Fear Fighting In The New YearSample

"Will You Let God Speak to You?"

With all the details of my skinny, extra hot, double pump vanilla latte on my mind, I nearly missed him. My feet carried me faster than a cartoon roadrunner. Must. Get. Coffee. Have. No. Time.

But there he sat. Scrunched in the corner by the door. One you would certainly miss if you weren’t looking. But I didn’t miss him, because he was staring intently. His eyes met mine with both invitation and conviction. They practically asked me, “Are you just like them? Another one rushing past me to get that cup of golden idol to warm your hands for the day?”

Everything in me wanted to snap back, “Well, yes, I am. And don’t talk to me anymore, because I am going to be stuck at the back of that line.”

I almost said it. I really wanted to. I wanted to ignore him and rush in to suck down that brown nectar from the green goddess. But I didn’t. I didn’t because sometimes you know it is the voice of God pulling you into something great, and if you don’t slow down and listen for just a minute, you’ll miss it.

I stopped. I stopped because I was deathly afraid of missing something greater, something powerful, or something that would release the feeling that an unbound schedule meant I would plummet straight into dark depths of despair. I drew near, and the closer I got the more I couldn’t help but inhale his stench and observe his deep, dirty lines of life-pain. I didn’t want all this heaviness on my rush-in and rush-out stop-off.

Yet what I have realized is that stopping and stepping into unsafe forces us to receive God’s new safe. Will we risk it? Will we receive it?

It’s the only place we get to see that God won’t turn His back on us, disregard our emotions, or critique us. Rather He’ll speak straight into our gaps of discomfort—if we let Him.

Will we?