Bittersweet

It was a long drive home... or was it away from home?

Three hours in the car trying to reconcile this strange mix of peace and excitement, with a heavy, deep sorrow, only helped me realize it's going to take me weeks to fully comprehend what I've just left behind.

I think there's a love to be found in the church that runs far deeper than ordinary friendship. In lots of Pauls epistles, he writes about longing to be with this church or that, about a certain church being his joy.

The people I've left in Austin are more than just college friends. We've "fought the good fight" in that city side by side, and stood together against the depravity of the world and the attacks of the enemy. These people have invested in my life, have called out the seeds Christ has planted in me. We've longed together for more Jesus in our lives. I've prayed, and hoped, and cried, and called down heaven with them for five years.

I am more than sad to leave them behind; I'm heartbroken.

But along with that sorrow, is a certainty in me that this is the right move. For the first time in at least a year, I feel a measure of the peace of God resting with me. This last year in Austin I've felt like I was sitting outside His will. I had every reason to be happy, surrounded by people I love, in a city I love, with a good job. But I've only had this sense of dischord in my heart; like I was missing it somehow.

This is terrible and wonderful. It's stretching, and painful, and scary. But I can already see God moving in this place. Even today, I can already feel a desperation for Jesus rising up in me, as I leave my support systems behind. The preacher this morning quoted from Hebrews:

but now he has promised, "Once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens." 27The words "once more" indicate the removing of what can be shaken—that is, created things—so that what cannot be shaken may remain.

28Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, 29for our "God is a consuming fire."

I see Him shaking up my life; shaking loose the things I've become dependent on, shaking up my complacency; bringing me back to a place of total reliance on the Father. Restoring Jesus to the throne in my heart, where I've let other people be my support, and other things be my comfort.

I say, let it be, Jesus. I think I'm finally ready to lose what I love for a chance at more of Him.