G.R.I.T.

Prayer and Fasting

By Jacob:

Fasting is something I never consider easy to do, but when your attitude needs working on it's especially hard to do. Things around here have been a whirlwind- from not knowing what to do next in GRIT to not knowing what is next after GRIT, it's a struggle to focus on the "here and now."

I will say that things are getting better. Even though my attitude is slow to come around (honest confession here) that I am slowly picking up where I left off after last year's GRIT. I'm working on ten thousand things at once when all God is saying to me is, "Can you just sit at my feet for a while? Can you slow down and even stop and have some coffee?"

God is constantly chipping away at me and perfecting every little piece that isn't in alignment with His will. The idea of getting past myself and getting on with more of Jesus. It's so so hard. All that I am I just want to do what He wants. I'd like to just be done with growing... not fasting, exercising and everything else.

But the fact of the matter is that isn't that way. It isn't what we want. It's different. WAYY different. Exercising today wasn't too bad since we're doing fasting only breakfast and lunch on Mondays instead of Sunday nights this year. It has definitely helped my attitude in both exercise and all day prayer. God is asking me not to do everything. Rather, He is asking me to do only what I can do. The phrase in Japanese is "?????." Norman says it at exercise when he is explaining something to Keiko, Mr. Ohashi or one of his 3 children who have exercised with us.

So that's what I did today. I didn't try to do "everything expected of me" through outside sources. I just did what I could do. I did the necessary things and got what I needed to get done. It was a good day and I let go of any hesitation to do only the things I can do. After the discipline of silence, prayer, a trip to several places around town with prayer and praise throughout, it was a satisfying day indeed.

Now Norman and I are about to contact ABWE about my VISA. We'll see how it goes, but the truth of the matter is I still have no clue. We hope they can get me the documents I need by the end of the day so that on Tuesday we can go and send my application off Tuesday afternoon after going by the Kumamoto VISA office. After that, it's truly in God's hands.

For now, all I can do is "trust and obey."

posted by Norman @ 10:37 PM