Two years ago I had one of those moments with God where you know the gravity of the request God is making but you also know the answer needs to be yes. It started out as a normal time of prayer and Bible study but there was a point in time where I felt God was asking me to pray 3 prayers. After hearing these thoughts in my spirit I felt sick. They were to pray for humility, discipline and pruning. While those all sound good and spiritually profitable my mind was already rushing ahead to the kind of lessons that might accompany those prayers.

I'm going to write a blog about each of the three individually over the course of the next few days so in this blog I simply want to encourage you to pray whatever dangerous prayers God puts in your path. The way it has worked out has been even harder than I might have imagined that day. I'm actually glad I didn't know. But at the same time I wouldn't trade even one lesson. I don't know that the season is over or that it ever really ends but I do know this--I've come to know and experience God at a deeper level than I could imagine. It has been more than worth it.

God is greater, closer, wiser, more powerful and more available than I could have imagined. Everything I've lost was a great investment in seeding a stronger faith. I've felt pain turn to resolve. I've learned to wait for incongruities to untangle themselves. I'm not afraid of difficulty and see its value. Like a tasty recipe some things just take time to bake. I've lost in many ways but won in others and I didn't die in the process.

I'll get more specific in the blogs about each of the three but knowing what I know now, if God had said, here's what will happen--I would do it all again to get where I am today. You absolutely can trust God. I've learned that God's goals for my life may be different than my goals. His plan in a particular situation is often more about character development than about "success" (whatever that is). He knows best. He is trustworthy and true. He is faithful. He is loving in ways that amaze me. His grace is sufficient. Life is a great adventure when He is in control and that is the only way I want to live.