I spent a lovely weekend in the Sussex countryside this weekend and spent a lovely hour and a half in the sun on my own, lazing, sleeping, and reading. I spent a lot of time thinking ahead to the future, and at the plans that God might have in store.

It's so easy to question plans - I'm not big enough, I'm not strong enough, I'm not old enough, I haven't got enough money, they'll never be interested in me, I don't know enough, I've not got enough experience... I think you probably know the score... For every good idea God gives us, we come up with endless excuses for not doing it!

But this weekend, there was a line of a song that really smacked me between the eyes - it's a line from 'Majesty (Here I am)' by Delirious? and it goes a little something like this:

"Your Grace has found me just as I am,
empty handed but alive in your hands."

God's Grace, his passionate, infinite, loving, endlessly patient and forgiving grace has found me just as I am - finds us just as we are... regardless of however small, young, inexperienced, broken, hurt, past-repair we feel - God sees the potential in our fuzziness and can make it work. When you sense that call from God to go, it's because his Grace and timing has sensed that you're ready to take the first perhaps even tiny baby steps towards the next phase of your life.

And the most gracious bit of all? We can go to him empty handed - he knows that he's the provider, and that's exactly what he'll do. What sort of father would send his child out on a road trip with a broken car, no petrol and two flat tyres? He'll give us what we need, but it might just take a lot of faith and trust on our part. But it's when we place helplessly, but trustingly, into his hands that we become truly alive! Our potential can be grasped because we accept we're not doing it in our own strength but in the strength of the creator of the universe!

But we have to move in order to be steered - you can't just sit back and wait to be airlifted from A to B... So, even if it feels a bit scary at the moment, listen to that call if it's God shaped, and push that old proverbial door. It may be that God just wants to get you moving again, and maybe the end game may not be what seems to be in sight at the moment, but the route for your actual goal is on a turning along the way. God's timing is perfect, and his Grace has found you just as you are. Not as you think you should be, or as you were, but as you are right now.

"There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and he who fears is not perfected in love." 1 John 4: 18