Tonight as I was doing some study on Passover (it begins tomorrow) and getting some thoughts together to post a video blog regarding this holiday I found myself extremely distracted with other thoughts. Thoughts of Israel. That ever present ache in my heart for that nation and the people of that nation. It's always there but sometimes it just seems to hit me like a ton of bricks... out of no where. As my heart aches to be back in the Land I am confronted with my own frailty and weakness as I often am when I am longing to be back in Israel and not having any guarantee as to when that will happen. I have the dream of being back; the hope of being back; the need to be back. The only assurance that I have is that I am called to be there and that assures me that God will make a way. The "when" is the hard part for me.
Sometimes I think people out there (no one specific, just "people") see me as brave or something. Brave because I've decided to go live in a Middle Eastern country. Brave because I've decided to leave this country with relative comfort and safety for a country that lives in constant tension with the threat of war always looming. The truth is... I'm not so brave. Not in and of myself. It's nights like tonight when my heart is aching so much that all my weaknesses and frailties are before me. All the questions that I dare not bring to the surface because, after all, if I acknowledge them what would people say? Would I seem as if I don't have any faith? Maybe. But as I have gotten older I have become more and more real with myself. I've become more real with my emotions. I decided that there isn't much sense in pretending that I don't feel a certain way or that a certain fear doesn't exist. Refusing to acknowledge something doesn't mean it doesn't exist. As I begin to acknowledge these emotions and fears with the Lord I am able to deal with them. Dealing with them brings victory over them.
Here is my confessional as I deal with the emotions, fears and weaknesses tonight. I do get scared. Scared that I won't make my goal of leaving for Israel in the fall and thus losing the momentum I had coming off my summer in Jerusalem. Scared that no one will be interested and no one will respond to my inquiries. Scared of attending yet another FI conference not being anywhere close to buying a plane ticket. Scared of not getting the support. Scared of just simply being inadequate for this assignment. Along with the fears comes some of the most lonely times I've ever experienced. I'm surrounded by people and yet I'm terribly alone. When the ache in my heart deepens these are the fears and the thoughts that I battle.
And yet... I hang on to hope. I hope against hope. It doesn't matter how many years this journey takes, I will hang on until I see it through. There is no turning back or giving up. I burned those bridges. There is no looking back. I recognize my weakness and then like Paul I boast in my weakness because when I am weak, He is strong. That is my story. In all of my weakness, and I am a terribly weak person in the natural, He is strong. It is His strength that keeps me going. It is His strength that keeps me from giving up. It is His strength that gives me the ability to hope against hope. He knows every single fiber of my being inside and out. He believes in me enough to give me this assignment. How can I go back? How can I say no? How can I give up? When I work through this process, let go of the fears and the emotions that do not line up with the Word, it is then that divine perseverance takes over. I rest in the dogged determination that I will fulfill the call of God on my life and that He will make it happen in His timing. Until then, hear I sit in my bedroom in Matthews, North Carolina aching more deeply than words can express for a nation and a people who desperately need to know their Messiah.
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