I just finished the book Radical. The last chapter is on four points to live radically: pray for the whole world, read the whole Bible, give your money to a specific cause and spend significant time outside your context, all while being part of a community that is seeking to do the same thing. This book ending coincided with a sermon in church about the cost of discipleship. My pastor shared verses that are hard, verses about taking our cross, loving God more than family, giving up everything, counting the cost and following Jesus. Jesus sure wasn't trying to start a mega-church for He said things that were unpopular and uncomfortable.
So I have to ask myself what does God want me to sacrifice? What is the cross I must take up? I am a bit of an extremist, so I go to these crazy pendulums. Maybe I need to never see another movie, maybe I need to commit to waking up at 4:00am every morning, maybe sugar should never again touch my lips, maybe, maybe... In some contexts I think He will ask me to do something extreme, but right now, those don't feel right. So what is it?
A quiet message keeps getting repeated: It's time to stop hiding. Coming out of my cave right now feels so much more risky and painful than giving up sugar or movies or sleep. I don't fully know what it means just yet, but I do know I've been hiding. So coming into the open, exposing my vulnerability feels well, vulnerable. So the pain of these words tells me my cross to take up. He longs to exchange my ashes for beauty, my mourning for oil of gladness; He longs to call me His oak of righteousness. But none of this can happen in my isolated cave, where my heart is more than guarded, it is stone-walled.
So here is my declaration: I am willing to follow Him to death, especially death to myself. I am coming out of my cave of hiding. I will show my weakness, my beauty, my heart to the world, inviting others in, not walling them out. I will expose myself to rejection and even ridicule so that others may see my heart, the home of my Savior, and thus be invited to sup with Him. Even as I type these words, I am filled with fear... but this is my cross. I will pick it up and follow Him.
When you open your heart to others and expose your weeknesses you will realize you are not lone. We are all broken vassels in one way or another, in need of a redeemer. The word even says that in our weakness He is strong. So embrace your weakness and vaunerability as a place where God can reviel himself, and he will fill you with a sencitivity and tenderness that will astound you.He will break your heart with the things that break his.
ReplyDeleteIf we are to rule and rein with Him we must join in the fellowship of His suffering. He to exposed Himsel;f to rejection and ridicule so that the world could know His heart. I will be praying that your faith will remain ..
in Him, John Reece