How to: 1. BE a disciple and 2.. MAKE disciples

Disciple: (from dictionary.com) "1 a. one of the 12 personal followers of Christ. b.one of the 70 followers sent forth by Christ. Luke 10:1. c. any other professed follower of Christ in His lifetime. 2. any follower of Christ. OR Person who is a pupil or an adherent of the doctrines of another; follower." What I found even more interesting, however, were the origins of the word: "disciple: Biblical borrowing from Latin: discipulus "pupil," from *discipere "to grasp intellectually, analyze thoroughly," from dis- "apart" + capere "take" . So I interpret this as to first, grasp intellectually, second, to analyze thoroughly, and finally to take hold of and to be set apart. Love it!

I have been pondering the Great Commission: what it means, am I doing it, and if not, HOW to do it! I don't think salvation tracts are the answer, sorry.

Matthew 28: 16- 20 reads, "Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

But hold on a minute...look at the end of verse 16: "...but some doubted." What? Some of the 11 remaining disciples DOUBTED? Are you kidding me? These men who had been with him since day one DOUBTED? Wow. Back to dictionary.com: doubt="to be uncertain about; consider questionable or unlikely; hesitate to believe." After all they went through with Jesus, some still doubted. Incredible. But look at Jesus' answer, and herein, I believe, lies the key to our motivation for the Great Commission: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go..." and His final promise, "And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” We don't go it alone. We have Him right there with us, always. And because ALL authority has been given to him, and He's WITH us, all authority has been given to US.

So this is what I am convinced of today: 1) that to be a disciple means that we have grasped the truth of Jesus. That He is the WAY, the TRUTH, and the LIFE, and that no one comes to the father except by Him (John 14:6). And that we have taken hold of the truth and consequently have been set apart as followers of Christ. 2) to fulfill the great commission we must go and make other followers, empowered by the authority given to us by Christ, who is with us always.

Now the difficult part, am I making disciples? To be honest, I'd have to say, "not so much." Dead silence. Why? Why am I shirking the Great Commission? If my leader gives me one big assignment, how in God's name can I ignore it? Lame excuses like, "I'm not an evangelist," or "it's not my gifting," are essentially bunk. Jesus doesn't give me a loophole like that. He said "Go and make," period. As far as I can figure, I'm not doing it for three reasons: fear, preoccupation with my own life, and laziness/love of comfort. Those are horrible reasons, and it's embarrassing to face them. Fear of what? Loss of friendships, admiration, popularity? Philippians 3:8 has the answer for that: "What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ." Preoccupation with my own life? Matthew 13 and the parable of the sower deals with that issue: "[and] The one who received the seed that fell among the thorns is the man who hears the word, but the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth choke it, making it unfruitful." Yikes! I don't want to be this one; I want to be this one: "Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown." What about my laziness and love of comfort? John 12:23-26 answers that: "Jesus replied, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. The man who loves his life will lose it, while the man who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be. My Father will honor the one who serves me."

So I must change. I must become one who counts everything rubbish beside the great honor and prize of knowing Christ and making Him known. I identify with Paul in Romans 7:21-25 "So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched [wo]man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!"

It is through Christ, by the enabling of the Holy Spirit, that I will GO and make disciples of all nations, including my coworkers, relatives, friends, acquaintances, and strangers. 1 Thessalonians 1:4-5b "For we know, brothers loved by God, that he has chosen you, because our gospel came to you not simply with words, but also with power, with the Holy Spirit and with deep conviction." The Holy Spirit will give me power to present the gospel, bringing deep conviction. I don't have to rely on my lazy, comforting-loving, approval-seeking self to convince others that they need Jesus. I only need to walk in the assurance that Jesus himself is with me, the King of authority, and I HAVE the Holy Spirit's empowerment to speak boldly, fearlessly, and convincingly. What a relief! Now to ask for opportunities and divine appointments-and then...GO!

