This is a global reality...

...what can we do about it?

Next Five Minutes from David Platt on Vimeo.

1+1-1=1

2 steps forward and 1 step...back. Do you ever feel like you're walking backwards?

I do.

Mostly because I try to walk on my own. One step forward.

God holds my hand while I stumble again. One step forward.

"Nohelpthankyou!" I scream. So God lets me fall and scrape my knees. One step backward.

I am a stubborn toddler, an adulterous wife, a thickheaded ninnymuggins (Elf, anyone?).

And yet, somehow I make it another step forward. Because two steps forward and one step back actually equals one step forward, right?

It's all Him.

He is Enough

Some people meet change in one day, like a quick but delightful coffee date. For others, change comes in a blooming relationship that grows over a lifetime. Jesus changes my life every day.

The story really begins before I was even born, with a man reaching the end of himself and the beginning of what would become a deep and abiding relationship with the God of the universe. It begins with a teenage girl finding her way to the cross, growing to be a woman sold out to Jesus. Two people, falling in love with each other and with the God who ordained their lives before time began. A legacy was born.

I am the child of a legacy, born to parents who love(d) Jesus more than life itself. They set out to do one thing and one thing only with their children: Surrender. Like Hannah with her precious baby boy, Samuel, my parents set me down on the altar of obedience from Day 1. There, the story takes off.

I've loved Jesus for a long time...At least, "loved" the way the world loves. Because you can "love" someone and live unchanged. You can't LOVE someone and live unchanged. I came to Jesus on my own terms, demanding salvation in exchange for partial surrender. I wanted to LOVE life and Jesus. It took a long time for me to realize that Jesus doesn't offer an "entree only" kinda deal. He is the FULL meal...take it or leave it. I just wanted the sandwich.

Then, in contrast to my perfectly perfect world, the unthinkable happened and my world was rocked. My daddy, the one who was the clearest picture of my heavenly Daddy, got sick. Really sick. And suddenly, the world wasn't safe anymore. I didn't LOVE life, because life hated me. And all I had, the only stable thing in my cracked world, was Jesus. He was faithful. I had heard that my whole life, but never was it real in the midst of suffering. Now it was. He was unchangeable. Despite all the lies I had believed my whole life--"It's all gonna be fine"--it was not fine. But He hadn't changed. For the first time, I was forced to accept His terms:

"If anyone wants to come with me, he must deny himself, pick up his cross every day, and follow me continually" (Luke 9:23).

I realized Jesus doesn't call me to safe living. He doesn't allow me to keep my stuff and dreams and desires. He demands that I give it all to Him. Everything. He demands that I live recklessly for the sake of the Gospel. And in return, I get HIM. Not Him AND what He can do for me, just HIM. And He was enough.

He was enough.

Now, every day is a journey into that phrase. Knowing that He is enough, experiencing that He is enough, telling others that He is enough. He has taken my stubborn heart, set on what I want my future to be, and softened it. He took me from, "I will never go to Africa!" to "God, I'll go with you!" From, "I could never live without X," to "Jesus, take away everything but yourself." From, "I can't live without my dad!" to "God, it hurts but YOU ARE ENOUGH."

Nothing else in this world will ever be enough.

Do you believe that He is enough?

List Lover, List Shredder

I love Lists. The illusion of control is powerful, so much so that writing down rows of words actually leads me to believe that the next 24 hours will go exactly the way I design them. And my life is the stage of God's favorite comedy act.

Lists hate me. I form them, they attempt to form me, and I rebel. I fall into bed at the end of the day, wondering where I misplaced the List and why exactly the day did not conform to the priorities of the List.

I'm coming to love Lists for their ability to shove me to the floor in glorious agony. Try this out for size:

"You are not your own; you were bought at a price" (1 Cor. 6:19-20).

Uncomfortable, huh? Lists torn up, ripped to shreds, thrown in a river gorge. And somehow there is finally peace, like in the moment a screaming baby ceases his rant and you sigh, "AHHHH...."

The List no longer condemns. The List no longer scowls and controls. The List IS no longer.

I am not my own. I am just one piece in a Grand Love Story, one flower in a field of flowers blooming loudly...

Say it with me {it feels great}:
"AHHHHHH...."