He leads me to greener pastures...

My last TeenPact class of the season ended about a week ago. It was hard to see it end. But what was harder was realizing that this could be the end of TeenPact for me for good. Maybe not, but I don't really know at this point. And saying goodbye was very difficult.

The last morning, in spite of the fact that we had all been up very late the night before, I woke up and 7 and couldn't get back to sleep. So I finally got up and decided to do my quiet time before everyone else woke up. I ended up reading Psalm 37, which talks about committing your way to the Lord and He will act, and the righteous will inherit the land.

Skip forward to the following Sunday. During worship, one of the dads (who had no idea what I was going through, by the way) got up and shared something he had been thinking about. He talked about how a good Shepherd never leaves his sheep in the same pasture for too long, because they eat up all the grass. As God's sheep, then, we need to be content in the pasture He has us in, and be ready to follow Him to new pastures when He says it is time. We need to stay close to the Shepherd.

Skip forward to Tuesday. Remember back a couple months ago, when I was struggling with something, and a Sanctus Real song I'd never heard before played on the radio? Well... it happened again. The Redeemer, which I talked about in this post, started playing. The song right after it said, "I'm letting go of the life I'd planned for me and my dreams." I almost laughed... or cried.

Later that night: My debate partner's family keeps a little day-by-day devotional pamphlet at their house. The devotional on that day was about trusting God's plans for you, and the verse it had under it was Psalm 37.

I spent the night at my friends house that night. The next morning we woke up to the radio. You know, it's very rare that you turn on the radio and it actually is starting a song. Usually it starts during a commercial, or in the middle of a song, or even more frustrating, at the end of a song. But this time, it started at the beginning of a song I'd never heard before. The first line? "I will follow You through green pastures..." Shelby just looked at me and smiled. I buried my head in my pillow.

My first reaction was to say that I was never going to turn on the radio again. I kind of looked up at the sky and said, "You must realize how dense I am. I get it now, okay?" Then I wrote the song I posted a couple days ago.

God never leaves us in the same place for very long. Sometimes, I'm afraid to leave a pasture behind that I love. But there's no need to be afraid. There's only two options. Either there is still more for you in that pasture, and He'll leave you there until the work there is done. Or, you've gotten all you can from that pasture, and He's got something even better for you. For me. So, we don't need to be afraid to follow Him out of all we know. He's just leading us to greener pastures.

Praise God, I don't need to be afraid! There are so many things I think I want. But I can rest in the knowledge that God knows what I need. And that, if He is my delight, He will give me the desires of my heart. If we desire His will... we'll always get the desires of our heart! And all those things I want? A very wise young woman once put it this way:

"If you want it, you need to let go of it. If it is meant to be yours, God will give it back to you in the perfect timing. And if He doesn't give it back, it was never meant to be yours in the first place."

So I am still learning to let go. And it's still hard. And sometimes I'm still afraid. But in the end, there's peace. So I'm letting go.

Onto greener pastures,
~Rachel Lynn