One week in.  It’s been quite a ride already as I get used to being back in school and learning the ropes of the classes and figuring out the best way to balance everything to ensure I don’t neglect family and work, but also to maximize the learning experience.  I’ve been down this road before, but it certainly takes getting used to once you’ve been established in routines.  It’s disruptive to the norm.  Many people are scared of disruption and what it does to their organization and routines.  I used to hate disruption.  I was a man of routine and like the way things role.  Now I welcome the disruption.  It gives me opportunity to reassess priorities and take stock of where I am and where I am going.  It gives me an opportunity to talk to God and see what he’s up to in my life.

As I ended the first week of classes yesterday and finalized the first week’s assignments, I found myself almost stressed.  I got a little frustrated with a quiz I working on even though this was the first week, I felt a little bit overwhelmed for a bit.  After the quiz, I picked up one of my books and started reading a bit more to recap some of the week. This is the book, “Competent Christian Counseling” by Dr. Tim Clinton (no relation) and Dr. George Ohlschlager.  A great introductory book into the field of Christian Counseling.  The first page I turned to was amazing as with the frustration that I just felt, these were the first words I read.  “The information is overwhelming; the challenge is daunting. However, when you come to believe that God is able – that He will shape and guide you and will walk with you through your growth and development as a Christian counselor – you will learn to relax.”  I tell you what, seeing those words in front of me right at that point exactly what I needed.    I knew God was telling me to just relax son.  As He has told me before, just trust in Him.  I know He is able.  I know He will guide me and walk with me.  I know it will seem overwhelming at times throughout the process. There’s a great deal involved with becoming a professional counselor.  It’s a process that necessary and if I put my trust in God, He will lead me through it all.

I have thought about those words many times since yesterday.  With all of my schooling, I’ve never thought in that sense.  I’ve never thought to allow God to guide and Father me through the process of where I was going.  I was very self-reliant and self-driven in the goals I was laying out before me.  It’s a very different feeling when I step out of myself, having shed the old man in me and let God take all of that.  Leave my fears and anxieties nailed to the cross of Jesus Christ and let the restoration that Christ has given me shine through knowing that I can go wherever God leads and be willing to take that risk and follow.

I read daily reading bits from Ransomed Heart Ministries that come across tablet through their app.  Their daily excerpts from one of their many books.  In another twist of how God was talking to me yesterday, that days bit came from the book “Fathered by God.”  This book was almost the next step up from Wild at Heart.  A very good read if you haven’t picked it up.  The title was “We Need a Guide.”  As part of our initiation in the masculine journey for men, “we need a process, a journey, an epic story of many experience woven together, building upon one another in a progression. We need initiation. And, we need a guide.”  A guide is exactly what God is on our journey.  This true for the masculine for me and the feminine journey for women.  We all need a guide on our journey and God wants to be that guide if we will let Him.  He is laying out the path for us to initiate us bring us into closer connection with Him.  We have to be willing to let go, not let the things in our small story keep us down.  Understand the larger epic story of God and let Him lead us through it.  Trust in Him.

This is where we need to be on our journey.  Walk with God and let Him come into our lives and lead us.  God is able and our faith Him means that through Him we are able to do whatever He says we can.  We just have to get out of our own way.  Don’t let the world or the enemy tell us we can’t either.  Trust in Him where nothing is impossible.

Commit everything you do to the Lord. Trust Him, and He will help you. – Psalm 37:5