In October we spent several days and nights at our home church, Shell Lake Full Gospel, attending a missions conference. This is the second year we have attended.  Last year we had just gotten back from Africa a month and a half before.  We came with excitement about what God could possibly have planned for us.  Our minds were on overload trying to figure out all God had in store for us.  Well we would have never been able to paint the picture that He has painted over this past year.  I have been trying to read my journal from a year ago, along with writing my new journey.  It is amazing to see all that we wrote then, and are living now.

The sermon a year ago this past August was about God not wanting us to be normal but extraordinary.  To not be afraid to do big things.  To want to fly instead of walk.  Then at the missions conference, a little over a year later we are sitting here listening to a speaker talk about a God that wants to break our normal and move us into supernatural.  To give us more than we could even hope or imagine.

I couldn’t have even begun to paint this picture of our journey a year ago.  We were living a “normal” life. We were raising our six kids, leading youth group in our home, Todd was working at the school and I was homeschooling our kids.  The kids were playing sports and hanging out with friends.  We had it all..the great American dream..the “normal” life.  Then God stepped in and shattered our normal and pushed us to dream of something so outside our comfort zone that our initial response was, ‘no way!” God wanted a year of our lives to go to Africa.  There is nothing ‘normal’ about that.

We wrestled with God and still question the craziness of this new adventure that HE has us on.  But there is something great about this journey and we haven’t even left yet.  God is inspiring people to pick up dreams they laid down because they didn’t see them as possible, people are telling us that our journey has inspired them to ask God,’What do you want to do with my life?’.  We have met brothers and sisters in Christ from around the world that are now praying for us and us for them.  We have had people be so moved by our journey that they stop to talk to us and share as we are walking by.  We are so moved to know that we can be, for each other, an encouragement that pushes us to places we never thought we could go.

We have also learned what it is to rust God on a daily basis to meet our needs and work out a lot of details.  HE is so faithful.  We wake up every morning anticipating how He is going to move in this journey and He always surprises us with the creative ways He reassures us and provides for us.  We have grown to love and trust Him more each day and for that reason alone this journey has already been worth it.

Don’t be afraid to let God interrupt ‘your’ life.  He has great plans for you (Jeremiah 29:11) and good works that He planned in advance for you to do. Don’t be so focused on the small day to day things that can consume our days that we miss walking on the water because we are content to sit in the boat.  Get out of the boat and walk on water.