When Home Isn’t Enough

Do you ever feel like you just want to get away? Like everything around you is falling apart, in your mind, and you just want to leave? It’s a time when no one seems to be behind you, even though a whole slew of people are backing you up, and you are fighting this fight for life on your own, but you still know you’ve got Jesus at your back. At 19, I totally was feeling this. Like I would do anything to get out of my house, and darnit, no one was going to stop me.

This last week I was praying to God in Heaven and he showed me a two very cool things. It was like he showed me the heads side of the coin and then the tails side. He revealed to me something good and then something… not so good.

I was thinking about home. Just about my bro and my parents and my friends and my church. The big stuff. And the 3 months that I’ve been here I honestly haven’t missed home once. I’ve been back twice for different occasions, but when I was there, I was restless to leave. Could it be that I’ve grown up? Heavens no! Ha. But God reminded me that it was never a “weird transition” for me to move down here. I just kind of did it. Sure I don’t have all my stuff, but I’ve got everything I need. I never once looked back and said that I may want to do something else. I came to Colorado and now it’s my home. I’ve been coming to realize that my home isn’t my current location on the globe. It’s in the presence of God. It’s not Cheyenne, WY or Colorado Springs, CO or Kyrgyzstan (WPC flag…legit), it’s with God. In Exodus 33:14-15 it says: “The LORD replied, ‘My Presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.’ Then Moses said to him, ‘If your Presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here.’”

That’s how I want to live my life. “God, if you are not going to be where I want to go, then I’m not going.” I think I’ve done a good job of this, but it’s always something to keep in mind. My move was easy because God was with me the whole time, and I’ve become dependent on him. I know that I can only be happy when I am where he is. That’s it. It’s not about my ministry, or my spouse (oh please God!!..haha), or who I influence. It’s, “Is God here? Ok, good.”.

Then God showed me the flip side of that. That in my life I have a lot of pride. That I feel like I can do it all on my own without God’s help. That I can get by, or do enough, or be good enough that I don’t need the help of God. A few weeks ago during prayer meeting we got all the guys together and started to talk about pride. How it is something that almost every guy deals with. We want to be able to do things on our own without the help of anyone, even God. I didn’t know how to pray against it, or what to say. I just rested in God and didn’t say a word the rest of the night of the prayer meeting. I was at a loss. The next morning at man workout we did what’s called the 21 gun salute. Groups of 4, first guy does 21 pushups, then the next guy and so on. You get the the first guy and he does 20 then the next guy and then the first guy does 19… All the way down to 1. It’s something like 250 pushups. It’s an insane number. About halfway through that I was done. I couldn’t even hold myself up after each set. I needed the help of others, but I was so embarrassed. I started to cry during this workout that God was working on my pride. That I have to be able to rely on Him and others around me if I even want to get through life.

I’ll never forget those two days back to back. Realizing my pride and then breaking it down. Pride is still an issue, as God showed me, but it’s getting peeled away. Sin issues and strongholds and ogres are like onions. We deal with the first layer, then God tells you to get the next layer, then the next, then the next. Unless God does a radical work in our lives, we will rarely be completely free from a sin overnight. Lust, Pride, Sloth, and Envy are all things that I’ve struggled with for a very long time. Now, they are but memories. I see the hints of the sins creep back in and sometimes I struggle more that I know I should, but by the grace of God I have learned how to overcome these things.

So I learned that even though I am dependent on God in my physical location and situation, I’ve become much too dependent on myself for my spiritual location and situation. “God I need you. I can’t do this life without You. You are my ONLY hope,” is to become my cry. In my life I want nothing more that to chase God, but do I depend on it? Do I need it?

Figuring out what I need,

Morgan