The uncomfortable topic of SIN

SIN. We hate the word. We breathe a sigh of relief that it's "under the blood," and it is...however...we must not stop warring against it each and every time it rears its ugly head. Hebrews 12:4 says, "In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood," which implies we WILL struggle with our sin. Now to me, THAT'S a relief. To know that I will still struggle against the desires of my flesh (and of course, it won't lead to bloodshed :) makes sense of my struggles today. I am human; I am sinful; therefore, I MUST consistently war against my sinful nature. I am not a freak of Christianity who can't get it together; I need to sharpen my weapons and get after it!

We all know people (or we are them) that don't seem to fight their flesh. To us, their sins are painfully obvious: pride, anger, critical spirit, gluttony, self-indulgence, laziness, mismanagement of finances, sexual sin, bigotry, etc. I can place myself in most of those failings on any given day, but the bottom line is, it's SIN. We live in a Christian culture of excessive tolerance, misnamed "grace," so rarely are we forced to face our sin. If we are not praying like David, "Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting (Psalm 139:23-24)," we may never really have to face our offensive ways.

We have stamped out legalism in the church, but in doing so, we have also stamped out much of conviction. We can spend all day on ourselves, wasting the precious time God has given us, indulging the sinful nature, and feeling totally fine about it. Why? Because we have released responsibility for our behavior. We are so "under the blood" that we've become soft and spoiled. I listened to a podcast from the Ramp yesterday and Damon Thompson argued that unless we spend significant time with Jesus, unless we make Him FIRST in our lives, including our TIME, we will not bear His image, we will bear the image of the world. He went on to say that a person can easily watch 4 hours of television a day, and that's normal, but to spend 4 hours in the Word and in Prayer is almost unheard of from the modern, average Christian. Now you could say Damon is "beating the sheep," but I argue that he's provoking us to return to our first love, a time when everything else paled in comparison to Jesus. Philippians 3:8-9b: "What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him..." Of course astute biblical scholars will ask me, "What about the rest of the verse 9? Which says, "...not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith." Amen. Indeed.

The rest of the passage answers that question: (vv.10-21) "I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. All of us who are mature should take such a view of things. And if on some point you think differently, that too God will make clear to you. Only let us live up to what we have already attained. Join with others in following my example, brothers, and take note of those who live according to the pattern we gave you. For, as I have often told you before and now say again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is on earthly things. But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body."

Hallelujah! Let us NOT live as enemies of the Cross! Let our stomaches (appetites) NOT be our gods, and let us take our minds off earthly things! Take note of all the active verbs in that passage: know, attain, press, share, strain, take hold of, live up to. We can do "all things in Christ who strengthens me" (Ph. 4:13).

And finally, the words of the apostle Peter (2 Pet.1:5-11): "For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But if anyone does not have them, he is nearsighted and blind, and has forgotten that he has been cleansed from his past sins. Therefore, my brothers, be all the more eager to make your calling and election sure. For if you do these things, you will never fall, and you will receive a rich welcome into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ." Amen?

Defending Life

A few weeks ago my husband and I attended our local pregnancy support center's annual fundraising banquet. Afterward, we rushed home to take care of our grandkids so their parents could work their respective night shift jobs. As I put those precious grandbabies to bed, I began to ponder anew the existence of abortion in our world. I had been a pro-life zealot in the past, fighting the battle with prayer, protests, and relentlessly giving family and friends the facts about abortion. Over the years, complacency set in, and I gradually lost my zeal, giving up the battle and letting others shoulder the load. That night, however, I was reminded that as long as we humans kill our own, we have not outgrown the barbarism of slavery, racism, and sanctioned murder. We are still the same people who enslaved and brutalized African Americans, lied to, stole from, and murdered Native Americans, burned women at the stake under the guise of Christianity, just to name a few of our nation's past atrocities. And now, the blood of our discarded children cries out from the ground for justice.

