Paradigm shift

Sitting at the computer today, trying to write an essay for my application to seminary, I felt like a fraud. How do I know? Am I insane? What am I doing? Can I do this? Will it work this time? Blah, blah, blah. So, I plug in the mp3 player and go back to basics...songs that remind me of who God says I am rather than who I say I am or who others say I am. Then I pick up my Bible and look for a specific passage. Instead, I find Isaiah (pronounced in a British accent, of course) 55:5, 8-13.

5 Surely you will summon nations you know not, and nations that do not know you will hasten to you, because of the LORD your God, the Holy One of Israel, for he has endowed you with splendor.
8 "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," declares the LORD. 9 "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. 10 As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, 11 so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it. 12 You will go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and hills will burst into song before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands. 13 Instead of the thornbush will grow the pine tree, and instead of briers the myrtle will grow. This will be for the LORD's renown, for an everlasting sign, which will not be destroyed."

Suddenly, I'm not a fraud. I'm simply who God has called me to be, and I'm walking forward to accomplish the word that the Lord has spoken over my life. Who am I to question what He has asked me to do? Yes, it may seem crazy. Yes, it may seem counterintuitive. But, looking back, what have I done, what have I walked through for God, with God, that actually makes sense? Nothing that I can see with my eyes.

So, yeah. Here I sit, on the precipice of something magnificent, something of which I've dreamed sporadically, constantly for over a decade, perhaps three decades. I'm walking forward, jumping with no parachute. I'm depending on God to accomplish the word. After all, He is the One who said that His word will not return empty.

And I really do need some more stamps on my passport. My England stamps are kind of lonely.