Your Intended Life

We all grew up with dreams. Many of them get shattered along the way and we grow out of some of them, but there are always a few that stay in the back of our minds, entrenched in our hearts.

For me it's flying. I was in the cadets as a teenager and flew light aircraft - two seaters - many times up to the age of 18. It's over 20 years, but I can't shake the dream of flying again. It drives my wife nuts. She hates that I ride a motorbike where all I have to worry about is left and right. Add up and down into the equation and she has kittens at the thought.

But the dream is still there. The first time I saw the movie "Reach for the Sky" I was hooked. And I was 3 years old. I wanted to watch that movie over and over again - but had to put up with having the music on an old vinyl LP until the BBC saw fit to show it again. A pilot who beat the odds after losing both his legs in an accident but then became a hero in the wartime fighter squadrons. Douglas Bader was my first real hero.

The dream didn't die. I still long to soar on wings over the ground, spitfires, microlights, heck strap a lawnmower to a plank and I'll try it. I just want to get into the air.

I believe God has placed that passion in me, that dream. It's a deliberate placement. I don't know why. When He's given me the time I've not had the money. When the money's been there it's been way tool hectic to find the time. Right now I'm broke, but with all the time in the workd to try. Again.

The blocks keep going up, but I can't shake the dream. I ask God to take it from me and He doesn't. I ask Him to replace it with something else. He only shows me how I can use it to Glorify Him.

So my prayer has changed. I'm asking for funding and time and my wife's agreement to all come together. Nothing short of a work of God will allow that combination to happen. Especially my wife's agreement.

But what is my intended life?

I feel God's pleasure when I write. Like Eric Liddel, another hero of mine from my childhood, I was made to do God's work, but when I write I feel Him dancing over me.

I like to have a candle burning near me when I write. It's gentle flame flickers and reminds me we are temporal, but the darkness itself cannot snuff it out - only I can do that. I find it's healthy (although if they ever let me near the controls of an airplane I doubt a lit candle in the cockpit will be permitted).

Our dreams are our intended life. They are the Life God designed us for in the womb. He had a specific purpose in mind for every conceived soul - and yes, I am pro-life. Abortion should never, ever be used for birth control following consenting intercourse. I'm less sure about rape, but I believe the "morning after pill" and other emergency contraception methods are not abortion. After the quickening of a heartbeat it is a different matter - that soul has a purpose, and we should not be playing God by destroying it.

But back to the point.

We dream. We have desires we daydream about. I never met anyone working in a cubicle - and I've done my share of time in that environment - who dreamed of coming back the following day and doing the same thing again. Most of them dream of returning with gasoline and matches. Or not returning at all.

I have a simple dream right now. To spend time living in England on a narrow-boat, cruising the canals for a year and writing about the experience. Seeing my homeland slide by at no more than 3 miles per hour and being able to tie up and visit quaint little villages and towns I'd never otherwiose consider going to. Seeing them from a boat, and wherever I tie up is home for the night. Or two.

Escape from the rat-race for a year. See if a publisher will go for it "A Christian's Year Afloat in England", speaking in churches and gently wandering on, meandering through the countryside whatever the weather. It's an attractive though to me - less so for my wife, who I think would go nuts but I think would do her good. But is it my intended life?

Probably not. I have too much of a Warrior's heart. I enjoy the fight of Spiritual Warfare too much, seeing battles fought and won on a daily basis - although a bit more in the way of daily victory would be nice. Poor health has dogged us both for most of the last five years, mostly my wife with surgical complications, more recently emotional stressors and for me a badly septic foot which could have cost me one or more toes if left any later, perhaps more, to be treated. It's ont thing to understand the healing power of the atonement of Christ, but manifesting it 100% of the time is proving to be tricky. I rely on God meeting me where I am and providing miracle healing not miracle health at the moment. It's simply where my faith has grown to, no condemnation, simply a statement of where I've reached. I've prayed for others and seen complete healing instantly. I've received other healings instantly from laying on of hands, but I struggle to let go of some things.

We all do.

It prevents us living our intended life. We need to live it deliberately. That means letting go of certain things. I managed to let go of gout when I got fed up of being crippled every few weeks by a demented bone-dwarf trying to mine out of my foot. I got prayer, and the healing was instant. I put my full faith and I got angry with the enemy for daring to afflict me like that. He's never come back in that way.

I got slightly upset with the diabetes progressing in my body and prayed accordingly. It's not got worse since, but it's still there - I'm not angry with it. Although almost losing my toes this last week has made me more upset to be sure. Time will tell.

But what is my intended life? I keep coming back to preaching and flying, an odd combination. But I feel if the Ozzies can have the Flying Doctor, why shouldn't the South Africans have the "Flying Pastor"? And why not me? My wife's a doctor. We could work as a team (if she'd get into a plane with me at the controls). Me teach their spirits and her treat their bodies. I don't see the problem - except the cost of a plane anyway.

Life's brief candle. We can run a station, we can do what we do best. But we have such limited time. I'm over 40. In fact I'm officially closer to 45 than 40 now. She's closer to 40. We have limited time, but then why do we have to let that stop us? Moses was 80 when they left Egypt and he led them for forty years. Joshua and Caleb scouted the land ad 40 and entered it at 80, then Caleb went to claim the mountains where the Giants lived approaching 100 years old. Abraham was 100. Why not.

It's never too late to begin to live your intended life.

Just have the courage to take the first step.