Ummmm....I think I'll take the stairs!

If your like me, sometimes you wonder why you can’t just wake up one day as, ummmm, I don’t know, Beth Moore or Sheila Walsh or Lysa Teurkurst. God is big enough to do that right? To wave his magic wand, and all of the sudden you are the leader of an amazing ministry, making a living out of exactly what you wanted to do. He could do that right? Of course He could! I have no doubt that if He wanted to, He could have the “right” people call me tomorrow and my book would be published and I would be speaking at conferences weekly. That is IF He wanted me to, or IF he was ready for me too, or IF I was ready. He is capable. I am willing. So what’s all the hold up about?

I tend to get ahead of myself, it’s a bad habit of mine. I tend to lack patience, and I wanted “it” (whatever “it” happens to be at the moment) yesterday. But, thank you God that He knows better.

I wish I was more biblically knowledgeable, if I was I could give you verses, but I oftentimes find myself running across stories in the Bible about falls. It can be the fall of a glamorous city, or the fall of a famous leader, or the fall of an army - there is lots of falling in the Bible. Most of the time it happens when people or places get too prideful, start to believe that they don’t need God anymore, and their hearts turn away and turn wicked. It happens over and over again. I hate to use the cliché, but, pride comes before a fall.

I love the words that I found in Lamentations to day. Lamentations 3:16 “He has made me chew on gravel, He has rolled me in the dust. Peace has been stripped away, and I have forgotten what prosperity is.”

Have you ever been in that kind of place? Chewing on gravel. Boy, I sure have. Could it be possible that God doesn’t send us on an elevator to the top of the high rise of our dreams, because He knows that if He did, we would inevitably fall? And not a little fall, but the kind of fall that we would step out of the elevator, not knowing which direction to go, wander of the ledge, and find ourselves eating gravel. Could that be why He instead sends us up the stairs? The rough stairs. The long, grueling, makes you out of breath, hurts your thighs, and causes blisters in your high heals, kind of stairs.

I think maybe the reason He doesn’t wave His wand in our lives all the time, is because we are not ready, yet. That does not mean that we won’t be ready, because we will. But we have to gain some strength, learn some lessons, live some life, make some mistakes, and lay down some dreams before He can take us to the top. The top that He has planned for us, which is far more than the top we could ask for or imagine. It is not anyone else’s summit either, it is the summit at the top of the high rise of our life, what He has for you and you alone!

So let’s start another week girls! One stair at a time, and loving each and every minute of it! It’s a privilege to get to climb the stairs, if we rode the elevator, we would miss out on all the beauty He has provided for each and every step.