Sink or swim you gotta give it a whirlLife's a dance you learn as you go
Sometimes you lead
Sometimes you follow
Don't worry 'bout what you don't know
Life's a dance you learn as you go
The longer I live the more I believe
You do have to give if you want to receive
There's a time to listen, a time to talk
You might have to crawl even after you walk
Had sure things blow up in my face
See the longshot, win the race
Been knocked down by the slammin door
Picked myself up and came back for more
[JOHN MICHAEL MONTGOMERY]
John Michael Montgomery couldn't have said it any better. Life is a dance the only way we learn is by dancing. When you are learning a new line dance we always tell people to get in the middle. That way when you change walls (face a different direction) you will always have someone on either side of you that you can watch and learn from. It may take some time, it may take a couple tries of making a fool out of your self but eventually you'll get the steps down. And even after you get the basic steps there are still times when we forget the moves, there are always more variations that we can learn from each other, but again the only way to learn is being out of the dance floor, learning as you go.
Even in the Christian life there is no cake walk. Making a commitment to follow Christ with everything you have usually means that while you have been given this gift of freedom and grace and unconditional love, life usually gets harder. The enemy knows this as well. He knows that while we have a desire to be in a right relationship with our Father, he knows that we are weak and he knows how to clue into our temptations, struggles and appear as "fun and easy." And unfortunately the only real way of knowing is dancing the dance of life. Trying you hardest and running to the cross in every situation but we are human and we do make mistakes. Falling isn't fun. Falling victim to our sin is not anything that anyone should go through but we all do it. We all give in to the mysteriousness that is the enemy attacking the children of God. He knows how to appear alluring and seductive. He's the mysterious attractive guy leaning on the bar, he's thinking that we can take care of ourselves, he's the girl that is giving you attention when you are feeling lonely, he's the sweet taste of another glass of whiskey, he's in our desire to be noticed by the wrong people, he knows what our struggles are and he knows how to use them to get us to fall. And as fun as it may seem at the time and how sucky it becomes afterwards, sometimes that's how we learn. We have to be broken to be made new. The line in the song that says "You might have to crawl even after you walk" relates to just that. Most people think that the Christian life is a track that looks like this:
Where you are on a high for awhile but then make a bad decision and you feel like crap and then you try to come back up for a while but can't hold on any longer and it's a back and forth of being good and being bad and not realizing they can do anything about it. It also holds more weight because we feel like this shouldn't be happening because they want it to look like things are getting better all the time and we should just be going up. When in reality it looks like this: -->
We are constantly moving and constantly growing in our life and in our faith and walk with the Lord. There are going to be times where we take a step back and go through some really tough stuff and some really bad mistakes and decisions but we will never be back where we started. In everything that God is teaching us he is letting a part of us that shouldn't be a part of us die and left in the valley. As long as we are seeking Him and running back to the cross in our broken states, even in states where all we should do is praise Him we will keep growing. Earlier we talked about how when learning a line dance you need to have people on all sides of you to watch and learn from and ones who are going to help you learn. The same goes for any other situation. The last couple days have been extremely hard and if I didn't have the friends that I did, who I knew I could call and wouldn't judge me and would know what to do to take care of me and be with me for 3 hours that they could have been doing homework or something anything else besides literally waiting for me and letting me spend the night at their house and just the friendship that I have built with these 3 girls is unbelievable. God calls us to live in community and this is why. We need people on all sides of us who we can watch, and who are going to help us get through whatever it is that we are going to get through no matter if you are just feeling bad or just made the biggest mistake of your life. No matter what wall you're on, someone else is going to be there surrounding you and guess what, when you rotate walls, now they are looking at you and count on you just the same. In leading YL that is one of the biggest changes I've seen. It's almost the "dirty little secret of younglife" that we do it because of the lives we know we are impacting but mostly because of how our lives are being impacted thought this process.
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| [KATIE] |
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| [SHANNON] |
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| [ADRIANA] |
You can't worry about the next step in the dance. You can't worry about what you don't know, all we can do is hold tight to Christ, watch out for the enemy and his attacks and learn as we go!
"Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean; wash me and I will be whiter than snow" {psalm 51:7}
"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow for tomorrow will worry about itself. each day has enough trouble of its own." {matthew 6:34}
Til the next new day ♥ ,
