Part One of _______

I would just like to share some things that God has been showing me over the past week or so. I have recently began reading the book "Chasing Daylight" by Erwin Raphael McManus, and it has had a great impact on my daily life. The theme of the book, as cliche as it may sound, is about seizing every moment, letting God work through you moment by moment. As I have recently discovered, this is an extremely exciting and fulfilling way to live your life. McManus writes:

"The most important moments rarely come at a convenient time. Sometimes you wish that God would check your calendar first. The ironic part is that our schedules get packed with the mundane and ordinary, and we become irritated with God when He interrupts us with the miraculous and extraordinary. The Scriptures are full of stories about people who were rudely interupted by God. We read them and long to have the kind of adventure experienced by those men and women. Yet when God interrupts us, are we willing to respond on a moment's notice?"

So many of us, myself included, have a desire to lead an exciting, meaningful life, yet want to live this life on our own terms. We live with the fear that God may call us to do something undesirable, something that may disrupt our day-to-day life. However, when you live moment by moment, the only thing you can worry about is the choices you make in that particular moment. I experienced this first hand yesterday as I was walking home from the Mustard Seed. I was in a bit of a hurry because I had dinner plans with a friend last night, when a guy approached me on the street. He introduced himself, and when he learned that I go to Bible school, he told me that he had become a Christian himself in the last couple years, as he had nowhere else to turn. He then proceeded to tell me a long story about how both his parents had died, and he had spent every last bit of his savings on bus fares to get from Toronto to Fort McMurray, where he had just got a job. He no longer had any money to buy food, and had very few possessions. To make a long story short, I ended up going with him to an ATM and giving him a bit of money. I still am not sure whether I believed his story, but he told me that he figured my helping him out was God's way of letting him know that He still loved him, so who am I to say any different? I believe that when we focus on living for each moment, we may have opportunities such as this that we may have otherwise ignored or missed. When you remain open to God's leading, even ordinary things such as walking home from work can become opportunities for ministry. As of late, I find life much more exciting and rewarding, as I never know where/how God may use me next. This is so much better than simply trying to order and plan my life around my own hopes and desires. More on what I have been learning to follow...