Some Thoughts About Beauty and Suffering in the World and Our Response

That there is beauty in this world demonstrates that there is something more than the ugliness and pain of this life. It is wrong to live an ugly, austere, depressed, ascetic life as a Chritian because we feel guilty over the suffering of others. The hope in our life gives hope to others. We should use our hope as a means of ministering to those who have none–always ready to give an answer for the hope that is in us–a hope we can only have from God.

We should embrace what is beautiful, true and good. Our lives should be characterized by these things, along with love. We should not, however, use these things to escape from the reality of a hurting world. We have hope of a better future and so we can look suffering and pain in the face without it shattering our faith–whether the suffering is ours or another’s–and we can reach out to others without despising them for their “lack” of beauty.

We know He makes all things beautiful in His time. We look forward to no more tears, pain and suffering. We have this as a sure hope, an anchor of our souls, and so we don’t have to grasp after it here and pretend nothing is amiss in our lives or the world. We can enjoy the beauty in this world and live with joy and hope, while at the same time accept that this world is also full of evil and suffering.

Because we are not escaping into beauty we can actively look for people who are hurting and extend hope and practical help to them. We can do this without feeling like a fake, because though the suffering is real, so is beauty and goodness and it is the goodness that will go on into eternity whereas the suffering will come to an end. Praise to the Lord.

Holding on with Confidence

During one of my baby’s feeding times in the early morning I was praying for a friend going through cancer treatment. Sometime in my prayer I said to the Lord something along the lines of “Lord, I believe, help my unbelief.” I have been through much with the Lord and I shouldn’t struggle with my faith because He has proven His faithfulness time and again, but the reality is that I am tempted to doubt just as much as anyone. When I woke up later in the morning the Lord reminded me of these passages in Hebrews and they encouraged me. The people Hebrews was written to had also suffered, and had faithfully endured, but at the time the letter was written they were being tempted to shrink back. So I am not alone in this temptation to shrink back, but I do not want to give in and I do not have to. The Lord is faithful! Let us keep pressing on in the Lord!

“Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that He opened for us through the curtain, that is through His flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful. And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near. . . .

Therefore do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward. For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God you may receive what is promised. For,

Yet a little while, and the coming one will come and will not delay, but My righteous one shall live by faith, and if he shrinks back, My soul has no pleasure in him.

But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who have faith and preserve their souls.

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. For by it the people of old received their commendation.

By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible. . . .And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who diligently seek Him.”
~Hebrews 10:19-25, 35-11:3, 6~

“But you, beloved, build yourselves up in your most holy faith; pray in the Holy Spirit; keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life. . . .Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of His glory with great joy, to the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time an dnow and forever. Amen.”

~Jude 20-21, 24-25~

Heart Change

It has become evident to me over the years that when my health is low I am more likely to give in to temptation to sin–especially in how I treat my children. One could say the enemy tempts more strongly when he sees we are weakened, and there is truth to that. But I think the real problem is that we rely on our own strength to “be good” more than we realize. When the thin veneer of our strength is stripped away we are left with what has always been barely hidden in our hearts–sinful attitudes. The Lord allows times of weakness so that we can see how desperately we need Him, and, when He also exposes our sin during these times, He gives us the opportunity to repent and seek Him for genuine heart change–not just “cover up”.

Needless to say, I will not be winning the “Mother of the Year” award. But I am thankful for the mercy of the Lord, His rebuke and correction, His cleansing and His changing work in my heart. And I am thankful for the forgiveness of my children. The Lord is good to give us times of weakness. His grace is sufficient and our weakness is not an excuse for sin.

Blessings!

Cassie

Listening to God

My son and I were outside working in the garden. He was a little ways off. I called to him but he didn’t hear me, answer or come. I called again and still no response. A third time I said his name, much louder than before, and finally he heard me! He had been focused on something else and had not even heard the sound of my voice.

Sometimes it seems like God is not near or is not speaking to us. Could it be that we are so focused on the day to day tasks and distractions that we are not listening for His voice, while all the while He is calling our name and inviting us to draw near to Him? That seemed to be what He was saying to me through the experience with my son. I needed the reminder.

God doesn’t have favorites. He rewards those who diligently seek Him. Always when I draw near to God through His word and prayer He draws near to me and the fellowship is sweet. When I set aside time to sit with Him it seems that my ears stay tuned in to Him all day and the conversation carries into whatever tasks I need to accomplish. Why then do I sometimes go so long without listening to His voice?

