This one will serve more of a purpose. I recently started on staff with Fellowship of Christian Athletes and this will give me a space to talk about what is going on there, the struggles and successess of ministry and maybe lead you to think that God is crazy for allowing me to do this. I'm a messed up person and thank you, Lord for grace or I would be wallowing in a pit of muck somewhere. Maybe I still am. Matt says I don't shower enough. So there's that.
I am scared of this. I daily tell Matt I don't want to rely on God. I daily tell God I don't want to rely on God. And then I breathe and realize I relied on God. By trusting in the science that makes my heart beat and my lungs breathe I trust that God is in control of whether I live or die and maybe my lungs won't expand one day and my heart stops because of the massive amount of french fries I eat and that's okay too. Not about the fries. That is not okay Rachel. Sometimes I think that trusting God is kind of like a lazy way of accepting life. Doesn't mean it's the right way to think but it's the way I sometimes do. And I am going to trust him in this ministry as He has led me here to share the gospel with students. I am. I will. Repeat.
Through each season in life, high school, college, teaching, marriage, and growing older, I've found comfort in Jeremiah 29:11. There is a plan. There is a plan. Through each moment of wanting to give up and join the army (Seriously, I thought that. Someone telling me what to do sounded nice at one point.), I've repeated that mantra. There is a plan. There is a plan.
Recently, I found this article from Relevant Magazine, about my beloved verse, ripping it's hope apart from what I'd always interpreted it to mean. Below is an excerpt from the article which I found interesting. Read it and think about it and maybe say that the verse does mean I will succeed in my plan to build and own a business that creates french fries that taste like french fries but have no calories. Or maybe it means I just have a purpose while my lungs continue to expand with each breath.
"God the vending machine
When we realize our interpretation of Jeremiah (or any passage) has given in to such a misreading, we should step back and consider how we arrived in a place where God more closely resembled a vending machine than our creator and savior. It was Martin Luther who quipped, “What the heathen had in their wood, we have in our opinions.” He meant by that saying to remind us idolatry still exists. The form of it changes in every generation, but the tendency for us to exchange the truth of God for a lie continually confronts each person. We have a startling capacity for self-deception."
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