My Journey: Painting the Canvas of my Life

     My friend Whitney told me a few weeks ago that she had a vision of the two of us one morning during worship (Whit and I pictured right). In this vision, we were both seated on stools each of us in front of a canvas. She was sitting on her stool painting this canvas; it was a canvas of her life. She would be sitting there and get inspired and start painting like crazy getting more and more excited about what was developing. As she filled up the canvas, she would throw it up to the Lord and He would tweak and change it how He wanted and then send it back to her. She would see that He had made it even more beautiful and would be filled with unspeakable joy, laughing and rejoicing in all that He wants to do in her dreams and visions. This is how she operates. She is a visionary, but has learned to throw these visions to the Lord and allow Him to remake them in the way that He wants.

    Then Whit looks over and sees me just sitting on my stool. I am sitting back just resting in the Lord’s presence. I wasn’t painting anything. The Lord Himself was filling my canvas in the way that He wanted. I was just watching Him paint the canvas of my life and exclaiming, “Yes. Yes! I love it!!”
   I realized that during this past year I have become this person. I know that I shared some of this in a previous blog post (read My Journey: Abundance in the Hard Places), but this past year has brought me to such a place of dependence upon and trust in the Lord. I have encountered such deep wells of His presence and peace. I know that I have come to a place of living in complete surrender ready to allow the Lord to do whatever He would like in my life.  

    I have seen the truth of Whitney’s vision so much as He has been putting together my long-term dreams. I find myself constantly surprised at what He is doing and the way that He is just dropping things in my lap. He is painting every detail of this dream as I just sit back trusting Him and feeling my heart fill with joy and exclaim, “Yes. I love it!”
    The Lord is giving me vision for this dream as well as connecting me with people who can help make it a reality.
  
   The Lord has been connecting me with so many people who can give me wisdom and help at different steps of the process. He is sending people who want to partner with me. I have been praying into raising up people to take on some of my current tasks. As I begin to see someone who could be raised up for a specific task and decide to ask them to come and help me as I begin to raise them up into leadership, they come to me first and tell me that they want to help. The Lord is painting. He is ordering my steps and filling in each beautiful detail. All I can do is exclaim, “Yes! I love it!!” Thank You Father for your beautiful plan and Your faithfulness in bringing it to pass.