October Joy (Moments In Paradise 1) (26 page)

“Instead He comes in a way Elijah does not expect.  He expected the windstorm and the earthquake and the fire--that’s why he stayed where he was.  But what he misjudged about God was He simply wanted to talk to him.  And not harshly.  How does He come?  Verse 12 says,
And after the fire there was the sound of a gentle whisper.
  And then God repeats His earlier question.”

Andrew’s voice went soft.
“What are you doing here, Elijah?’”

Andrew let silence follow his imitation of God’s voice, and Sarah got chills over it.  She could imagine God saying those words to her right now if she was still in Minneapolis, wondering when, if ever, she should go to California with Andrew.  Her answer would have undoubtedly been, ‘I’m here because it’s safe and rational and going off to California with a guy I just met is ludicrous!  Why couldn’t You have brought me someone from around here?’  But since she was sitting in Andrew’s family room, she felt she could answer that same question in a different way:
I’m here because I’m trusting you, God, and because I love him.

“If I may be so bold,” Andrew continued on the video, “I think it was probably something like how I hear God speaking to me sometimes.  I’m all caught up in my worry and fear, thinking the world is crumbling around me and taking me with it.  God has abandoned me.  He doesn’t care.  I’m on my own.  And then I hear this gentle whisper in my spirit that says, ‘Andy?  What are you doing living as if I don’t see you and don’t care?  Don’t you know Me at all?  Don’t you know how much I love you?  Don’t you believe in My faithfulness and My promises?  You think I’m not here?  Where did you get a crazy idea like that?’

“So, what does all of this have to do with enjoying God?  Well, a couple of things.  You can be like Elijah and serve Him faithfully and not enjoy it.  You can be very dutiful and totally miss the point of why God asks you to serve Him in the first place.  It isn’t because He needs our help.  It isn’t because He couldn’t just as well do it Himself.  He can, but He invites us to join Him in His mighty work.  In John 12 Jesus says,
‘All those who want to be my disciples must come and follow me, because my servants must be where I am.’
Why does He say that?  Because He doesn’t want us doing anything on our own.  If we do that, we totally miss the point!  He wants us to be close to Him.  That is His objective when He calls us as His servants.

“And secondly,” Andrew said, closing his notebook and stepping away from the podium, “Our greatest obstacle to enjoying God is fear.  Elijah was too afraid of his enemies, and too afraid of God.  He wasn’t too afraid to serve Him, but he was too afraid to enjoy Him.  In First John 4:16 it says,
We know how much God loves us, and we have put our trust in him.
 

“Do you know how much God loves you?  Those who know it, trust Him.  Are you trusting Him?  That’s the key to enjoying Him, my friend.  How do I know?  Because I’ve been on both sides of it.  Which side are you on right now?

“If you’re not enjoying Him, my charge to you is this: Embrace His love for you.  Believe it with your entire being.  Believe it enough to trust Him fully and completely with everything right now, because no matter how difficult your circumstances are or how afraid you feel, you are safe.  You are safe in His love.”

***

Andrew came home to have lunch and then went back to the office, so Sarah listened to the second message while he was gone.  It was mostly about different people in the Bible: some who enjoyed God and some who did not.  He also talked about his journey of learning to enjoy God, sharing ways he had and hadn’t done so in the past.

One benefit of listening to the messages she hadn’t anticipated was getting to know Andrew better through them.  He was so candid and just himself, so it was like seeing the same man she had been getting to know, but in a different capacity.  Andrew returned at three, and they had most of the afternoon and evening to themselves because Grace didn’t get home until almost dinnertime, and then both Grace and Tabby spent a couple of hours with James and Ryan after dinner.  Her time with Andrew was the same as it had always been: relaxed and enjoyable.  She talked, he listened, and vice-versa.  It was all very comfortable whether they were teasing or being serious, talking or kissing, or just sitting together quietly.

She’d always had that with Levi too, but not a lot of it.  Sometimes she felt like if she wanted a quiet evening with Levi, or any time with him to herself for more than dinner, she needed to make an appointment.  It seemed ironic to her Levi had often said, ‘I can’t sit still, there’s too much to do, too many lost souls to save, too much...’ the list went on and on, and yet God had taken him from this earth at such a young age.  Apparently God and Levi saw things a bit differently on that subject.

