1.12.14

Breakfast- Blueberry Poptarts

Lunch- McDougals chicken fingers

Dinner- TBD

Bigger or Better

Today I picked back up with Bob Goff's Love Does. This book is great. It makes me want to write my own book someday, which I seriously plan to do. But that's a different story.

The chapter I read that stuck out the most to me today was called "Bigger or Better." Bob tells the story of how his kid played this neighborhood game where you start with a dime and walk from house to house asking for something bigger or better. Long story short, the kid starts with a dime and ends up with a car. That's just cool.

The theme he relates here is the idea that God wants to take our dime size faith and turn it into something bigger and better, as long as we are willing to give him our dime.

Everyone's dime looks different. Sometimes our dimes look like a lust for power and when we give it to God he gives us a bigger, better heart of service. Sometimes our dimes look like a longing for acceptance and when we give it to God he gives us a bigger, better ability to love others.

My dime? Mine looks a lot like fear of loneliness.

Being completely secluded and alone terrifies me. I love people too much. I love meeting new people, learning their names and connecting with them in the simplest ways. A social atmosphere is my comfort zone. But at the end of the day this can all be very surface and unfulfilling. I can go out, meet 10 new people, remember all of their names and have a great time, but it's all very fleeting and temporal if I never see them again.

So I think God wants me to surrender my fear of loneliness so he can give me something bigger and better. I'm not sure what that is, but my dime size faith says it's the right direction to take steps in.

So what does surrendering my dime look like? For me, I imagine it looks like keeping up with this New Years resolution of reading more and talking less. Intentional time alone where I calm my heart and quiet my mind. Putting the phone down, unplugging from the world and retreating from environments of worldly stimulation. And definitely more prayer.

I guess my hope from this would be to experience God in new ways. For a long time I've allowed my faith to function under the idea that I experience God best through interacting with people. Which is true and there's nothing wrong with that. God definitely shows up in small interactions where simply remembering someone's name can add value to a life. But I think I've been too content with this method of experiencing God for too long, causing me to miss out on experiencing God in new and different ways. Quiet, pensive and alone ways.

Here's a quote from Henri Nouwen that I'll be drawing on for encouragement in surrendering my fear of loneliness.

“It is this nothingness that I have to face in my solitude, a nothingness so dreadful that everything in me wants to run to my friends, my work, and my distractions so that I can forget my nothingness and make myself believe that I am worth something. The task is to persevere in my solitude, to stay in my cell until all my seductive visitors get tired of pounding on my door and leave me alone. The wisdom of the desert is that the confrontation with our own frightening nothingness forces us to surrender ourselves totally and unconditionally to the Lord Jesus Christ.”

Someone wise once said that the world puts you in the desert when they want to isolate you, but that God puts you in the desert when he wants you to listen. So here's to surrendering my dime and listening.