Pro-Choicers cite compassion for women in difficult situations as the reason for their stance, some even claiming to be personally opposed to abortion for themselves. The bottom line is that they believe it's a woman's right to choose what goes on with her body. But what about the other person whose life is at stake? These same people have great compassion for animal rights, humanitarian causes, and starving children in third world countries, but are incredibly blind to the sanctity of the unborn's life, and to the fact that abortion has two victims-the child and the mother. She is forever scarred and guilty, as much as she tries to justify her actions. My heart bleeds for the mothers who have aborted their babies. They were sold a bill of goods and believed the lie that they made the best choice under the circumstances. Thankfully, they have a merciful God who forgives and heals their sin, just as He forgives and heals all our sins. Their sin is no greater or worse than any other. It just bleeds more.

I ran across the following on the Association of Pro-life Physician's website, and as it is so powerfully and eloquently worded, I have taken the liberty to share it.

"One can rarely engage in a discussion over abortion without one of the rare cases being brought up to justify abortion:

“What if the woman is raped?”
“What if a thirteen-year old conceives through incest?”
“What if the fetus is deformed and unlikely to survive anyway?”
“What if the mother’s health is at risk?”
“What if the mother’s life is threatened by her pregnancy?”

We would be remiss to deny the emotional sway of these rare scenarios that would pull at the heart-strings of any compassionate physician. We grieve with our patients who endure such tragedies in life, and want to provide the best healthcare possible to them. But do these dire circumstances justify an abortion?

It is easy to prove that these objections to the pro-life ethic are insincere. What if someone brought up these arguments to justify the killing of an infant: “The baby was conceived through rape” - “The infant is deformed and mentally handicapped” - “The mother’s health is suffering as a result of her baby.” Would anyone who endorses abortion in the womb openly justify the killing of an infant using these excuses? No, they would not. This proves that these objections are insincere and that the heart of the matter is whether the fetus is a living human. If it could be proven that the human fetus is just as alive and just as human as the infant, then these objections would not justify aborting a fetus any more than an infant. (For a thorough scientific argument proving that life begins at conception, please see the article on our website or the APP tract “When Does Human Life Begin?”)

We must respond to all tragic circumstances of pregnancy from the unshakeable foundation of two indisputable premises: human life begins at conception, and it is always wrong to intentionally kill an innocent human being. The unborn child’s right to life and liberty is given by his or her Creator, not by his or her parents or by the state. The right to life is inalienable: that is, not to be trespassed upon by another. In tragic circumstances such as rape or incest, we want to care for both the mother and her unborn baby. We want to relieve the suffering of the mother and her unborn baby. It is never right to intentionally kill an innocent person, even if it does relieve another’s emotional or physical suffering. It’s not up to a vote, and our obligation to submit unto divine judgments does not sway with our circumstances." (http://www.prolifephysicians.org/rarecases.htm)

Cloaked and anesthetized in pseudonyms like choice, pregnancy termination, "morning after pill", and even the necessary-sounding word, abortion, the snuffing out of a human life becomes abstract and clinical. It's easy to endorse something without fully understanding the horror taking place thousands of times each day.

Abortion is the act of murdering a human being in cold blood. It doesn't erase or rewind, it tears, maims, shreds, crushes, assassinates, butchers, slaughters, executes, destroys and massacres. Depending on the method, it also decaptitates, eviscerates, poisons, disembowels, suffocates, garrotes, burns and dismembers. It isn't a nice, neat, clean way to remove an unwanted growth.

I have marched with fellow pro-lifers who carried pictures of aborted babies, much to the shock of observers. We were treated as if WE were the artists responsible for composing the heinous sights. To quote from the website http://www.abort73.com/abortion/abortion_pictures/, "Though pictures of aborted embryos and fetuses are shocking, they are no more shocking than the act of abortion itself. Until you see what abortion does, you will never accurately understand what abortion is. There are some things for which words alone fail to accurately communicate their brutality."

