T'was the night before the departure...

My Dash

In less than 12 hours I will be on a plane to an unknown place, to live with an unknown family, and do something that is completely unknown to me. I should be scared out of my mind, but I'm not. I'm not because God did some epic things in my heart this week that have made me psyched to get to the DR. 

Sunday morning I had the opportunity to attend Athens Church, which is a plant of North Point Church. They stream Andy Stanley's message from his home North Point Church. The story that Andy talked about came from Mathew 4. It was about Simon Peter dropping everything and following Jesus. Now one could say that this is what we are suppose to do, we are suppose to give up all we have and follow this Jesus guy, even if we have no idea what we are doing. But that's not the whole story. A more detailed account of this story is found in Luke 5. Here it tells us that Jesus had asked Peter if he could use his boat, Peter agreed, probably reluctantly considering he had no idea who this guy was. At this point Peter refers to Christ as "Master", a common, unspecific name for a teacher. After teaching for a period of time, Jesus asks Peter to take him out and to cast his nets into the water. Peter is again reluctant saying that they had already tried and there was nothing. But, then he says, "But because you say so, I will let down the nets". Most of you know the rest of the story. They go to the boat, they catch a ridiculous amount of fish, and it isn't until then and Peter begins to refer to Jesus as "Lord" and makes the decision to follow him. Andy's point in all this was, following begins with information. It begins with listening and learning who God is. We aren't called to a blind faith. We aren't called to go serve a God we know nothing about. We are called to know God, to first trust him, to begin to call him Lord instead of Master. We are also called to do something God's way. Even if we are fisherman and may have cast out our nets a million times, we are called to do it one time HIS WAY, and to see what happens. So this is me casting out my nets GOD'S WAY. I trust him, I let him in my boat and now I'm doing what he has asked of me. I am not going into a foreign country with a blind faith, but rather a knowledgeable faith on the One I serve. 

This was an awesome morning that really made everything click for me. But, God wasn't done with it yet, for he had far more in store. 

Sunday night I was back home and me and my brother went to our church, Passion City Church. Church twice in one day? Yeah, it didn't sound too great to me either especially when I still have not started packing yet. But I went and now I know why. Pastor Louie started a new series called "A matter of life and death", this was kind of the opening overview message. Here's a synopsis of what he said. When we die, we all have a tombstone. We all have a name, a birthdate, and a deathdate engraved on this tombstone. But, the dash between our birth and death dates is the most significant, yet least noticed part of the engravings. A dash is such an underrated symbol for everything we did in the years between our birth and death, but it's all we get. We all get one dash, and none of us know how long that dash will be. Knowing this fact, as Christians, we can't take advantage of any day. We can't let anything hold us back from living the life we want to live while sharing the Gospel. We have to be confident and undying in this pursuit of sharing the Goodnews. 

This rocked me. In a totally good way. It was like God was yelling at me saying "yes! yes Neilly, yes! what you are doing is right and good! Do not waste another day!" I don't know how long my dash is, God does, but that's for Him to worry about and not me. My job is fill my dash with as much Kingdomwork as I can. My job is to not let an piece of this dash slip by me wasted. 

So my work in the DR isn't for college or job applications, it's not to get a great tan, or to take a break from school. It's to do something God's way instead of my way, and through that, to fulfill my one dash that I'm given. And because of that, I can sit here, hours before I leave (still not packed), and have not one ounce of fear or doubt in my body. To be full of joy and confidence and excitement knowing that I can further and kingdom and my dash will not be wasted.