I want to be like Samuel who said, “Speak Lord, Your servant is listening.”

Oasis in the Desert

Only You can satisfy my soul
Only You can satisfy my soul
So I draw near to You

You are the well that never runs dry
Living Water flow

All I have to do is ask
And seek You with my heart
All I have to do is draw near to You
And drink, deep

I will search until I find You
No more chasing mirages in the sand
You are like a stream in the desert
Life coming forth in a barren land

You are the Rock that gives water
Life to those who know the secret of this place
You are Treasure waiting to be found
Buried beneath the surface

Green trees grow here
Planted in Your word
Thank you for the green trees that drew me here
I will stay—make me a green tree too

Across the desert people wander
How can I keep this water to myself
So many dying of thirst
Chasing empty promises

Picture an oasis in the desert
What draws you there?
How do you know it is not like the mirages you have followed before?
It is the signs of life—green everywhere

What do people need?
Do they need us to be like mirages to draw them to Christ?
Or do they need us to be green trees
Planted deep in the Lord?

They already know the mirages are empty
Who are we fooling by disguising Christ as those?
We are only making fools of ourselves
And leading them nowhere

Do you know the secret of the wilderness?
Have you met the Savior there?
He is calling all His people
Come drink, again and again
Turn away from distraction

Plant your life in the living water of the Word
Let the Spirit teach You
If you stay connected to the Water
He can send you anywhere
To be like a green tree planted in the desert
Pointing to the Source of life—Jesus Christ

Let all who are thirsty, come
The water is here
Let all who are empty, come
You will be filled

Jesus is the Living Water
The Bread of Life
Nothing satisfies like Him
Come to Jesus

Come for the first time
Or come again
The water is deep
The water is wide
There is no end

Spiritual Gifts in the Church

A helpful article on the use of spiritual gifts from Bernard Hull.

The Gospel

Disciple-Making International.

 

Go to the link above for a great message on the gospel.

The Need for the Spirit in the Work of the Church

Disciple-Making International.

Thoughts on suffering

God is not an idealist–instead He is patiently working all things for His glory and for our good–He is looking towards the final product.  We get in His way when we idolize the perfect situation NOW, and He gradually pries our fingers off our grasp of our ideals.

God does not waste any suffering.  He uses it for our good now and He is storing up treasures and glory for us in eternity.

God is good.

God is loving.

God is faithful to discipline His children and make them more like Jesus.  Sometimes He uses suffering to do that and we can look back and tell Him ‘thank you.’

God is always with us.  He never leaves us or forsakes us, and He is especially close to those who are suffering.

God does not give us more than we can bear, when we are relying on Him.

God does what will bring the most glory to Him, but He always has our best in mind as well.  What is best for us is usually not what we think it is.

Suffering is an opportunity to know God deeply.

Bitterness is Like a Mulberry Tree

I have a child who frequently feels guilty about their sin after they have committed it and is very good about asking for forgiveness, but so quickly does the same kind of sin again and again and again and so comes to say they are sorry again and again and again.  Sometimes by the end of the day I blurt out, “I forgive you but it sure would be great if you could be sorry about your sin before you do it and just obey!”  It is a valid point, I think.  I don’t want this child to think they can do whatever they want, knowing they can apologize later.  On the other hand, I am called to forgive, over and over and over again.

Today we were reading in Luke 17:1-10.  Verses 3-5 say, “Take heed to yourselves.  If your brother sins against you, rebuke him; and if he repents, forgive him.  And if he sins against you seven times in a day, and seven times in a day returns to you saying, ‘I repent,’ you shall forgive him.”  And the apostles said to the Lord, ‘Increase our faith.'”  They thought seven times was hard!  They must have been shocked when he told them to forgive 70 times 7 (Matthew 18:21-35).  ‘Increase our faith!”

As we read on my heart took in the meaning of the passage and I started praising the Lord.  Verse 6 says, “If you have faith as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be pulled up by the roots and be planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.    Mulberry trees grow rapidly and can reach 70-80 feet tall.   Their root systems spread out very far and can be invasive.  They produce a very messy fruit (although they do taste quite good).  This is what bitterness and unforgiveness are like in my heart.  But Jesus says if I only have the faith of a tiny mustard seed I can send that bitterness into the sea.  I thought of the verses that say love covers a multitude of sins.  With faith, I can command bitterness to be planted in a sea of love and that huge tree will be covered over.

