Here is my struggle this day, this hour, this minute, this very second:

Being All In.

This weekend was amazing. I was blessed with the opportunity to speak at a weekend youth retreat. What a powerful weekend it turned out to be! Maybe you’ve experienced a moment in time like this before: where God was so tangible, the Holy Spirit moving so powerfully, fellowship so sweet, and the scripture so life-giving. Near the beginning of my first session I offered a challenging question: are you ready to be all in?

All in to the weekend experience. All in with being honest with each other. All in with God.

Here, in the days after, I feel the challenge (continually) laid on my heart: am I ready to be all in?

See, because being All In isn’t just for the big moments in life. Not only for the sacred spaces of life. But being all in really means being ready to live all moments of life with God.

Kara Tippets said in her book, The Hardest Peace:

“Before cancer, I waited on the big moments of life while trying to faithfully live through the small. That living feels foreign to me now. I live in the large, open grace of the small moments and humbly expect the big moments to come… The small moments have become enormous. The fire in the fireplace, the coffee in mugs, the rib tickles, the learning to apply makeup, the singing out loud and off-key—those are the huge moments. Those are the milestones… “

If you are friends with me on facebook, then you likely already know that her book is hitting me hard. But it isn’t just her book. God has been working this thought on me in so many ways.

Am I willing to be all in, no matter what “in” I am facing?

The big struggles and the big joys demand our all, they leave us little choice. Ignorance isn’t a bliss afforded us when struggles come, they meet us smack.in.the.face style and plunge us deep in realities we never choose yet we have no alternative but to be “all in”… The highlights of life have won our hearts thereby getting our all lest we miss even an infinitesimal moment and we jump “all in” with abandon.

But what about all the other times?

Those are the times that require choice… choice to not just bury our head to hide from the undesirable, choice not to just coast through the easy, choice to not turn away from the difficult, choice to not be absent of mind though we are physically present in a moment. Will we choose to be all in?

God calls us to love him with all that we are (heart, soul, mind and strength) and to love one another as we love ourselves. This is being all in. He has ordained our moments; none catch Him by surprise or fail to serve purpose. Galatians 2:20 says that, “It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. So I live in this earthly body by trusting in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

Can I Will I choose to see that in the small like I do in the big? Because when I do… then I come to see a little bit more (minute by minute) how Jesus came that we “may have life, and have it to the full”!

It sure isn’t easy and I’ve failed so many times today already… but it is worth the effort. Will you join me in trying to live life (the big and little, the happy and hard) all in? In what ways has God blessed you when you’ve been all in? How has God shown up in the most “unlikely” of moments?

~Jillene