Sunday, February 20

A Letter Home

Dear God,

It was great to get to spend time with You last night, just You and me one on one. It is always a delight and a growing experience to me to sit at Your feet and listen, to be totally immersed into what Your visions cast and Your words bring to life. It is always with a heavy heart that I have to get up and watch You go on Your way. I know it is unusual for me to write a letter to you, what with the instant communication that we share nowadays, but I wanted to express in writing like I used to my appreciation for our relationship. A permanent record of what I feel for You and what You are doing in my life, through my life and with my life. Much like Your record of love letters You've written to me that I call the Bible.

Remember all the times You told me that I had to be ‘like a child’ in my pursuit of You? That such simplicity would be the only way I’d enter the Heavenly gates? I’ve never really understood that until tonight, as You spoke to me through the “Letters to God” movie. Tyler was both physically and spiritually a child in his relationship with You. A child dying of cancer who had lived more than I have as an adult. Although there was no indication of Your answering him, in the end lying in front of him on that stage were the results of the work You had set his hands to and it was beautiful. It is there that I realized what You meant by ‘as a child.’ The simplicity of faith in a world that denies it unless it is instantly proven.

You have brought me far on this journey home and there is not a moment of true depreciation that I’ve ever experienced, though sometimes in the darkness after the campfire burns low and the night falls silent I may have quailed before the enormous size of the task at hand. You have shaped me and molded me into a warrior with a cause, a special operations member of a team designed to fight in the darkness for those lost. Help me, my Friend and Mentor, to have that simplistic faith of a child in the tasks You are preparing for me.

You know those momentary distractions that keep me from a focus totally on Your work; the financials, the family and the daily minuet that carries my attention away from the true dance of the redeemed. You know that I trust in You to provide what my family and I need so that we can use what we’ve been given to reach out to those who don’t know you. That line from the Cars movie echoes in my head, “I elicit feelings in others that they themselves don’t understand.” I would trust that those feelings that my life and my words elicit reflect You and brings those people to Your gentle knocking on their doors for a relationship such as the one we share.

There are many things we talked about last night, my dearest Friend, and many grand adventures You and I have left to take upon this earth if what You said was true (and I have learned You never not tell the Truth). There are many titles that people will give me; Chaplain, Pastor, Friend, Father, Brother, Fool, Idiot and Disillusioned Man. Some will believe and see Your Spirit anointing me anew into the purpose to which You have set me to. Some won’t. But, just as they did with You, calling You many names (Savior, Messiah, Fool, Fake), I trust that You will carry me into the Will and Purpose of Your design as our Father in Heaven carried You.

You told me that You have enabled me to do greater things that You Yourself did while You were here on this earth and my mind cannot grasp at the sheer audacity of such vision. You said that You were molding me for that purpose set before I took my first breath upon this world and I still wonder if I am worthy of such grand dreams. You mentioned that there is still work to be done, still souls to be saved and that time is growing short.

I humbly submit all that I have, am and will be to You to use as You see fit.

I look forward to our next time where I once again can sit at Your feet and just hear You speak the Truth into my life to the point of overflowing so that I can in turn be a source of its utterance into a world gone mad with its own reality.

I am, and always will be, in Your service.

Love,

Jim