Which Way Your Heart Will Go

Today after church, a couple of my friends from GOC (the small group I attend on Thursday nights) asked that I share my journey to faith with them. We had been talking about theirs and it kinda became my turn. I have told it a good number of times since I have been here so it has gotten a little easier, the short version of it has anyway.

I fell away from the church sometime in middle school for a multitude of reasons, but truly the important part is not why I turned away so much as that I came back home. The beauty of it all is that even in my running away I was never lost. And when it was time, God knew, and he drew me back into his fold. Through all of my unfaithfulness to his word and to his people, I always had Christian friends, and they felt it too, when it was the time.

A certain friend of mine in high school started bugging me in my senior year about coming to the youth group that he and a number of my JROTC friends had been attending regularly. When I got a car I finally relented. The family that I found among my peers was incredible, and the youth pastor's sermons were as well. He had this way of speaking, straight from the word and unapologetically relating what it said and what it meant. I was in. I pray that one day I will be able to say definitively that from that point I was in for life (It's probably a little too early to tell at this point).

Two weeks before I left for the Air Force Academy, I asked my youth pastor to be baptized. I don't know what exactly triggered it, but I felt very intensely that I wanted at least to be baptized before leaving. The next weekend we spent a good amount of time talking about what baptism meant to a believer. I know that it wasn't really as long a time as most people undergo, and I will likely attend the classes at some point while I am here in California, but it was what felt right at the time. The following weekend was a pool party at one of the member's houses, and there in the backyard swimming pool, LP said a prayer, we donned the white robes, and I was baptized.

At the academy, I again went through a period of struggling again. I had taken on far too much already, and often did not feel that there was any room left for God. I spent the first semester and a half in tryouts for the cadet honor guard, a place where God most certainly was not. Honor guard took up a tremendous amount of time and an even greater amount of energy, and demanded complete dedication, in essence, honor guard took over the throne room of my heart for that time, and left no place for my Lord, Jesus Christ.

With the end of honor guard I returned regularly to the Saturday night bible study that had become my second home and family during my time as a cadet . . .

Tonight I was reminded of all of this while listening to Mason Jennings. The lyrics aren't explicitly Christian, but there are definitely some Christian overtones - or I am going to say that there are.

In essence, the song is about the chances in life, the fact that everything has lined up so perfectly so that the guy in the song ends up with the perfect girl - God's timing:

Where would I be right now
If all my dreams had come true
Deep down I know somehow
I'd have never seen your face
This world would be a different place
Darling, there's no way to know
Which way your heart will go

Anyway, it really made me think about the way everything has lined up so perfectly to bring me here in this year, in this time, in this way. I am not at a point where I have even an inkling of what it will all mean to me by the end of the year, however I am quite certain that this is God's plan unfolding in front of my eyes.

It makes me think also of some of the hard times that have come to us since we have all been here in Hollywood. Certainly the timing of our sorrows and pain is every bit as much in God's control as our times of joy.

I don't have an outcome to savor like the singer of this song, but I do have an all knowing God in whom I can place all of my trust - I do not need to know the future because He knows it already and has placed his mark upon it.