breaking loose

This is a lion. Obviously.

I took this picture 3 years ago while on a safari at Masai Mara, Kenya. "Why the picture of a lion?", you may ask? Here it begins:

Before I started my first year of college back in 2005 (has it really been that far in the past?!?), I will confidently say that I lacked much of any sense of individualism and self-identity at all. As much as I genuinely have learned from my pastor, youth pastor, and other influential characters in my life over the years, I had also been stuck in a large [now very obvious] rut of conformity and low self esteem. Whatever front that I displayed played no reality on what I was truly like. To concede a little bit, however, I was growing in my faith in God, and I built some (I would like to think) very solid friendships with some great guys throughout those years. However this all led up to one Sunday morning at my church in Ohio...

The graduating seniors of the year came up to the front to be prayed for. At the end of the prayers a good friend of my parents whom I had grown to know a little bit approached me and essentially told me this:

"Seth, I have a word for you (to this day, I firmly believe it was a prophecy...those still do happen today, ya know:]): Seth, I saw you as a lion.... you were this lion, and you were in a cage, but you were [i would like to believe ferociously] breaking out of that cage."

This I have regarded as something that the Lord wanted me to know...That I have the potential to escape triumphantly from this haze of mediocrity that my life held me in. He wants me to know that I am much more than how I view myself...and that I will break loose from the boundaries of this limited, somehow maybe even sedated life and FAITH that I've been living. that is what I now seek

Some incredible things have happened to me over the past few hours. I had no money to buy christmas presents for my parents with, I had no gas money to get home, I had no money for groceries for my apartment, none for my car insurance payments...I somehow (and legitimately) I owe National City bank $230. That is apart from school loans and all other financial junk (i hate money). This morning at 10:45 I got an email from the school saying that I've been refunded $250. today. 250 dollars. I talked to a friend this morning...I was freaking out and soo excited. He said, "wow dude, that's your debt plus 20 bucks change!"

GO ahead and tell me that God isn't real and I'll tell you that he shows up all of the time like this
GO ahead and tell me that there is not power in Jesus' name and I'll tell you that I was healed of a very rare skin disease that was supposed to be with me for my entire life.
GO ahead and tell me that God doesn't direct our paths and I'll tell you that in my recent search for more intimacy with the Lord, he cleared my debt and is practically yelling at me: "Keep pushing Seth, you're almost there. There is so much more of me than what you have. We can be so much closer than we already are. Just keep pushing and seeking."

that's a rap...
sfk