"Lost and Found" by: Jason Krause

I lose things constantly. My keys, my phone, my make-shift wallet. Make-shift because it is 2 debit cards a drivers license and an insurance card loosely tucked in my front pocket. Wallets are stupid because they make you sit funny in your chair. Remember that episode of Seinfeld with George’s huge wallet? That’s what wallets feel like to me.

As you can see, I also lose my train of thought. I would also lose my head if it weren’t screwed on good enough.

When I lose things though, I don’t look for them that hard. Especially my phone, because I’d be more than happy if I never had a cell phone again. Maybe it’s a guy thing, but if I lose my keys I’ll pretty much just stare at where they should be and hope that they materialize right in front of me. Sometimes they do, sometimes I’ll be staring right at them and I’ll be so glazed over that I won’t realize that they are right there.

The reason why I don’t look hard for things because I know whatever is missing will pop up eventually so I don’t worry about it. Also, I kind of hope that somebody else will find whatever I’m looking for so I don’t have to look as hard. This all changed about two weeks ago when I was packing for my trip to Canada with Kinger and Peacer. I knew all along that I was going to have to look for my passport, but I wasn’t worried because it could only be in one of three places. So after looking in my console, my important documents folder, and my nightstand I couldn’t find it. So I tore up the house. I went all through our office closet, which looked like Monica’s secret room on FRIENDS. *I might watch too much TV.* I didn’t find my passport but I was able to tidy up the closet. I looked everywhere in this house. It was 12:30am, we were scheduled to leave at 6:00am and I still had no passport. We got in the car to take Austin home that night, and just for gits and shiggles I thought I would look through the console one last time. Lo and freaking behold, there it was. Stuck to the back of a CD case. I found it. Although I wanted to say screw it, go to bed, and hopefully the passport fairy would dump one under my pillow that night, I knew I had to keep searching. I was relentless in my pursuit because aside from blowing through the border past the patrol station I wasn’t going anywhere.

I had a word spoken over me years ago that said, “don’t be a toad…be a mountain lion. Find what is rightfully yours and take it with pride.” At first I was like…okay, how about you don’t be a freak and tell me something that makes sense. But I knew that there was some sort of meaning behind this strange word that I had received. So on my way home that day I prayed and sought answers; answers that came surprisingly quickly. I started to think about how the two animals ate. Maybe it was because I was hungry. The toad sits quietly on its lily pad awaiting the tasty fly to come just close enough to where he can blast out his tongue and grab it. If I were going to eat flies, I wouldn’t want to work hard for it either. The lion on the other hand chooses its prey. Will it eat a deer, zebra, gazelle, maybe a human, who knows. But it chooses what it wants and then takes it. The lion pounces upon its prey and has a meal that far surpasses a gross fly. Go out and get it. That is what I was supposed to hear. My life has been a repeat story of incidentals and right place at the right time. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think any of it happened by accident, I think I have been in God’s plan all along, but I have never successfully gone out and taken what I know is rightfully mine. I think that time is approaching. I think that in this next chapter, I’m not going to be able to count on things just happening. I think that I’m going to have to take the words and promises that God has given me and run with them. And to be honest that pretty much scares the crap out of me. I’m a fan of safety, security, and habits. New things aren’t that great. At each restaurant that I go to I have one meal that I get. I don’t need a menu because I know what I want when I get there. It’s kind of convenient actually. Why would I bother taking the risk on something that I might not like, when I can have something that I know I love? With that philosophy in mind, you can only imagine how awesome this fast that we are on is for me. Vegetables, fruit and water. You have to be freaking kidding me. First, vegetables suck. Secondly, fruit is fine but it’s an appetizer on the way to something better. And water, does it really have to taste like air? This hasn’t been fun for me. Not only do I hate almost everything that I am eating, I am also picking apart the technicalities of fasting and trying to justify a way out of it. What good is fasting if the time that I’m supposed to be focused on God, I’m griping about what a crappy time I’m having. This isn’t supposed to be fun I guess.

While I can almost certainly say that I’ll still have my usual at any restaurant that I choose to visit, I have to remove that mindset from the other areas in my life. Food is not that big of a deal. I’m not going to change the meals that know I enjoy in order to prove a point. Mainly because that will only piss me off. But I do have to get ready for the new things in life. I have to get ready to not be willing to sit in a pew every Sunday or Saturday night in order to further my relationship with God and fulfill His call on my life. Yes, you read that correctly, I have to be willing to NOT sit in a pew to further my relationship with God. Our weekly feeding times at “church” is not going to save my life. There’s nothing wrong with fellowship, worship and teaching, but if that is the only thing that you are getting in your Christian diet, then you are going to die. You are malnourished. Going to church one day a week isn’t going to share the truth with your employees as work. Going to church isn’t going to magically make your kids grow up right. Going to church isn’t going to free you from sin. Going to church isn’t going to fulfill the command that we were given to love and serve others. Monday-Friday and all of the times that we aren’t worshipping and learning together is church. We have it so backwards. Church is supposed to be mobile. I can’t expect church to take me to the next level. Why? Because I am the church, and so is every one else that believes Jesus is who He says He is. I can’t tune out all week and think that God is going to show up only on Sunday. He’s around pretty much all the time, even when you don’t want Him to be. This next move isn’t going to be comfortable, but I am secure that it will be safe because God is with me.

We caught a vision this past year. We got our house inside the city limits of Ft. Worth, because we knew that is the area in which we have been called to serve. This is a city of hurting people. I’m ready to somehow show them that there is so much more to life than this. I can’t wait to be real with people. I can’t wait for them to see that Christians aren’t better. I can’t wait for them to see the Jesus that walked the earth, not the one that is so falsely represented by us. It’s not sinners that give Jesus a bad name, its Christians. Sinners belong to the world, Christians belong to Jesus, but we don’t act like it. Christians are so much worse than sinners because at least sinners are honest. Christians do they same thing that sinners do only Christians lie about it. It’s time to be different and make a difference.

This was actually supposed to be more than one journal but it just all came out. That’s me losing my train of thought again.

Today, I was sitting on the couch and Alyse asked me if I was just not eating for the fast. I said at the beginning that I didn’t want to just not eat and call that a fast, I wanted to do it right and really seek after the answers that we need. But I haven’t been. I was just not eating. In a minute of frustration I felt like God said “Don’t look for the answers like you look for your keys. Look for them like you looked for your passport.” I have been. I’ve been staring at one or two places in the Bible everyday hoping that revelation and answers would hit me in the face. But they didn’t. It was only until I heard that and begun writing this that I realize that I’m not always going to have all of the answers. Despite all that has happened we still have a vision planted in our hearts. We have a glimpse of the direction that we need to head in. Maybe I need to stop being focused on trying to get all the answers. If I had all of the answers I wouldn’t need faith. Maybe this is God saying, “Do you trust me? Okay, now go out and get it.”

Okay, I got a revelation. Can I eat now?