Our Lives Are Not Our Own

We have told anyone who would listen that the years spent in Fort Worth in seminary were some of the best of our lives.  Yes, it was life-changing that we met each other during that time, but even if it didn’t happen we would still count those days as rich and full.

Not that every single day was spent walking around campus hearing the “Hallelujah” chorus ringing in our ears, or seeing prophets of old playing racquetball in the rec center. Quite the opposite. The workload during our time at seminary was ridiculous.  A good ridiculous… but ridiculous nonetheless.  The reading assignments alone would cause your eyes to cross.

One thing I learned when I met Nikki.  She is a reader.  I am as well, but Nikki is a reading machine.  She can absorb information and spit it back out to a group of learners with ease.  Like learning algebra and explaining it in such a way as to make it seem like 1+1=2 to the student.  She is amazing in this regard.

Me on the other hand will absorb information if it is delivered through song with heavy reverb and a delay pedal.

Then there were the exams.  Professors didn’t joke around when it was time to measure recall and comprehension of theology.  Stress increased as did intake of Twinkies and Mountain Dew.  One day before an exam in Systematic Theology II, Nikki whispered something to herself that I overheard.  The phrase was repeated many times over the course of our seminary experience.  “I have prepared to the best of my ability. This exam has no eternal significance.”

I’m going to let you in on a little secret.  Lean in close.  The full phrase was the following….

“No eternal significance, I don’t care if I fail.                                                                               No eternal significance, I’m not going to hell.”                                                                           (The phrase rhymes if said with a southern accent.  Try it.)

Played a bit for laughs to herself to relieve a bit of stress before an exam, but a portion of it is a phrase for life.  “This has no eternal significance….”

What was she really saying?  “This worry has no eternal significance.”  “This worry………”

Divide the things of life into two piles.

1) Eternal significance         2) No eternal significance.

Pile one should guide you.  Pile two can be thrown into the garbage.

Repeat after me, “This life is but a vapor.  This life is but a vapor.”

We spend most of our days worrying about things that will eventually burn up when the end comes.  Every single day we need to take off the ten-ton backpack loaded with worries that carry no eternal significance.

I am well into my thirties.  I don’t have the life experience to say I am an expert but I have enough miles to be able to see that worry has sidetracked me, slowed me down, and stopped me dead in my tracks.

If I were to be honest I would say I have been hampered most by one recurring worry….  if I take the steps of faith the Lord wants me to take then my world of security I’ve created will be adjusted in a way I don’t particularly like.

Until I daily divide my life into two piles, and take one to the trash, my insides will never be at peace.  (Though it could be the Twinkies….  I think it’s the worry.)

A kid down the block, Bobby, showed me his new Van Halen album.  The album was 1984. Being a pre-teen, and being trained to think all music not by Petra or a woman named Amy or Sandi was straight from Beelzebub, the cover was quite disturbing.  A baby with wings smoking a cig.  Yikes.

Bobby asked, “You like Van Halen?”  I didn’t own any of their vinyl, I didn’t own any music at the time not deemed “christian”, and once paid a dollar to take home a cassette of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” just to look at it and return it to the owner the next day during recess.  So no, at the time I didn’t “like” Van Halen so I answered honestly.  I said, “Yup, love ’em,” and went on my way.  Soon after I saw a video for their song, “Jump”.  You know the one.  David Lee Roth defies the law of …I don’t know….but some sort of law of physics with his high leg kicks.

Fast forward 25 years.  The song was in my head the day we needed to somehow pay for health insurance with possible maternity.  Roth keeps telling me, “Ah, might as well jump.”  I’m going to sound really whiny here…..what if I don’t wanna?

God continually leads all of us to take leaps that are completely contradictory to what well meaning people would choose.  “Get a good job with benefits for once.  You’re moving backwards!”

The battle in my brain between temporal desires and eternal opportunity is constant. The foil of my brain is taut and ready to burst with too many questions for my Savior.  I am the human Jiffy Pop popper.  But when we get to the end of our rope our Lord always gives encouragement.  Every time.  Without fail.  Isn’t He patient?

Yesterday we met with our insurance agent, who is also a caring friend.  He informed us that a bill for several hundred would be due within ten days if we wanted to pursue health insurance with maternity for the just in case baby scenario.  We informed him that we didn’t have the money but to sign us up because God was leading us to do it.  I told him point blank, “Jim Bob (name changed to protect the innocent), God is going to provide it.  Sign us up.”

I said it without bravado.  My voice probably quivered.  I said it because I didn’t know what else to say.  We had prayed about it.  I had peace, my gut had peace.  So we acted. Simple as that.

Today we got home and found two checks in the mail from people who were oblivious to our circumstance.  The money will pay for the bill due in ten days, plus five months worth of health insurance.  Shaking my head in disbelief seems a bit small.  God is our rock.

Tonight we were at a Bible study where three different languages and four cultures were represented.  We had no idea what two of the attendees were praying for during our prayer time.  Couldn’t comprehend a word yet we understood everything that was said.