Jesus goes on to tell a story, ” And which of you, having a servant plowing or tending sheep, will say to him when he has come in from the field, ‘Come at once and sit down to eat’?  But will he not rather say to him, ‘Prepare something for my supper, and gird yourself and serve me till I have eaten and drunk, and afterward you will eat and drink’?  Does he thank that servant because he did the things that were commanded him?  I think not.  So likewise you, when you have done all those things which you are commanded, say, ‘We are unprofitable servants.  We have done what was our duty to do'” Luke 17:7-10.  Clearly, if we refuse to forgive we are considering ourselves to be better than our master, our Lord Jesus Christ who died for us, and chooses to forgive our sins.  And we are also viewing the other person as being a worse sinner than we are even though the opposite is true–we ought to be the worst sinner we know, in our own eyes.  See also Matthew 18:21-35.

Dear Child of mine–I will forgive you over and over and over again. . .will you forgive me over and over and over again?  And Father, thank you for your unending mercy and your love which covers the multitude of my sins–through the blood of your Son, Jesus Christ.

“Pursue peace with all men, and holiness, without which no one will see the Lord: looking diligently lest anyone fall short of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up cause trouble, and by this may become defiled” Hebrews 12:14-15.

 

 

To Be More Present

One of my prayers lately has been that the Lord will help me to be more “present” to my children.  We homeschool and spend most of our waking hours together, but though we are together most of the time I am not always “present”.  Humanly speaking, I cannot give them my full attention 24/7–my strength gives out  quickly.  When I get tired I find it difficult even to answer simple questions.  There are times though when I am simply distracted from them by unimportant things.

Since I started praying this I have noticed a difference in my ability to be more focused on helping them, talking with them, teaching them, listening to them, entering in to their fun. . .even when I am fighting through another day of fatigue.

The Lord reminded me that He “is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. . . .The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge” Psalm 46:1, 7.  He is not just in the same room with us, doing His own thing.  He is attentive to our every cry, every need, every thought, every Hallelujah and I love you, everything about us.  He loves us each as if we were the only person on earth and yet loves us all the same.  My Father has time for me and I am not a hindrance to Him.

I want to be like Him with my children, and so I will continue to pray and act as He gives me the strength–but I know I will not ever be as good at it as He is.  It makes me realize just how amazing and wonderful it is that God is an ever present  help in trouble; our God with us; the One who promises to never leave us or forsake us.

 

If You Love Me

I’ve been pondering over 1 Corinthians 8:3: “But if anyone loves God, he is known by God.”  It is an easily overlooked verse in the context of conscience regarding whether or not to eat meat offered to idols (a common problem in those days since most everyone had idol worshiping friends).  Some were using their knowledge that idols are nothing and eating this meat without thinking about others in their church family who did not have faith to do so.  Their knowledge had puffed them up.  Paul, for the sake of love, declared he would rather not eat the meat, even though he knew there was but ONE TRUE GOD, than offend a brother in Christ.  Knowledge puffs up, but love edifies, says Paul.  He returns to this thought in chapter 13.  The Corinthians were putting knowledge and spiritual gifts above love, but Paul says that these things are those that will remain: faith, hope and love; and the greatest is love.

It isn’t that knowledge is unimportant.  In 2 Peter 1:3-11 Peter wrote:

3 His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us to [3] his own glory and excellence, [4] 4 by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire. 5 For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, [5] and virtue with knowledge, 6 and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, 7 and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. 8 For if these qualities [6] are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9 For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins. 10 Therefore, brothers, [7] be all the more diligent to make your calling and election sure, for if you practice these qualities you will never fall. 11 For in this way there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Notice that all of the qualities we are to add to our faith, including knowledge, lead to love.  And knowledge is not only facts, doctrine and Bible knowledge, though it includes that.  In this passage and several others knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself is stressed.  Paul frequently prays for believers to ‘grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ’.

To grow in knowledge of a person, or a subject or a skill involves time spent with that person, or reading about the subject, or practicing the skill.  Generally, the more time we spend with someone the more we grow to love them.  This is how it is with Jesus.  We have to spend time with Him in His word and in prayer, enjoying the fellowship of His Spirit, so that we will really love Him with our whole being.  Knowledge leads to love and love leads to obedience from the heart.

Jesus said, ‘If you love Me, you will keep my commandments.”  That is, the law of love written on our hearts by the Spirit.  This isn’t a list of things to follow.  You have probably noticed that the commands given in the New Testament letters are commands having to do with love.  We can DO all the right things, but if we are not motivated by love for God and people all our DOING is useless.  We can KNOW all things, but if our knowing is not grounded in love we will only be arrogant.

