11 months is a short time and a long time.
It’s a short time in the grand scheme of life and eternity. What’s a handful of months compared to forever? Not much!
It’s a long time in the sense of the present moment, living day to day, schedules and routines. 11 months of, essentially, one short-term mission trip after another, without any (unscheduled) breaks or “back to normals”, gets to be REALLY long. And we’re all starting to feel the weight of that reality as we hit month 8 of 11. (Now that said, I still know that I’m still right where I need to be, and I’m very grateful to be here! I still have so many moments of looking around and being astonished that this is the life I get to live right now, by and in the grace of God.)
So in that reality, I’ve been reminded again that though I often reduce my life to what I have to do, the reality of grace is that my life is actually full of what I GET to do.
I GET to worship.
I GET to know and walk in truth.
I GET to trust the Lord with my future and live out of His love in the present.
I GET to be an ambassador for the Kingdom of the one and only, good and gracious King and Savior Jesus.
I GET to walk in faith.
I GET to surrender.
I GET to choose obedience to the Lord.
I GET to deny myself, pick up my cross, and follow Him.
I don’t have to walk in darkness or conform to this world, drowning in the hopelessness of a life without Jesus. No, I have been saved and redeemed, bought by the precious blood of Christ. I am a child of God and a citizen of His Kingdom. Therefore I GET to live the life I do because of His great grace and love toward me.
We who are believers in Christ possess a get-to faith. We live in a get-to reality. Where the world around us is trapped in a have-to cycle of works and striving, trying to find an answer apart from Jesus, we have been set free to live in a get-to abundance. Does it always feel that way? Certainly not. We’re members of an upside-down Kingdom, after all, one that the world doesn’t understand. And the parts of our flesh that are still used to the world will continue to complain when our lives don’t look abundant or free like the world describes. But the truth still remains: in Christ, we are free to live out of get-to faith.
It’s a faith of abiding, not striving.
It’s a faith of opportunity, not obligation.
It’s a faith of expectancy, not expectation.
Which means…
We get to be free from fear, shame, and condemnation.
We get to receive God’s peace.
We get to love and serve others.
We get to work not for approval but out of gratitude.
We get to surrender our freedom to Jesus, rather than being enslaved by the passions of the flesh that the world endorses as freedom.
It’s a paradox – but then, so is the Kingdom of Heaven. And in Christ, we’re citizens of that Kingdom, not the one on earth. We get to live different as citizens of Heaven.
So, yes, 11 months can start to feel like a long time. It’s not very easy. But it is a blessing. And it’s an amazing chance to lean fully into the reality of our get-to faith.
