Monday, October 22, 2012: The date that I originally put this picture in a draft and saved it with the title "It's for real." I thought I was going to a place called the International House of Prayer in Kansas City for an internship. I thought it was for real. I could barely believe it myself because I was planning to do something very far outside of my comfort zone, but it was for real.
I was going to be moving away from my family, hometown, most of my friends, and the familiarity of what I've spent the last 7 years knowing life to be.
I'm not writing this post to tell the story of what happened or why in March, I'm still here, living with my family in my hometown with most of my friends and that familiarity still surrounding me.
While I could explain the mental process of my decision not to go, I cannot tell you why I'm here instead of there right now, because even I don't know.
I know that in choosing to go or not to go to IHOP, I've probably changed the course of my life, whether in big or little ways and the temptation is there to worry about whether I made the right decision. The thing is, I can't know exactly what any of those ways would have translated into.
Would I be closer to the Lord now, or would my heart have hardened towards Him through some random happening?
Would I have been blessing the people around me more?
Are the relationships I've deepened here better than having founded new ones there?
Would the hard things that happened since I stayed have happened if I had gone?
Would my best friend be my best friend?
Did I just not go because I was scared?
Have I done something great here that I wouldn't have done if I had gone?
Did I defy the will of God by not going?
Or the other way around?
There could be a barrage of questions if I kept thinking about this long enough, but the truth is, I don't think any one of those specific questions matter as much as this one answer: the Lord is my Shepherd.
I know that sin is not what God would will for us to do but we can choose sin very easily. So it makes sense to reason that since it's easy to sin, it's easy to not be in God's will. I don't think that's right.
It is easy to sin. But God's grace abounds, setting us back into a right relationship with Him. Therefore, even as a Christ-follower, because I sin does not put me outside of God's will. He remains my shepherd.
I don't think the will of God is a certain combination of choices and events and if I happen to make a wrong choice or not go to one event that I was supposed to be at, there's no going back. To say that His will is something I could understand that easily is sort of rediculous really. He is a multi-faceted God, so why wouldn't His will reflect that?
I think the biggest question I've had about not going to IHOP is whether or not it was God's will that I stayed. Should I have gone? Did I really screw up this time by not choosing the other side of the fork in the road?
Like I said, I could come up with tons of questions for every decision I make. The biggest one being "Did I make the right choice?" And I know I'm not the only one who has ever asked that question. For others, maybe it wasn't IHOP, but it was a college or job or car or investment or relationship.
With the Bible as the ultimate authority, some choices are black and white.
But sometimes (the Bible still being the ultimate authority) choices aren't black and white and when we make decisions that are gray, I believe that what matters is how we go through with those decisions, and not so much whether or not we made the right decision.
The answer to any of my questions from the 3rd paragraph can be answered not in words but in how my life reflects the fact that the Lord is my Shepherd. If He is my Shepherd, it's not going to matter as much whether I made the right decision. If the Lord is my Shepherd, I will live my life, wherever I am, whatever I'm doing, in a way that brings Him as much glory as my life can bring Him.
I'm not going to stress about whether or not I should have gone to IHOP or not. Instead, I want to pursue the Lord in a way that it doesn't matter whether I went or not.