I’ve always read this statement of Jesus’ and taken it as a command, but as I was meditating on it yesterday the Lord spoke to my heart these thoughts:

“If you love Me you WILL keep My commandments, for they will be a delight to you.  My commandments are not burdensome; my yoke is easy and my burden is light.  If you love Me, I will know you and I will lead you in the way you should go.  I will hold you by My mighty right hand.  If you love Me you will come to sit at my feet and learn of Me and I will give you My own strength to follow Me.  My word and My ways you will love–My people You will love–The lost and the poor you will love–If you love ME.”

The Lord knows those who love, fear and honor Him, see Malachi 3:16-18.  When trying to figure out what to do in a situation we can go to our Savior and ask Him for wisdom.  We have our own ‘meat offered to idols’ to deal with and questions about each step of our walk with Him.  He will lead us and His leading will fulfill the law of love.  We each must do this for ourselves instead of patterning ourselves after other people.  Others may give a good example, but we should seek His counsel before we follow it.  It may not be what He wants us to do.

Our friend Bernard just wrote this blog post.  I commend it to you.  He carries this theme out further than I have here.

The Power of the Blood of Christ to Sanctify

I have been reading Andrew Murray’s book the Practice of God’s Presence. The first section of the book is on the Power of the Blood of Jesus.   He goes through redemption, reconciliation, cleansing, and sanctification by the blood of Jesus.
I have been in Chapter 5 on sanctification for a while now.   Having read the chapter, I was going back through the scriptures in the chapter and praying. Murray really focuses in on the idea that sanctification is about God imparting Himself to us.

Amen, may it be so, more and more, as He has promised.

At the end of the chapter he summarizes the work of sanctification in this way:

“Through the Holy Spirit, the soul’s intimacy is in the living experience of God’s abiding nearness, accompanied by the awakening of the tenderest carefulness against sin, guarded by caution and the fear of God.

But to live in watchfulness against sin does not satisfy the soul. The temple must not only be cleansed, but it must be filled with God’s glory. All the virtues of divine holiness, as manifested in the Lord Jesus, are to be sought and found in fellowship with God. Sanctification means union with God, fellowship in His will, sharing His life, conformity to His image.

…”Jesus also, that He might sanctify the people with His own blood, suffered outside the gate. Therefore let us go forth to Him, outside the camp, bearing His reproach” (Heb 13:12-13) Yes, it is He who sanctifies His people. “Let us go forth to Him.” Let us trust Him to make known to us the power of the blood. Let us yield ourselves wholly to its blessed power. This blood, through which He sanctified Himself, has entered heaven to open it for us. It can make our hearts also a throne of God, so that the grace and glory of God may dwell in us….He who is willing to lose and say farewell to everything, in order that Jesus may sanctify him, will not fail to obtain the blessing. He who is willing at any cost to experience the full power of the precious blood can confidently know that he will be sanctified by Jesus Himself, through that blood.

“May the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely” (I Thess. 5:23). Amen.”
[Emphasis is mine]

God has been doing an amazing work in giving my heart a “tenderest carefulness against sin”.   But He is also teaching me that life is found in the abundance of His presence in my life.
I highly recommend the book.   When you know the history of Andrew Murray’s life his words take on even more weight.   I also highly recommend this book on his life, Andrew Murray(Men of Faith) by Dr. William Linder Jr.

– Rob

Lesson of a Butterfly

Dragonflies and butterflies filled the air last week when we drove to Christopher’s violin lesson. I ducked to avoid them but despite my efforts we hit several with our car. A Gulf Fritillary butterfly became caught in our windshield wiper but was alive.

Once we slowed our pace in town the butterfly fought to free itself, twisting and pulling with all its might. I watched in horror as bits of wing tore off and blew away in the breeze. I wanted to shout, “Stop! Wait until we get to where we are going and I will let you go. We are almost there and then you can be free!”

And then I realized that I am just like that butterfly. When circumstances become difficult I fight to free myself of them in any way I can, sometimes in reality and other times in my imagination. I view life through my limited understanding and react against unpleasant things in my own strength, hurting myself and others in the process. Just like the butterfly, I want to spend life drinking nectar from colorful flowers. Trials seem to stand in my way.

We arrived at the music shop and I let the butterfly go. It had enough wing left to fly away, but if it had waited patiently it would have remained whole. Freedom would have been sweeter.

