When Jesus takes us by surprise

Jesus took me by surprise yesterday.

Once a month I have a day marked out on my calendar as a "Day with Jesus." It's a discipline I took up a few years ago when a wise counselor recommended it. It sounds simple, but it's surprisingly difficult to pull off. Yesterday morning I was asking Jesus about how he wanted to do the day.

I was inspired by a blog post I read this morning by Scott Couchenour at Serving Strong. The post is about remaining childlike and engaging God with wonder and curiosity. Scott's words were in the background as I prayed about the day. I wanted to be childlike and receptive toward God.

As I prayed, I felt a leading to do some writing on an article I am drafting for the Covenant's denominational magazine. It's the story of how my entry into the Covenant feels to me a lot like a story of immigration. There's a lot of my personal story in the piece.

I felt this leading to write, but because writing is "productive" activity, I resisted. (Isn't it just like us to tell God we know better than he does?) I wanted to be receptive toward God, which I translated into doing something less "work-like." (Translation: "Let me be receptive in the way I want to be receptive.")

Still the leading persisted. Wising up, I decided to try it.

I enjoyed the writing. More importantly, about an hour into it, I met God. As I told my story, I recounted how he had worked in my life during some very difficult years. Narration became mingled with worship.

So it happened that in the process of writing, I met God. It's not that I'm on a different plane as a writer. It's that I simply followed the Shepherd and did things his way.

How about taking a minute and asking him if there's any way he wants to direct you in the rest of your day. You might be surprised!

Comments

  1. UnknownMarch 5, 2013 at 7:49 AM

    Thanks for sharing this Dave! Really needed to hear this!

    ReplyDelete

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