On Wednesday morning, Sarah listened to the next message where Andrew focused on who God is and what He is like.  And again Sarah felt like she knew most of it in her head, but she had never allowed the reality of His love and forgiveness and goodness to reach her heart.  Andrew had said he wouldn’t be here to have lunch with her because he usually fasted and prayed during his Wednesday lunch-hour, so he’d arranged for her to have lunch with Donna instead.  Donna came to the house to pick her up, and the small amount of anxiety she felt beforehand pretty much vanished within the first five minutes.  Donna was very sweet.  She asked her a ton of questions about herself, but she listened well and never made her feel inferior or uncomfortable in any way.

Sarah felt comfortable sharing what God was teaching her through all of this, and Donna said she’d had a similar experience when one of her teenage daughters had gone through a rebellious time.  Her response to God over it sounded a lot like Elijah, and like herself during the last three months.

“I was like, ‘God!  I’ve been so faithful to You.  I’ve prayed for my daughters since they were babies that this exact thing would never happen, but it’s happening!  Where are You?  What’s going on?’  And then God brought me to a point where I heard Him say, ‘You say you’re following Me, Donna, but you’re not.  You’re busy.  You’re distracted.  You’re listening to everyone except Me.  Just come and let Me give you rest.  Rest in Me.  Trust in Me.  Believe I am over this and everything is going to be okay.’”

***

“We’re leaving now, Gracie,” Tabitha said.  “See you at home.”

“Okay.  I shouldn’t be too late.”

“But tell Dad not to wait up?”

She laughed.  “No.  I have to work in the morning.  I won’t be that late.”

Grace watched Tabitha step away with Ryan who had picked them both up on his way to the church tonight.  She’d had a fun time as one of the youth leaders, but she hadn’t had a chance to talk to James, and she was looking forward to a little time with him before this day came to an end.

Helping him with cleaning up and shutting down the building for the night, she couldn’t help but think of when she had done the same thing a week ago and how much had changed between them since--and not only between them.  Her life had been completely turned upside-down this past week, sort of like when her mom died five years ago, only this was a joyful series of events.

Part of her feared in another week’s time everything would be different again.  Sarah could change her mind about marrying Dad and hop on a plane back to Minnesota just as easily as she had come here.  James could decide his fantasy about dating her didn’t match up to reality, and he’d dump her like a hot potato.  She couldn’t really imagine her feelings reversing about him, but a week ago she never imagined falling in love so quickly.

“So, how was it?” James asked, taking her hand as they left the building and walked toward the lone vehicle remaining in the parking lot.

“It was fun,” she said, knowing he was referring to the night with a bunch of rowdy teenagers on a more normal night than last week.  “I really liked the worship.  That was my favorite part.”

“You know what my favorite part was?”

“What?”

He leaned against the passenger-side door of the truck and pulled her close to him.  “Having you here.”

She smiled, and she felt amazed.  What James saw in her, she wasn’t sure, but there was no denying his strong desire to have her in his life.  His long and slow kiss only confirmed that.

“I stopped believing in this five years ago,” she said.

“In what?”

“The fairy-tale.  Boy meets girl.  Falling in love.  Getting married.”

“Why?”

“I grew up hearing about it from my mom and dad.  They lived it, but then they lost it.  I decided I’d rather never have it to begin with.”

“Changing your mind about that?”

“Yes.”

“Are you falling in love with me, Gracie Morgan?”

“Yes.”

“What are you going to do about that?”

“Kick myself for waiting so long to let it happen.”

“I think this is perfect timing,” he said.  “Your family has needed you.  I knew that.”

“Do you need me?” she asked him seriously.  “Or am I going to be a distraction from all the great things you’re doing here with these kids?”

“I need you, Grace.  I love my work and the calling God has given me, but I don’t want to do it alone.  I want a family.  I want to show these kids what a blessed life looks like, not just tell them how they can have it.”

“Why haven’t you been searching for that with someone else?”

