30 March 2010

Videos!

Note the news videos now posted in my quick links section.
Informational & Inspiring! Check them out!

26 March 2010

transparency

I've begun listening to a sermon series called "Radical: What the Gospel Demands" by a Pastor David Platt in Alabama. Good, challenging messages from Luke 14:25-35 on hearing the demands of discipleship, counting the cost, and responding to Jesus' terms.

It's Luke 14:28a that resounds in my head, "But don’t begin until you count the cost...." with the stories of the builder who didn't first stop and think of what it would cost and the king who went out against an enemy force without first assessing the strength of his army.

So I headed into this week with these truths simmering in the back of my mind, along with similar passages of Scripture. I'm on a Partnership Development stint in Northern California, and it's been great re-connecting with old friends and acquaintances. But inevitably, time marches on... we head varying directions in life and friendships grow, change, or fade. This is simply life and rarely, if ever, bothers me.

This time it's different.

And Praise God it is so, because the reality of my moving overseas is finally starting to sink in. And, friends, I'm just beginning to realize, and feel, that it will have a cost.

For years, I've loved David Livingstone's quote:
"Lord, send me anywhere, but go with me;
Lay any burden on me, only sustain me;

Sever any tie, but the tie that binds me to Thyself."

Yet, two nights ago, as I was blindsided by the realization that I'm leaving, that my friends and family will go on with their lives, milestones and big life changes will happen, and things will be different when I come back... I could not find any corner of my heart that could pray that last line and truly mean it.

Immediately, the Lord brought comfort in the form of Luke 18:28-30 -
Peter said, "Behold, we have left our own homes and followed You."
And He said to them, "Truly I say to you, there is no one who has left house or wife or brothers or parents or children, for the sake of the kingdom of God, who will not receive many times as much as this time and, in the age to come, eternal life."

Still.

It comes back to a lesson He is ever, patiently, weaving around my soul. Of loving. and letting go. yet loving still. and refusing to not love because it will mean grief/hurt/pain/separation. It is a natural human tendency to react and pull away from pain - God's physically designed us that way. So it is counter-intuitive, in a way, but it is the reality of His Love and the Cross.

So... when everything in me wants to pull back, protect myself, and put up a wall around my emotions, He says: "No. Love more. Love deeper. Be vulnerable and transparent." I have no excuses left, over the cost, when He silently points to the Cross.

hard to grasp this in theory. even HARDER to walk out.

But Galatians 2:20 says, "My old self has been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. So I live in this earthly body by trusting in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me."

there really is nothing else to say. it's not my life, my heart, my decision. It's His. I am His.

As I sat down to type this, Kutless's "I'm Still Yours" started on my playlist on here:
"If all my world was swept away, would You be enough for me? Would my beating heart still sing? If I lost it all, would my hands stay lifted to the God who gives and takes away? If You take it all, this life you've given... still my heart will sing to You. ...I'm still Yours."

He was, is, and always will be, Worth any cost.

14 March 2010

... well, she's willing ...

"I wasn’t God’s first choice for what I’ve done for China. I don’t know who it was. It must have been a man—a well–educated man. I don’t know what happened. Perhaps he died. Perhaps he wasn’t willing. And God looked down… and saw Gladys Aylward. And God said, ‘Well, she’s willing.’" – Gladys Aylward