In Other Words...He Knows What He's Doing

“Acceptance of discipleship is the utter abandonment of the disciple, the surrender of all rights, to the Master. This abandonment, in all cases, will mean pain. Christ listed some of the troubles His followers could expect, so that they would not be taken by surprise. He did not offer immunity. He asked for trust.” ~Elisabeth Elliot

Discipleship is trusting yourself to the one you are following. Saying 'I realize you are the expert in this field and I trust that you know more than I do about what it takes to be who I want to be. I trust that whatever you ask me to do, whatever situation you put me in, whatever you say to me, and whatever tests you see fit to require me to pass, you have my best in mind, you are helping me become who I want to be.'

We forget this so much.

As Christians we may even start the day with prayer time, surrendering our day to His will, asking for Him to be glorified through that day, asking Him to mold us and shape us, etc, etc.

But then every time a little bump comes up in our day, we freak out. How could this happen? Why do I have to put up with this? I’ve got better things to do, I don’t have time to deal with this right now...Anything and everything that changes OUR plans or gets in the way of OUR schedule and the way WE think things need to go for the day is seen as unnecessary. All of a sudden we forget about our wise mentor, the one we are following after, the one we have asked to make us who we really want to be. All of a sudden we have become the experts.

We judge a day based on what has happened according to OUR plan and we never stop to ask if maybe it could have been going according to HIS plan all along. Surely His plan looks like ours right? It just makes logical sense. If it doesn't make sense to us, then it can't be necessary. If the day has not gone according to our plan, we count the day as bad. We start to play the victim even. We are trying hard to make the day ‘good’, to not be stressed, but it’s really not our fault....this happened, and that happened, and he said this and she did that, and everything just isn’t fair, and we’ve just been so busy and blah…blah….blah.

Have we given our lives to Him?

Have we surrendered to following Him?

Then we need to daily (and I’ll admit sometimes its more like hourly or even minutely) remind ourselves that we trust Him.

Do we trust Him?

I have to stop and ask myself, and sometimes it takes a few minutes for me to say 'Yes, yes I do.' And sometimes I realize that I don’t, but I want to, and saying ‘Yes, I trust You’ about ten times really helps it to sink in.

Surrendering isn't a one time deal. It's a daily deal. An hourly deal. A minute-by-minute deal. Cross carrying isn't a one time deal. You pick up that cross and you carry it, step by step by step by step.

Sometimes I have to stop and ask myself, am I really surrendered to following Him right now? And a lot of times I will realize that I’m not. From there I have to ask myself why not, what is it that I am trying to hang on to, what is that I'm afraid to face? He helps you pinpoint those things when you ask, by the way.

It’s OKAY to be honest with Him. It’s okay to say ‘I don’t want to let go of this, I don’t understand this, this wasn’t how I planned my day, or my week, or my life! BUT, I want to trust You, I know You are for me, I know You are keeping my steps.’

It’s OKAY to struggle, it means you're growing. But the struggles should lead us to a deeper commitment to Him, to a re-commitment to following Him. And if we take advantage of the struggles and unplanned bumps that come up as opportunities to re-commit, to deeper-commit, then these things that seem to be slowing us down in our journey actually become things that help push us down the path at a little faster pace then we would have gone otherwise.

In other words, He knows what He's doing.

One Day

Things are going to be better.

No matter how hard it gets, don't stop.

Sometimes I Freak Out

A lot actually.

Then I take a deep breath and remind myself it's all in His hands.

It still hurts, it's still hard, it still takes effort.

But there's peace in the middle of it all.

Do you have peace in the middle of whatever you're going through right now?

Sometimes It Hurts; It's Supposed To

I don't want to be a Christian right now. I don't want to continue investing into people.

People are selfish, apathetic, hurtful.

I care a lot and I don't know why.

I tell myself I'm going to stop. I'm going to 'toughen up and not worry about what the people around me do with their lives.'

I don't want to care, I want to live my own life.

I want to walk away from it all, throw my hands up and say ' You know what God, no one else is trying even half as much, I quit.'

I want the Christian life to not involve community because community is messy. It requires relationships with humans and humans are complicated. It would be so much easier if I could just hang out with God from time to time and do my thing.

"So just stop. Stop caring. Do what makes you happy."

Cause that's in the Bible right.

Oh, and that's what Jesus did. He did what made Him happy and didn't care about the people in His life, especially the ones that were hard to love.

Oh wait a minute. That's me.

I'm hard to love.

I'm selfish.

He cares more than I will ever know, and so many times I just spit in His face by ignoring Him.

But He loves me anyway.

He is always there waiting.

No only waiting, but pursuing.

Not just pursuing, but passionately chasing me down. Just to say He cares.

That's true friendship.

Looking out for my best even when I don't want Him to.

Loving me even when I tell Him I don't want anything to do with Him.

That's what the world needs more of.

In a world of selfish, broken people, that's what will stick out.

That's something not of this world, something that forces people to look to Him.

That's the standard I will keep in sight until the day I finally get there.

When did reflecting Christ become something that is supposed to be easy?

When did cross-bearing become a simple thing?

When did laying down our lives, dying to ourselves...when did this become something that is possible without pain?

Before The Throne

Sometimes I think we forget what we claim to believe.

"Before the throne of God above

I have a strong, a perfect plea:
A great High Priest, whose name is Love,
Who ever lives and pleads for me.

My name is graven on his hands,
My name is written on his heart;
I know that while in heaven he stands
No tongue can bid me thence depart
No tongue can bid me thence depart.