“Because I wanted you, and God told me to wait for you.”

She smiled.  “My dad’s right about you.”

“About what?”

“He always says, ‘There’s more to James than you see on the surface.  A lot of people jump to the wrong conclusions about him, and they completely miss his pure and genuine heart.’”

“He said that?”

“He says it a lot.  Usually when you’re facing some kind of opposition, but I think sometimes he said it for me to hear.”

“You have a pure heart too, Gracie.  Sometimes cautious, but always pure.  I’ve always seen that in you.”

There was something she had wanted to ask him for a long time, and she decided to ask him now.  Once when James had been getting some heavy fire from some parents about his earring, she said to her dad, ‘Why doesn’t he just take it out?  Is it really that big of a deal to him?’  And her dad said, ‘Yes, I think it is.’  She’d asked him why, and he said, ‘You’ll have to ask James.’

She told James that, and then she said, “It doesn’t bother me you wear one, but why exactly are you so stubborn about it?  Why did you get it pierced in the first place?”

He smiled and kissed her sweetly.  “I thought you’d never ask.”

“You’ve been waiting for me to ask?”

“Yes.  Or hoping you would.”

“Why?”

“Because it has to do with you.”

“What?” she laughed.  “You had it before you ever knew me.”

“Yes, but I knew of you.”

“What’s that mean?”

“I’ve been wearing it for me, and for my future wife.  And I think that might be you.”

“So it’s like a purity ring?” she asked.  She had been wearing one on her right hand since she was sixteen.  It was a birthday gift from her mom and dad.

He explained further.  “When I went away to college at eighteen, I went to a Christian college, but a lot of the guys I met there weren’t upholding some basic Christian values.  Two of my three roommates weren’t virgins, and one of them was in an active relationship at the time, and he wasn’t the only one on campus.  It shocked me because I’d come from a church where my youth pastor had always stressed the importance of sexual purity, and yet these guys didn’t see it as any big deal.

“By the time I began dating Sydney, I knew I had to get it all straight in my head before I got into a serious relationship with her, so I read several books and talked to some people, and I realized it was a faith-issue.  Either I was going to believe God when He said, ‘Stay away from that.  Wait until marriage,’ or I wasn’t.

“I knew I couldn’t pick and choose what I wanted to believe about God.  I needed to believe and obey everything He said, not just some of it, so I bought Sydney a purity ring and I wore a bracelet, and we talked about it.  She was committed to waiting too, and that worked for us.

But after we went our separate ways, I felt God asking me to do something for any future relationships I had.  Something physical, like when God asked Abraham to be circumcised because He had promised to bless him and Abraham gave God that sign of his belief.

“I thought getting my ear pierced would be a way I could have a physical reminder of my commitment to believe in God’s best way for me and His promise to bless me.  I knew I would see it every time I looked in the mirror, so I did it, and I’ve been wearing one ever since.”

“Why don’t you tell people that?”

“I tell people who ask.”

“But why not everyone?”

“Because it isn’t about them.  It’s about me and God.  It’s not like I think every Christian guy should have one, or I think anyone has to have a reason to wear an earring.  This is just me.  People can either accept me or reject me, and I hope they will look at my heart to make that judgment, but if they choose not to, I’m not going to force it.”

“I’m glad I decided to look closer,” she said.  “You’re a very special person, James.  I’m sorry it took me so long to see that.”

“I’ll let you make it up to me,” he said, opening the door of his truck and kissing her on the cheek.  “You can buy the ice cream tonight.”

Grace had been enjoying every minute she’d spent with James during the last week.  He had a pure heart, and he treated her like she had one too.  She didn’t always feel like she did.  She’d held a lot of resentment in her heart toward God these last five years about losing her mom.  She talked about ‘God working all things together for good,’ but she didn’t always believe it.  She didn’t see how her life could ever be as good as it once was.

But whether she’d believed it or not, God was filling her heart with joy once again, just like He’d always promised.  And somehow James had seen past her doubtful and cautious spirit enough to know she was worth waiting for.  She felt bad she had put him off for so long and made judgments about his appearance, but his unspoken forgiveness made her love him all the more.