the old and the new

I just came back from a weekend long Luke manuscript study dig in with Servant Partners. This weekend was so important. It was refreshing, fun, convicting, hard, fulfilling, mind-expanding,.... I really really love these dig in's i have decided....God has spoken to me through the word in community in incredible ways druing these times. I feel so full and satisfied and energized right now...

God was telling me, among other things, that I should stay at Walden School. Behind this is the deeper issue: Like Simon the fisherman, will I refrain from making decisions based on what I know/want/will make me comfortable? This is something we say all the time, but Lord it is hard. It is hard for me to not take a job opportunity that I am being so freely and generously offered. It is hard for me to choose to stay in a place where my gifts (as I see them) are not needed/actualized, where I am not respected, as 'ministry of insignificance,' to name a major theme of our time in Luke so far. It is hard for me to decide to serve and committ to a group of people and an institution whose values, personalities, agendas are so oppositional to my own and uncomfortable for me to work within and among.

I want God's will to be done in my life, but so rarely do I choose against my will and into something that God might be saying to me in subtle ways. Not that God would always have the hardest thing for us. But can I say that I follow Him if i never choose the illogical, the obscure, the insignificant, the inefficient, the uncomfortable?

There was so so much God taught me this weekend. Praise Him. I saw our SP community grow so much and take major steps toward becoming a deeper, more vunerabel one....I just have a deep love for all of you guys, and it is so clear that this community is an answerto prayers I prayed back in college. He has been faithful, and I know he will take us together into beautiful things....