Crying out to the Lord in any language is understood.  Three of our international brothers and sisters have families in other countries in varying degrees of real danger and we’re worried about cash.

I’m rambling.  We want to encourage you to take the leap.  Whatever it is.

I know some would say we serve a God who is only concerned with us having a smile on our face, but sometimes you gotta roll through some difficulty to experience the peace.  You don’t get there without moving.

This culture, our “Christian” culture included, teaches we are to go after the warm blanket of comfort and security, and if we have anything left over (time, money, etc.) simply slide some God’s way. But God asks us to be the warmth.  We are His vessels. Whatever way He chooses.  We were never meant to simply pursue and live in a bubble of temporal security.  We were created for so much more.  Eternal things.

I don’t know how this life is supposed to work.  I just know the alternative is to attempt to make the best of it on my own by making “logical” and “safe” choices in order to help my temporal self feel secure.  It never seems to work.  My gut never feels right. This is a time in our life where we have the least amount of money coming in and the greatest amount of peace.

Sooo….go ahead and jump?  Just be careful with those high leg kicks.

The day of our wedding was a blur.  I assume most married men and women would say the same.  I remember bits and pieces like fanning through a photo album. You see all the pictures but only a few seem to stick.  One particular memory is the moment when my father in law picked up the microphone to give a toast.  He said many things but what I remember is when he said, “Be ready, it’s gonna be an adventure.” Maybe we have all heard those words a thousand times, but for whatever reason we repeat the line to each other quite a lot.  Maybe some view it as a generic grouping of words, but if either of us says it out loud we know exactly the who, the where, and the when of that sentence.

We are often at the place where we think, “If this adventure is supposed to be some sort of ride I’m ready to exit this seat.”

Over the past few months we have been moving forward with two tasks we know are from the Lord and at the same time have known that the very pursuit meant the death of a dream for us, or at the very least a large alteration.  A dream we both had years before we met, in which we took great risk, invested hours of time and prayer, and moved halfway across the country to pursue.  We will never regret the step and where it led, but one day it was as if the Lord said, “Temporal or Eternal pursuits…. what’s it gonna be?”  (I’m sure He said it with much more eloquence.)

We are thankful for His direction and see the next stop on our missionary journey as rich and meaningful and it has given us a real kick in the pants, but we have come to realize something about ourselves during this time.  Time to fess up.  Ask either one of us and we will tell you the same……..we are a couple of wimps.

Please hear us.  This is not a false humility plea where the orator is hoping someone will stop him mid-sentence and say, “No Mr. Orator, you’re not a wimp. You’re great!  Chin up!  Rainbows and lollipops!”  Nope.  We’re fessing up.  When it comes to this Christian walk Mr. & Mrs. Akridge are wimps.

There is a song by U2 called, “Acrobat”, and it’s one of my favorites.  The song says,

“To take the cup, to fill it up, to drink it slow, I can’t let You go, but I must be an acrobat, to talk like this and act like that.”

The song goes on to speak to the notion that we talk a good game but when trouble comes we get twisted like a pretzel into something we barely recognize.  “…and I must be some sort of acrobat to talk like this and then act like that.”

What has the challenge been?  What confirmed we’re wimps?  Simply….God meeting our needs.  Good grief.  We must be the children of Israel.  Things get tough….we freak out….God provides… we say thanks….things get tough…..we freak out….God provides….we say thanks….things get tough….lather-rinse-repeat.

It’s not a big secret.  We’re not sitting on a pile of money.  When we started moving in faith God didn’t provide a bag of silver coins, He simply provided His promise to provide along the way.  We were down to beans and our bills this week added up to beans and sprouts.  We had the beans, not the sprouts.  Then we learned we didn’t owe car insurance for this month.  Sprouts!  (there’s a “hill of beans” joke in here somewhere….)

We’re day to day my friends.  I’m not talking about the money.  I’m talking about our faith.

God peels back a layer of the onion in our lives and when we think He has arrived at the core He peels off another.

Do we have faith that Jesus is our Savior?  Yup.

Do we believe that He is God, the Creator of heaven and earth?  Yeah, no problem.

Are we prepared to follow Him at the cost of our earthly comforts and feelings of temporal “security”?  Mmm, let me get back to you on that one.  We get shaky.

Some days we are walking boldly in faith and have a peace that passes all understanding, and the other days we are ready to put our master’s degrees to work for us and make some real money and begin storing up our treasures on earth.  But the Lord won’t let us off the hook, and our spirits are thankful even if our flesh is sometimes weak.

If God has called you to take a leap of faith and you have a peace that makes zero sense, the leap is scary and takes no account of earthly security and may look ridiculous to others, Christians included, then you may be on the right track.  God doesn’t deal in safe leaps.

As the years go by and we remember the words “….it’s going to be an adventure” we are learning more and more we know less and less about our Lord and the way He works. Whenever we think we have Him figured we realize even more He is the calculus to our 1+1.

Since the day of our wedding it has been an adventure.  Living in different places, dealing with different experiences, learning more than we ever thought possible, but God continues to provide and fill up our photo album even when we act like the children of Israel.