Now to shift from referring to abortion as the cause of death, I want to place the tools of slaughter directly into the hands of the perpetrators, and to be honest, it is us. We are guilty either by passively allowing, as a society, this atrocity and horror, or we are deceived into thinking it's not really murder-more of a medical procedure-and anyway, shouldn't each woman decide? I propose that if the murder of deformed 3-year-old children began to take place, we would rise up in horror!

Not only do we all corporately share in the slaughter of the innocent, we also share the guilt of the loss of great talent and the extraordinarily gifted. Just as Tim Tebow's mother was encouraged to abort him, other mothers pregnant with fantastically brilliant individuals have been tempted with that same choice, and sadly, thousands have succumbed to the pressure. Gianna Jessen, an aborted baby who miraculously survived a saline abortion, and who now suffers from cerebral palsy as a result, speaks out powerfully for life. I have included a must-watch link to her speech to the Australian parliament: http://youtu.be/BrPuOrEMNwE

In this video, she says, "Some day we will stand before God and we will ask Him "Why did you let so many people die of cancer, AIDS and war."
God will answer:
I sent you someone with the cure for Cancer, but you aborted them.
I sent you someone with the cure for AIDS, but you aborted them.
I sent you the Prince of Peace, but you hung him on a cross.

At what point will we Christians rise up and defend the unborn child's right to life? What will it take to mobilize us from our complacency? The blood of the innocent cries out from the ground, and we don't hear it.

Check out: http://bound4life.com/

The End of Propriety...or...the Beginning of Passion!

Propriety (according to Webster): "the quality or state of being proper or suitable: appropriateness; conformity to what is socially acceptable in conduct or speech; fear of offending against conventional rules of behavior." The American Church (defined here as corporate believers or Christ-followers) as a whole, displays very little passion in gatherings or even personal lives; we are much more concerned with propriety. We tend to avoid the radical, the weird, the different...to be blunt, the PASSIONATE. Those who are passionate often offend us. We label them (and I have been TOTALLY guilty of this) unbalanced, super (or spooky) spiritual, over-the-top, "so heavenly minded they're no earthly good", etc. But what does God really think of the Jesus Freaks?

The bible is full of weirdos; take some of the prophets, for example: Ezekiel cooked his food over human dung, laid on his right side for 390 days, and then his left for 40 days, as a God-ordained symbol of atonement for Israel's and Judah's sins; Isaiah walked around naked for three years as a warning of future calamity coming for Egypt and Cush; God ordered Hosea to marry a sleazy, unfaithful prostitute, AND forgive her and accept her back every time she cheated on him. Hosea's assignment served to paint a graphic picture of God's love for His unfaithful people; Joshua and his people marched around the walls of Jerico, shouting until it collapsed, much to the amusement and derision of the Jerico inhabitants; and John the Baptist lived in the wilderness, wore camel hair clothes, ate bugs, and forcefully preached an unpopular repentance message. But the icing on the cake: Jesus constantly behaved inappropriately as defined by social and/or religious customs. He boldly declared himself to be the Christ; he touched and healed a (gynecologically) unclean woman; he verbally trashed the Pharisees, the highest religious rulers of the day; he ate at a dishonest tax collector's house; he protected an adulterous woman from a lawful (and deserved) death; he defended the disciples accused of breaking sabbath rules and gathering grain, again in the face of established religious protocol; AND He healed the sick, raised the dead, cast out demons and turned the world upside down! To further explore biblical weirdness, the book of Acts records numerous accounts of magnificent miracles, all performed by ordinary men, full of passion. Don't tell me that stuff was only for then and not today! Now go read Revelation and get your mind blown :)