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways, acknowledge Him and He will direct your paths” Proverbs 3:5-6.

“So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal” 2 Corinthians 4:16-18.

The Lord sees the unseen. We only see the temporal. He is faithful and we can trust Him to work what is right in our lives for His glory and our good. We mentally assent to this, but our actions betray the true condition of our hearts. As we wrestle against difficulties our way, our Father reassures us that if we will rest in Him He will deliver us at the right time.

When I had the last miscarriage, I cried out to God and told Him how tempted I was to permanently prevent future miscarriages. That kind of drastic measure is not something I believe in doing but after 14 miscarriages I was feeling desperate. Others I know believe differently than I about having surgery to prevent pregnancy, but I never could have done it in faith that it was right. For me, it would have been sin, but I was close to ignoring my convictions. I begged the Lord to heal me and give me a baby or to keep me trusting Him through the heartache. I never allowed having another baby to become my focus because the Lord had become my delight–when you suffer and continually find the Lord to be faithful you cannot do anything but delight in the Him (Psalm 73:23-26)–but losing children over and over and over again is very painful.

A year went by and my health continued to decline. This spring I almost died and it was then the Lord healed me completely and immediately blessed us with a healthy pregnancy. Our baby is due in January and is doing very well. The word amazing keeps coming to my lips. Only God could do this. When I think of how I almost gave up, I am humbled. He knew it would be “just a little further” to the place He would set me free. And because He kept me trusting when I couldn’t trust anymore, I am whole and freedom is sweet.

A Call to Go

Don’t wait for God to call you to be a ‘sent one’. Ask the Lord to send you and He will give you a call to go.

Too many of us tell ourselves that since we don’t feel a call to go here or there to share the gospel that God must not want us to go anywhere. We get comfortable with our lives and think we are in God’s will. “My mission field is right here’ is something we frequently tell ourselves. It might be, but do we really know that for sure, and if so, are we doing anything about it?

We must not try to send ourselves anywhere, not even to the next door neighbor. Unless God fills, sends and directs us we will be trying to serve God with the arm of our flesh–our flesh is supposed to be dead (in Christ) and God will not use it. There will be far too many people on judgment day who say ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and cast out demons in Your name, and do many mighty works in Your name?” And the Lord will say to them, “I never knew You; depart from Me, you workers of lawlessness.” A true believer knows how weak and unable they are to do anything for God and when they see Him face to face they will worship Him and praise Him for all that He has done. We cannot do anything apart from Him and anything we do in our flesh will burn up–even if we are saved.

Most likely though, we are not false prophets doing works for our own glory and we understand that we are weak and can’t do anything–so we are quite content when God doesn’t zap us with lightening and send us to Africa. We’re afraid to talk to our neighbor, let alone to someone in a different culture.

The problem with this is that God is calling all of us to go to someone, somewhere. It might be next door or to another city, state, or country, or all of those at different times, but He is calling.

In order to hear the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?” we have to be close enough to hear Him. Isaiah sought the Lord with all his heart and the Lord revealed His glory and holiness to Him. When he saw the vision of the Lord he cried out, “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!” Then one of the seraphim took a burning coal from the altar and touched Isaiah’s lips with it and said, “Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for” (this was because ‘out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks’). Isaiah came to know and see God accurately and saw his own sinfulness and inadequacy and humbled himself before the Lord. The Lord cleansed him and allowed him to remain in His presence. Because of this, Isaiah was able to overhear the Lord’s call for someone to go and he responded, “Here am I! Send me.” God said, “Go” and then gave him a specific message for a specific people (See Isaiah 6).

God calls humble, broken people who abide in His presence to go to hurting, dying people. If you are not sensing God’s heart for lost people then it could indicate you are not abiding in Christ. We all know that the Bible tells us to share the gospel, but that is head knowledge easily ignored in the busyness of daily life. Does the plight of lost people dying and going to hell grip us as it does the Lord? If not, we are not abiding as we should.

God reveals His heart to those who dwell in His presence, and in such a way that we cannot ignore it. He is gracious with us though. His timing is not instant and He works in our lives skillfully to prepare us for what He wants to do through us. Some start abiding and they catch a vision of what God wants to do through them and then they run ahead of God and try to do it on their own. But the Lord gives us glimpses of the vision along the way so we can watch, pray and be sensitive to His leading in our lives as we continue to abide in Him and obey, day by day, step by step.

