Signpost #3: The right spot at the right time

I am still recording my signposts that I hope will point me towards "another way of living."  There will be a total of five signposts which are an accumulation of lessons that I learned in Australia and Papua New Guinea this summer.   It has been such a treat to have time to reflect over my experience on the YWAM Medical Ship and time abroad. I hope to not just tuck away these moments and lessons.  I want to have signposts that tell me to "Stop and remember" because now that I am back I have seen how easy it is to get comfortable and to forget.

I can't really wrap up my third signpost into one moment.  It was a string of moments that let me know I was in the right spot at the right time.  Even though I was roaming around Queensland and sailing on uncharted waters of the Bamu River, it seemed like the path was paved for me.  Life can't be filled with these "right spot at the right time" moments because then we would not get to activate the faith muscle near as strenuously.  Skeletal muscles grow when they push harder resistance.  The faith muscle works in a similar way.

I ran across this Psalm before I left Madison.  I remember it caused me to breathe a sigh of relief.  It says, "The Lord will fulfill His purpose for me; your love, O Lord, endures forever" (Ps. 138:8).  For some reason I can put extra pressure on myself to fulfill my purpose.  I'm not sure if the Psalmist was at one of those moments where he felt like he was in the right spot or not.   Since earlier in this chapter he reminded himself that God has preserved his life and saved him (vs. 7), I am thinking that he might be starting to doubt God and God's timing.  I really appreciate the way the Psalm ends with the plea - "do not abandon the works of your hands" (vs. 8b) because that prayer is what I feel like saying most often.  But I usually just say or think "God, help."  I think the writer's prayer is much more poetic.   In this Psalms, the writer gives us a good game plan that we can use when we might be tempted to doubt.  He reminds himself what God has done for him, claims the promise he has, and then prays for grace in his uncertainty.

In The Next Generation Leader, Andy Stanley speaks about uncertainty.  He says, "Generally speaking, you are probably never going to be more than 80 percent certain.  Waiting for greater certainty may cause you to miss an opportunity."  I typically toss and turn over the next step and want to have one hundred percent certainty.  Mark Batterson sums it up nicely in his book In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day, "There is no such thing as risk-free faith." Getting on the ship  did involve a calculated risk, but I am so thankful I got up the courage to jump off the boat.

As they say, hindsight is 20/20.  God's providence and timing does usually make more sense through the lenses of hindsight as well.  So as I face the uncertainty of the next step, I am so thankful that I can look back on my last season and know that God had me at the right spot at the right time.  He is more than able to fulfill His purpose for me.  Whew.

"Twenty years from now you will be more

 disappointed by the things you didn't do than

by the ones you did do.   So throw off the bowlines.

Sail away from the safe harbor.

Catch the trade winds in your sails.

Explore.  Dream.  Discover."

Mark Twain