I just started a book where the author reminds us that if the most recent testimony of something that Jesus has done in our lives is from, like, a year ago, or worse, a decade ago, that we’re not walking with Him as we should be.

I totally get where he’s coming from. At the same time, I recently wrote a book chronicling faith encounters that have spanned about twenty years of my life. The reason I did that was because God intimately brought to my mind ways in which He had come through for me in big ways and in the details over the course of our entire relationship. And He did that for me when I needed to be reminded that He was for me and He is involved.

But I read that quote, that you should have something newer with Jesus to talk about in your life then, say, the 90s, and I have to pause for a moment.I went to Liberia twelve months ago.Talk about Jesus working in my life.But since then, what can I say?

What my last six months has looked like has been an emotional garage sale.I’ve been finding things in my attic that I didn’t even know were there, and now I’m trying to put them all in piles — keep, toss, sell, give-away.So the Jesus-moving-and-working-in-me stuff most recently has been below the surface.Stories are not coming pouring out of me because it’s all too raw, too personal, too none-of-anybody’s-business, too non-word-like.

And yet…He is doing new things in me.I can feel it.I can’t shout it from the mountaintops and you won’t be able to tell by looking at me at church or if we run into each other at the store, but He is.And I’m asking for new things.I’m asking for fresh encounters.

But in the meantime, while I’m waiting for these mini-revelations, I keep walking. He’s not going to do something new and amazing in my life if I’m not being obedient in all the things I already know I’m supposed to be doing. I have to show Him I’m being responsible with all that He’s already shown me before He’s going to trust me with another new thing. So I keep walking and waiting, in quiet expectation.

See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland. –Isaiah 43:19-