What are you waiting for?

A few times a year YL gathers up all off the YL staff in Tennessee and they let us just be together, breathe together. We go over the year, the good and the hard, we just spend time together. This time we ate together, we worshipped together, we slid down a waterfall rock together into ice water, we even crashed go carts into each other, I mean crashed hard. Haha

All of those things were some of my favorites, but one of my favorite moments was walking around the pond at camp with my new friend Tiffany. Tiffany lives in Nashville, we've met a few times before, but this time we bonded and it was sweet.

One night after dinner we decided to walk around the water and burn some calories before the next gathering J We laughed and joked some and then began to shared fears in our lives the Lord wants to take from us. 

I started sharing with her my summer and how loudly the Lord spoke to me and how it didn’t just start this summer. That the Lord for years has sent me affirmation after affirmation on a part of my life I needed to move in and I never did. And she just interrupted my thought and said

“What are you waiting for?” I paused and said “What do you mean?” and she goes “What are you waiting for? Why aren’t you doing it? What would have to happen for you to do it?”

I paused for a moment and before I could even think of what I was saying I said “perfection. I want to be perfect. I will do it when I’ve mastered it and feel like it’s perfect.”

Wow. As soon as those words came out I was shocked. The thought of perfection is laughable, because it’s not even close to being attainable, everyone knows that, no one and nothing is perfect outside of Christ.

Yet here I was, waiting to move in an area of life until I had it perfect. Wow. There it was. I had no more excuses left, God showed my real heart, what seemed like my last excuse.

He’s given me gifts, given me people to support me, given me joy in this gift, given me opportunities and now has just shown me the only thing that stands in the way of me and this next phase of life is…my goal of perfection.

Something about her asking this question and me blurting it out just took a burden off of me. Almost made it ok to not be perfect when I play music at club this Monday. To not be perfect when I write my songs tonight, to not be perfect when I sing them to my friends and strangers. Of course you prepare, of course you spend time putting hard work into it, but allowing myself to be free to not be perfect. It felt like my excuse/fear was exposed and now I could move forward.

What are you waiting for in your life to be perfect? Or striving for in your life to be perfect?

Your career?

Your family?

Your weight? 

Looks?

There are things in our life we want to “master”, and we strive to master before we’re satisfied

I believe in working hard in your career, working out to stay healthy, communicating to keep your family growing. However we all need the Lords grace in all areas. Because if we’re always waiting for perfect, working towards it, we won’t find it on this side of heaven.

I don’t want to wait for perfection anymore. I want to move, and probably take some wrong moves but I want to move. I want to sing  in public, sing wrong notes in public, because it’s not about the notes, it’s about the singing part that matters.

I want to love hard because God says to, even if I don’t love perfectly and have to apologize for them seeing a raw side of me, I want to love anyways.

I’m not perfect, it’s not an excuse, I will keep being sharpened my whole life. However, I want to walk in Grace. I want to live in a place where I need God to show up. I need people to see more of him when I sing and live then just seeing Lindsay.

I need grace not perfection. I want to follow where I know my following Him will lead others to worship and not to me. I want to follow, right now, because I won’t ever be perfect on this side of heaven, so there is no need to wait.

What excuse do you have right now that is standing in the way of someplace you’re supposed to go?

What are you waiting for?

It's a narrow path, but it's well lit.

I got up early this morning and went for a sunrise jog at my favorite park. I needed to run, I needed to hear from God, I needed to be alone and just lt Him show up.

And He did.

I was running on the trail and ran by this little side path, a path I’ve never really looked at. I run these trails every week and I’ve never noticed it.

But today I noticed it, the sun was shining right through it, it was like it was being highlighted this morning.

Right then and there I got my answer.

The path is narrow, but it’s well lit.

We all know the verse about the path being narrow, but to actually walk it out is a totally different feeling. It feels great reading the Bible, feels great saying the verse and studying in a small group and saying “yes let’s take the narrow!”

But when it comes down to your actual life, the narrow can sometimes look like a difficult choice. It looks like persecution, it looks like people whom you love not understanding what you’re doing. It looks like some people not only telling you you’re making a mistake, but then them not coming with you as you walk down the path.

For someone who loves people and wants everyone to come with her, it actually feels a bit painful when someone persecutes you because they don’t get what you’re doing. It actually feels a whole lot of painful when someone doesn’t want to come with you.

However, this is what the Lord says to do, for Him, and for those people, those loved ones. To keep going, keep following Him, even if for the time being it looks like you’re going down a narrow path and some of the ones you love aren’t coming with you. Go anyways. Because its all for them anyways, God wants none to stay behind, none to be with out Him. But sometimes that means I go first, I go alone, I go with less support than I wanted.

But I’m supposed to go, the narrow path isn’t a glamorous path we make it out to be in our minds. It’s a humble path, but it’s well lit.