I was swing dancing with my friends last night (I know, you wish you had friends as cool as mine), and I was practicing an aerial move with my partner.  (Now, the wisdom of trying any sort of lift that you learned about solely through YouTube videos is debatable, but it is good fun anyhow.)  This particular move I was doing requires the girl to jump, land on her knees on the guy’s bent legs, and have him toss her to his other side in a sort of twisting action.  (Basically, as a girl, you jump and hope that your partner doesn’t drop you!)  In previous practice runs of this move, the girls would usually stop and wait for the guys to get into position before they jumped.  The move is not meant to be danced that way, however; the girl is supposed to jump and trust that her guy is going to catch her.

I love to find God in everything, so I am going to bring Him into swing dancing.  Most of us have heard the admonition “Look before you leap.”  When my friends and I were practicing our aerial swing move, the girls did just that – they froze and considered the wisdom of it, waited for their partners to get perfectly positioned, and then, with looks of trepidation on their faces, hesitantly jumped.  Their hesitation hindered the flow of the dance and, when they offered only a half-hearted attempt because of their fear of being dropped, they often did end up falling.  In very human terms, they were afraid if they simply gave a leap of faith, as it were, they wouldn’t be caught. I began to consider that.  How many times do we hear God calling to us, saying, “This is what I want to do. Will you trust Me to do it right, to catch you when you jump?”

The importance of taking those leaps of faith that God calls us to didn’t fully dawn on me until last night as I was dancing.  My partner told me we were going to do the aerial.  I agreed and without a thought went into the steps.  Not pausing to see if he was going to be able to catch me, I jumped.  And our execution was great (at least for total amateurs!); we danced it without a hitch.  It was only then that I realized how absolutely amazing it felt to simply let the dance flow and not worry about whether I was going to be caught.  In everyday life, we tend to get very wrapped up in the “wisdom” of “looking before we leap.”  In some cases, that is very pertinent; but it is not pertinent in a relationship with God.  Once we have counted the cost and decided to follow Him, He asks us for nothing less and nothing more than our complete trust in His ability to lead us well and to catch us when He asks us to jump.  We have been called to something much greater than “looking before we leap”; we have been called to “live by faith and not by sight” (2 Cor. 5:7).  When you first learn to dance, you move slowly and make mistakes.  As you get more and more adept, however, you can dance flawlessly at a very fast pace.  In learning to trust and obey God, it is exactly the same.  (If you haven’t already read it, you should check out my blog “Dancing with God.” – http://www.journey247.com/2012/03/25/dancing-with-god/ )

God asks each one of us to dance with Him, and if we accept, it is vital that we trust Him implicitly.  I have found this to be so true in my own life.  Each day, I am learning how better to dance with my King, how to trust Him and synchronize myself to His movements.  Truly, there are few things more breathtakingly lovely than dancing in the arms of someone you love, and we have some very safe, very loving Arms to dance in.  Dance beautifully, dear friends, and always be open to those leaps of faith, for they make the Dance so much more thrilling!