So what are we afraid of, people of God? Are we afraid to offend by the plain gospel message? "Go therefore into ALL the world and proclaim the gospel" (Mark 16:15). Are we afraid we will be criticized or shunned? "[Jesus] was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces, he was despised, and we held him in low esteem." (Isaiah 53:3) Are we just uncomfortable with passionate emotions and feel they are somehow flesh-inspired? Luke 19:37-40 reads, "When [Jesus] came near the place where the road goes down the Mount of Olives, the whole crowd of disciples began joyfully to praise God in loud voices for all the miracles they had seen: 'Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!' Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, 'Teacher, rebuke your disciples!'
'I tell you,” [Jesus] replied, “if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out. WHAT? Jesus PROCLAIMED that either they must SHOUT, or the very stones would! My grandma, whom I loved dearly and was a wonderful woman, used to say about the churches I preferred, "I don't go for that whoopin' and hollerin' nonsense." Well her church was an Evangelical Lutheran church, and not only is pro-choice and pro-gay, but ignores the issue of a real hell. Give me whoopin' and hollerin' and the unadulterated truth!

Passion includes the following definitions: "a powerful emotion; an abandoned display of emotion." We are to express emotion just as Jesus expressed emotion. Jesus wept over the death of Lazarus (THEN raised him from the dead!) and over Jerusalem's unbelief. He cursed the fig tree (and it died), and he violently cleared out the temple. That's passion, Baby!

The opposite of passion is apathy, defined as "1. absence of interest in or enthusiasm for things generally considered interesting or moving; 2. absence of emotion." I submit to you that the majority of our gatherings of worship and praise show just that, a poverty of enthusiasm and joy. We are more concerned with propriety than we are with the over-the-top joy that is our strength. Be over the top; be a freak! Ignore the snide remarks to chill out and settle down. DON'T settle down, don't settle for lukewarm, period. Revelation 3:15-16 says, "I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth." We are called to be a people of passion and exuberance! 2 Samuel 6:14 declares, "David, wearing a linen ephod, danced before the LORD with all his might." And his wife, Michal, watching from a window, saw his antics, and "depised him in her heart" (v. 16). Hmmm? Are we Davids or are we Michals?

 The JOY of the Lord is our Strength! (Nehemiah 8:10) Joy is defined as: a. Intense and especially ecstatic or exultant happiness; and b. The EXPRESSION or MANIFESTATION of such feeling (emphasis mine). So when we say that our joy is just on the inside and not visible, we are only half rejoicing!

Lou Engle tells of a time the Lord gave him an embarrassing assignment. The Lord called him to stand up in the middle of a showing of the blasphemous "O God" movie (starring George Burns), and shout out that Jesus was the true God. Lou initially disobeyed, totally unwilling to make a fool of himself, but the Lord "burned in his belly" so strongly, that Lou felt he had no choice, finally obeyed, shouted like a maniac the message the Lord gave him, and then ran out of the theater. We WILL be called to be weird. We will offend people as we preach the gospel and stand for righteousness. We will hurt our friends when we tell them the truth ("But the wounds of a friend can be trusted," Prov. 27:6) We may even lose everything: job, position, reputation, even family respect, but the treasure of God is FAR more important. He is a pearl of great price and we MUST start acting like it. We must also act like Hell is real, and real people (including friends and loved ones) are going there, unless they repent and turn to Him, period. There are not many ways to heaven. There is one Way, and we must proclaim it from the mountain tops! "Let your light SO shine before men that they may see your good works and PRAISE your Father in heaven (Matt 5:16)."

In Pursuit of Zeal

In spite of my best intentions, I still find that I fill the precious days I am alloted with MY agenda, MY plans, pursuits and recreation. I more resemble a Buddhist basking in the "flow" than I do a Christian submitted to the will of Almighty God. My brand of "flow" mixes the pseudo-spiritual with the overtly worldly: while I dutifully spend time in the Word and prayer, I am impatient to finish so I can do my REAL agenda, MY plan. My plan involves piddling away on the computer (if I call it "research", I feel better about it), exercising with a passion I don't have for the things of God (apparently the health of my "earth suit" far outweighs the desire to clothe myself in righteousness), resignedly putting in my time at work, and pretty much stubbornly pursuing whatever tasks I deem mandatory for the day. Really? And yet I have the gall to wonder why I don't have a powerful, miracle-working life? How can I expect to further the Kingdom of God when I'm more concerned with building my own pitiful little queendom? Where is my passion for the Lover of my soul? Where is my honor for the King of Kings, hunger for His Word and Presence, grief for the lost, and compassion for the hurting? What evidence is there in my life that I am sold out to Jesus?