When Satan tempts me to despair,
And tells me of the guilt within,
Upward I look, and see him there
Who made an end of all my sin.
[ Lyrics from: http://www.lyricsmode.com/lyrics/s/shane_and_shane/before_the_throne_of_god_above.html ]
Because a sinless Savior died,
My sinful soul is counted free;
For God, the Just, is satisfied
To look on Him and pardon me
To look on Him and pardon me

Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Praise the One,
Risen Son of God!

Behold him there, the risen Lamb
My perfect, spotless righteousness,
The great unchangeable I am,
The King of glory and of grace!

One in himself, I cannot die
My soul is purchased by his blood
My life is hid with Christ on high,
With Christ, my Savior and my God
With Christ, my Savior and my God"

"When I Am Afraid, I Will Put My Trust In You." Psalm 56:3

The last week and a half have been among the longest. I have had some big decisions to make and I have been really torn in making them. Everything was so nicely packaged and planned out, it felt real nice, real manageable. I have had some uncomfortable, seemingly unnecessary circumstances thrown my way and it has really thrown me off. Little sleep, lots of tears, lots of prayers, lots of thinking. Several things that I have put my trust in have been slowly taken away. Several people that I tend to rely on when things get crazy have been unavailable for various reasons. It's scary when things are going on that are out of your control. You quickly realize how small you are and how large the world really is. You quickly realize how weak you are and how desperately you need God to be strong on your behalf.

I love this quote:

"Before He furnishes the abundant supply, we must first be made conscious of our emptiness. Before he gives strength, we must be made to feel our weakness. Slow, painfully slow, are we to learn this lesson; and slower still to own our nothingness and take the place of helplessness before the Mighty One." ~Arthur W. Pink

What a concept. There is such beauty in the picture of this incredibly powerful, sovereign God breaking me into 1,000 pieces. Beautiful because it is being done out of love. Love for me. This God that should break me into 1,000 pieces and leave me there because of my sin, instead breaks me out of love and for my good, because Christ took that judgemental breaking for me on the cross. God knows that there is one thing that will satisfy my wandering heart, that is Him, His presence, His peace. And because of His overwhelming love, He will stop at nothing to keep me focused on Him. He will take away anything and anyone that stands in between me and Him. And as much as it hurts me, He knows it is the only thing that will make me happy. The crazy thing is that I hurt right now because I am loved.

I am loved. So much so that He wont leave me like I am. He won't stop until I'm conformed to the most beautiful image one can find. Conformed to the image of His son. Focused on and delighting in Him and Him only.

Christlikeness. It's painful.

"You will not stroll into Christlikeness with your hands in your pockets, shoving the door open with a careless shoulder. This is no hobby for one's leisure moments, taken up at intervals when we have nothing much to do, and put down and forgotten when our life grows full and interesting... It takes all one's strength, and all one's heart, and all one's mind, and all one's soul, given freely and recklessly and without restraint." ~Arthur John Gossip

It's easy to pour all one's heart and strength into something when it is fun and exciting. It's really hard to give freely and recklessly when you have nothing left. It's really hard to pour all your heart into something when your heart hurts.

"Take up your cross daily and follow me."

Cross-bearing is not supposed to be easy.

Yet, we are called to pursue His steps freely and recklessly and without restraint. We are called to pour our heart, soul, mind and strength into cross-bearing...into dying...into becoming Christ-like.

"Learn to trust His heart when you cannot trace His hand. He has your best in mind and regardless of how you may feel now, at the end of the day Christ-likeness is what you really want."

I trust His heart more than my heart, more than my feelings, more than my circumstances.

Psalm 56:3-4 "When I am afraid, I will put my trust in you. In God, whose word I praise, in God I trust; I shall not be afraid."

I Want To Know God.

"Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls."
(1 Peter 1:8-9 ESV)

So I've been reading this book by this really smart man named J. I. Packer. This is something I came upon:

"How many of us would say that in the light of the knowledge of God which we have come to enjoy, past disappointments and present heartbreaks, as the world counts heartbreaks, don't matter. For the plain fact is that to most of us they do matter. We live with them as our "cross" (or so we call them). Constantly we find ourselves slipping into bitterness and apathy and gloom as we reflect on them, which we frequently do. The attitude we show to the world is a sort of dried-up stoicism, miles removed from the 'joy unspeakable and full of glory'. 'Poor souls,' our friends say of us, 'how they've suffered.' And that is just what we feel about ourselves!" ~J.I. Packer

I want to know God in this manner, in this way. In a way that is so real, so close, so deep, that it changes EVERYTHING. I know God, don't get me wrong. But I want to know him like this. In a way that produces continual 'joy unspeakable'. I think a lot of us accept the truth of the gospel and maybe we even study a little bit and develop a pretty good foundation of God and who we are in Christ. But we stop there for some reason. And although it seems like we know all this stuff, we've barely scratched the surface of KNOWING our God. We know a lot about Him, but how deeply do we KNOW HIM?

"But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish..." Phillipians 3:7-8

"When Paul says he counts the things he lost rubbish, or dung, he means not merely that he does not think of them as having any value, but also that he does not live with them constantly in his mind: what normal person spends his time nostalgically dreaming of manure? Yet this, in effect, is what many of us do. It shows how little we have in the way of true knowledge of God."

I want to KNOW Him in such a way that all these pointless things fade away. These things- the ones that hurt so much, that are so tiring, that are so hard to understand....they are rubbish, they mean nothing in comparison to KNOWING Him.

I want that. I want it not just in a theological, philosophical, abstract sort of way. I want it in the everyday, in a practical, hands on, lived out sort of way.

Determined.