His school of ministry is perfect, and He doesn’t send us out too soon or too late. The core subjects are: Knowing God, Knowing God, and Knowing God by spending time with Him in prayer and Bible study and meditation and ongoing conversation with Him; Dying to self in every area of life, Dying some more, Dying again; Complete surrender to the Lord’s will; Holiness; God’s Power at work in our weakness; and then whatever practical skills and experience we need for the type of ministry He calls us to. This process is not to be rushed, but it does need to begin. Come to God and ask Him to teach you how to abide in Him (John 14-16 is a good place to start to learn). Set aside time each day to seek Him in the word and through prayer. Obey everything He tells you, (always test everything with Scripture to be sure it is God’s voice you are hearing) even the little things that don’t seem that important. Be willing for God to root out sin and change your life in drastic but glorious ways. Allow Him the freedom to do whatever He wants with your life.

Don’t wait for God to call you. If you are resistant to offering yourself completely to God, ask Him to make you willing. And when He gives you the ability to cry out, “Here am I, send me” then pray it with all your heart. He will answer us and make us so willing that we actually beg Him to send us out. To those who abide in Him He promises, “You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in My name, He may give it to you” John 15:16.

Our friend Ned is faithful to seek the Lord daily and each morning he asks the Lord to give him a soul. As he goes about his day, the Lord will direct him to talk with certain people about the Lord. He only shares with those God tells him to share. Sometimes it is only a quick word and at other times he is able to lead people to Christ. He also goes into the jail where he shares the gospel and disciples new believers. He tells us of arguments he has with the Lord about whether this person or that one will receive what He has to say, but the Lord always wins and he obeys.

His testimony has always challenged me. I’ve wanted to be like him for years but I have been afraid to pray for God to give me a soul. But as I’ve been seeking Him lately, He has been changing my heart and now I readily pray for opportunities to share the hope that I have in Jesus. I am firmly convinced of my inability, but He is moving me beyond that to see His ability to work through me. He has also been burdening my heart more and more for those who don’t know Jesus. He is bringing our family to the place of, “Lord, we don’t know what You will require of us but we belong to You and we want You to use us however You want to, whether that is here or somewhere else.”
When I allow myself to be distracted from seeking the Lord and being in His presence I forget about the lost ones and I lose sight of the Lord’s call to die to myself. I start gripping my fingers around the things I want to do or have. But as soon as I focus on the Lord again He reminds me of His call to die. It is not an easy road, but it is the only one He offers. The closer we get to Him the more clearly we hear Him say, “Come and die (to self) that you may live.”

But Jesus promises, “Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last first” Mark 10:29-31.

“And He said to them, ‘The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest” Luke 10:2.

We can only pray earnestly for something that grips us, and if getting the gospel to those who are lost and dying grips us we will readily offer ourselves up as laborers–we should only pray for God to do through others that which we are willing to do as well.

Lillias Trotter was a missionary in Algeria for about 40 years and she wrote this about her call to Algeria:

I was busy in London working [she was doing mission work in London]; all was prospering, with God’s blessing, and I had no thought but to spend my life there. The whole missionary subject seemed to me rather dull, and was altogether beyond my horizon. But I had two friends with whom I was thrown a good deal just then, and they had both of them taken to heart the outer darkness [areas of the world unreached by the gospel]. I do not remember that they said anything to me personally about it, but one felt it right through them; they were all aglow, and after a bit, though I took no more personal interest in the matter than before, I began to feel they had a fellowship with Jesus that I knew nothing about. I did love Him, and I did not like to be out in the cold over it, so I began to pray: ‘Lord, give me the fellowship with Thee about the unreached peoples that Thou has given to those two.’

It was not many weeks before it began to come–a strange yearning love over those who were ‘in the land of the shadow of death,’ a feeling that Jesus could speak to me about it, and that I could speak to Him; that a great barrier between me and Him had been broken down, and swept away. I had no thought of leaving England then, no thought even at first to stir others at home, but straight as a line God made my way out into the darkness, before eighteen months were over.

Later Lillias wrote of her two friends:

Through eternity I shall thank God for the silent flame in the hearts of those two friends and what they did for me. Neither of them has ever had their path opened into foreign work, but the light of the Day that is coming will show what He has let them do in kindling others.

We cannot assume what the Lord will do when we offer ourselves willingly to Him. It may be the exact opposite of our initial thoughts about it. The point is to be willing to go anywhere with Him. Our primary calling is to a relationship with Him and He will lead us where He wants us to go if we stay close to Him.