Standing outside the fire

I grew to love country music as a young child. My love of it grew, not because my parents enjoyed it nor because of any outside influence, but because I liked the videos I saw on CMT(Country Music Television) more than what I saw on MTV. Choosing CMT was the safer (I would get into less trouble) option of the two stations I wasn't supposed to be watching at all. This decision shines light into who I am quite a bit. I push boundaries, but always holding back on an undefined something.

My brother and I were latch key kids – unsupervised children at home in the hours between school letting out and my coming home from work. Really, there are so many things that you may expect to happen when kids are left alone, but I will admit that I was most often a goody-two-shoes and followed most rules. But I liked to push some limits. I would do things that were safe but not what was condoned OK by my parents. For example, watching TV when I supposed to be doing homework and chores. Or I would wander all over my small little town of Marlborough, NH making sure I was home before my parents were so they wouldn't know I left at all.

But country music? That's serious rebellion. Um...not really. OK. I just wasn't always the biggest cartoon fan. We all like what we like.

I would spend hours watching the videos of these country songs. Among the first songs I ever remember falling in love with were Standing Outside the Fire, by Garth Brooks, and Any Man of Mine, by Shania Twain. To this day, I love these two songs, and have them committed to memory. But I'm going to ignore Twain's song. Standing Outside the Fire has a chorus and bridge that says:

Standing outside the fire
Life is not tried it is merely survived
If you're standing outside the fire

There's this love that is burning
Deep in my soul
Constantly yearning to get out of control
Wanting to fly higher and higher
I can't abide standing outside the fire

I would sing this out at the top of my lungs. It was me. I was constantly yearning to push limits. I didn't want to be OK with the mediocre. This is something I knew when I was eleven. How far was I going to be able to go?

But as I said before, I pushed limits but played it safe. I didn't hide things from my parents. I didn't do illegal activities. There were no major daredevil injuries.

Country music was my go-to choice most often, but in the last year or so I've stopped listening to it for one reason or another. But I've started listening again in the last few weeks or so. Going through some old cd's and I found a mix cd that said "Country Mix 1." There was no indication of what songs were on it. I grabbed it one my way out the door, loaded it into the cd player in my car and was hit with the familiar chords of Standing Outside the Fire.

This time it's hit me differently. The song plays on the idea that people don't push themselves, or that we give a hard time those who do. Now, when I hear the song it's not just a desire in my heart to push myself, and to achieve more out of life. But it's a burning desire to see the Kingdom of God move through out. I want it in my life. I want my family to experience it. I want it to pour into my friends and the strangers on the street. I don't want to hold back on that undefined something just to be safe. Jesus' ministry isn't always safe.

"Life is not tried, it is merely survived..." I'm sorry. Come again? Merely survived? No. That's not acceptable to me. I have come to the point that I can't just survive my life. I want to actively participate.

In Exodus, chapter 24, Moses was called up to Mount Sinai.

15 When Moses went up on the mountain, the cloud covered it, 16 and the glory of the LORD settled on Mount Sinai. For six days the cloud covered the mountain, and on the seventh day the LORD called to Moses from within the cloud. 17 To the Israelites the glory of the LORD looked like a consuming fire on top of the mountain. 18 Then Moses entered the cloud as he went on up the mountain. And he stayed on the mountain forty days and forty nights.

While he was there, the Israelites’ stood at the bottom. They proceeded with life as best they could, but they grew anxious. When was he coming back? When were they going to receive from God? Yet, they didn't wait.

Lately I see myself in comparison to the Israelites’. I want to be in that fire. I am walking that way. I see God moving and doing some absolutely incredible things that proves to me that he is the I AM. However, my heart grows anxious.

This morning I finally sat down to read through two devotional series I've been working tackling in the last year. God met me as I read some passages. Mind you, I feel like I've run from Him in the last 3 days out of crankiness and pain and my own weakness. Nevertheless, I opened up to Psalms 84 that reads:

1 How lovely is your dwelling place,
LORD Almighty!
2 My soul yearns, even faints,
for the courts of the LORD;
my heart and my flesh cry out
for the living God 

And then I read Isaiah 40:

28 Do you not know?
Have you not heard?
The LORD is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He will not grow tired or weary,
and his understanding no one can fathom.
29 He gives strength to the weary
and increases the power of the weak.
30 Even youths grow tired and weary,
and young men stumble and fall;
31 but those who hope in the LORD
will renew their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles;
they will run and not grow weary,
they will walk and not be faint.

"There's this love that is burning, deep in my soul" that the Lord has placed there. He's working it out in his unfathomable understanding. Though I want to move forward and move fast, I have to sit and wait.

My plans for Northern Ireland– not going as smoothly as I would hope for. My ear– excruciating pain lately. My time– it seems wasted, a lot. But in my waiting God is there.

Listen to the song. What does it conjure up in your mind? What is the fire that you can't abide standing outside?