His voice.
“In the silence of the heart God speaks.”*
The Lord asked me to simply walk with Him.
To simply trust Him.
And He has been so faithful.
I don’t even have words to describe it but faithful is the closest it gets.
My prayer is to know Him. To become more like Christ, to realize my life is not my own and to rejoice in all that He is and the fact He desires relationship with each and every one of us.
I could totally relate to these words:
“This my new vocation has been one prolonged “Yes” to God… my conviction that “the work is His”—is more than the reality… I know for certain He asked—“Will you do this for Me” Everything was His—Today His work has grown because it is He not I that do it through me.
Of this I am so convinced—that I would give my life gladly to prove it.” – Mother Teresa
I long to give my life gladly to the cross of Christ, but I know most of the time the battle is with myself. I need God’s help to live this long, joyful obedience. I need God’s help for me to step out of the way, and for Him to use me, fully, to fulfill His purpose for my life.
Our loving God is faithful, He is mighty to save.
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* Mother Teresa quotes/excerpts from her books No Greater Love and her private writings published in Come Be My Light
