Eager Expectations

Happy New Year Friends!

We made it! 2015 is here and flying cars are still not a thing...BUT

I brought in the New Year in the best possible way! My brother married his best friend Katie, and it was the most beautiful and holy wedding I've been to. I am so grateful to have experienced that ceremony and witnessed how God has worked in their lives. I'm eagerly awaiting to see what all God has planned for them.

ea·ger

adjective \ˈē-gər\: very excited and interested : feeling a strong and impatient desire to do something or for something

Eagerness. That's the word of the year for me. A few of my friends have adopted words for the year, I've never heard of that before, but I love the idea. I will be praying the word "eager" this year. Eagerness...not only eagerness about God, but eagerness in my expectations of God's good and perfect will.

I thought of this metaphor as I sat in my car waiting for the heat to kick on to combat the arctic temperatures. You know when you are sitting in a cold car, watching that ticker slowly making it's way to the "c?" You know it's going to get there, and as soon as it get's there you crank up the fan knob to HIGH and the temperature knob to HOT. That's the eagerness I'm talking about. I want to constantly be on the edge of my seat seeking God, on the ready!

I have this friend, we will call her Joy, because she is full of it. I've been walking with her through some stuff. It's been such a healing process for both of us to share in this journey of change together. It's exciting. This friend and I, we actually haven't hung out in years, but over this time, God has worked on our hearts in a very mysterious and gracious way. She texted me a few weeks ago pouring out her heart, and crying for change in her life. She had reached this point, that I pray everyone gets to, where she was done with Satan's lies, and ready to live so fully into God's loving grace that she'd be lost. Completely lost. So I began to pray for her, I knew that feeling. That feeling of hope and dread and nausea all at once. That feeling of unavoidable change. That feeling...of eagerness. A few days after that she texted me this journal entry where she heard God say, "It's time to deal with this," and with that she had this amazing sense of hope and eager expectation. I love it! Goosebumps just thinking of it!

Because of this conversation with Joy, I began to pray about what it would look like if we kept that feeling all the time. Not just with the anticipation of Christmas and Christ coming, the New Year and new change, or Easter and Christ's defeat over death. But what if we eagerly expected the Lord and his good and perfect will everyday? Not that HUGE, life altering things have to happen or will happen everyday, but what if we just kept that eager and willing heart all year? 

For me, it's a scary thought. Last year, I began to change my prayer life, I began to wrestle with God, and I began to grow an eager and expecting spirit. That sounds great right, so why be scared? Because every time I prayed into that eager and hopeful feeling, God asked me to do something painful. I had to let go of a relationship that I thought was worth fighting for, I had to quit my jobs that I loved and was good at, I had to move to Kentucky and away from my family and friends, I had to start school (and that's just painful enough by itself, right),  AND I had to completely let go of all my expectations that I had set for my life. None of that was easy, and not one of those things felt good.BUT our God is a God of love, so I don't say those things to scare you. God loves me and knows my worth. Frankly, I was settling on being content with being discontent. I cannot imagine my life in a different state than it is in now, doors have opened to speak truth and love to people that wouldn't have opened before and so much of who I am now wouldn't have happened where I was before. The me who welcomed in 2014 is not the same person who bears her soul and tells her junk on the internet in 2015, and I owe it all to my eagerness to be a part of God's will for my life. It wasn't easy, and it wasn't painless...but it was totally worth it.

I want to look at Isaiah 43: 18-21

Forget the former things;    do not dwell on the past.See, I am doing a new thing!    Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?I am making a way in the wilderness    and streams in the wasteland. The wild animals honor me,    the jackals and the owls,because I provide water in the wilderness    and streams in the wasteland,to give drink to my people, my chosen, the people I formed for myself    that they may proclaim my praise.

When I read this passage, I read eagerness. I hear eager expectations. Do you? Here, read it this way, "SEE! I am doing something NEW. GET EXCITED. GET INTRIGUED. GET PUMPED! Do you not see it? Well, get ready because THIS IS HAPPENING! In fact it has ALREADY STARTED. I am doing EXCITING stuff, and it is ALL for my GLORY. Come on! Be A PART! I WANT you to be A PART" 

Friends...2015...it's HAPPENING and it's HERE...Are you excited? Are you intrigued? Are you pumped? Are you ready for God to show up and make major moves in your lives? This is my prayer for you. I pray that you wake up each and every day of 2015 expecting the Lord to show up! The most wonderful part of that expectation is you won't ever be disappointed...it is an assured promise.

• And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age. Matthew 28:20

• Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast. Psalm 139: 7-10

• Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, "This is the way; walk in it. Isaiah 30:21

Be intrigued. Be excited. Be eager.

Happy New Year!

-Sarah