Mission Impossible Round #2

"Hello again, Agent Katie. So glad you decided to return. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to take on another Discipleship Training School. This time however, we would like you to help lead it."

Katie sets down the message. "Lead a DTS?"

Sometimes I think I might be a little bit crazy. I take on a challenge, I complete it, it's over- "I made it! I'm free!"- and I... come back for more?

Discipleship Training School #2 starts in less than 48 hours. Half of the students arrive tomorrow. I am floored. How is it you can spend months thinking about, talking about, and preparing for something, and yet it somehow still manages to sneak up on you?

Am I ready? Last year's school felt remarkably like parenthood- not that I have any parenthood experience to compare it to. Then being my first time, it surprised me. The instant love I had for the students, the difficulties, even the weight of responsibility surprised me a little. And they say no two DTS's are the same.

How can I feel ready for something that can be so different year-to-year?

In one sense, it's already remarkably easier the second time around. (I'm almost afraid to say that, like I'll jinx myself). We don't have to start from scratch this time. We don't have to renovate and furnish a new living space. We have experience. We have months of prep time instead of weeks.

But experience sobered me. I walked into last year wide-eyed, wild-hearted, and with a think-on-your-feet confidence that entrepreneurs and Tony Stark probably have in common. And they're good attitudes to have, but one DTS later I feel like a grown-up looking back on a myself last year as a child. I feel about 20 years older.

I learned a lot of lessons last year. Some of them I'm still processing though. But none is so practical and so vital now as this one simple lesson- which isn't new, but is desperately real: don't do it on your own strength. Depend on God. Depend on him to love, to give, to speak, to be wise through you. Depend on him to supply the energy for the task before you. Because he alone has enough.

We haven't even officially begun, and I'm tired already. This provides me fantastic clarity that everything will come- has to come- from God.

I probably am a little bit crazy. But its obedient craziness. It's what it feels like when little people do big, God-sized things. And that's what I always asked for. So.

Agent Katie picks up the message and takes a deep breath. "I accept."