The final nail in the coffin of my conviction happened this weekend, at the Montana Aglow conference. With each message the speaker delivered, my heart broke again and again over my laziness, desire for comfort and ease, and disgusting apathy. The nations cry out for redemption-TENS of thousands of their people die DAILY without hope of heaven. What am I doing? Concocting my next clever FaceBook status. As I sip my $4.00 lattes and chow down on Halloween candy, millions of precious children starve. While I shop for clothes I don't really need, the homeless huddle to stay warm. While I take vitamins, jealously guard my sleep, and rarely miss the latest Survivor episode, thousands of the unborn, created in the image of God, are sacrificed daily to the god of convenience. I am pathetic.

Not only am I ashamed, I am undone. And I pray that I never, ever get over my undoing until the day I die. I pray that grief over this self indulgent, wasteful, and apathetic living leads me to "LOVE the Lord MY God with ALL my heart, my soul, my mind and my strength, and to LOVE my neighbor as myself." (Luke 10:27) I pray that I never again forget that my number one priority in this life is to be the bride of Christ. A bride so consumed with love, passion, and zeal that she will pour out her life EVERY day in selfless devotion to her Lord. That she will cry out continuously to be sent to the world's lost and dying. That she will live to die. So help me God.

Sacrifice

The story of the Abraham's testing found in Genesis 22:1-19 has always disturbed me. Not only does God here seem like an evil pagan deity demanding human sacrifice, but He seems like a reneger: promising Abraham something wonderful, yet after YEARS of waiting to give him the promised son, He cruelly demands him back. I cringe at this story, and subsequently have jammed it (along with the story of Job) into one of my imaginary drawers -a drawer I label, "bad bible stories to avoid."

The other morning, however, when I was praying for direction and wisdom, this story popped into my head. Rather than allowing myself to suspect God of a dark side, I patiently waited for revelation. And here's what I realized: Abraham had some past issues with his character; to be blunt, he acted like a weasel on at least three occasions in his past. Twice he attempted to pass his wife off as his sister in order to protect himself, even though she could have been sexually compromised or even raped, and then he passively agreed to sleep with his wife's servant in order to conceive the promised child. These failings pointed to a lack of faith, loyalty and trust in God.

The Lord designed a trial for Abraham-not for God's peace of mind (he KNEW how Abraham would respond, He's GOD, after all), but to reveal to Abraham his own heart. He proved himself, to himself, that he would obey God at all costs; he would not waver, even when God didn't make sense or seemed cruel, demanding the one thing Abraham had prayed and longed for, the promise fulfilled, and now demanded back. Abraham is recorded in scripture as "the friend of God" and "the father of all those who believe, not the coward, manipulator or wife-betrayer he had been.

The apostle Peter too was tested. During his test, he denied Christ THREE times, exactly as Jesus prophesied he would. This hothead even denied to Jesus' face that he would deny! So he failed his test, but the results of that failure broke his heart. He became a new person that day, a man of power, one who boldly preached the gospel, healed the sick and raised the dead- a rock of the early church. His loyalty to Christ eventually led him to a martyr's crucifixion.

So I don't hate the Isaac near-sacrifice story any longer. Abraham's test proved his mettle, and though I can't help but think Isaac would have been scarred for life after this incident, I also think he would have been amazed by his father's faith in action-faith that trusts God to come through no matter how impossible the circumstances.

I have always thought I would have failed Abraham's test. My children (and now my grandchildren), have always been the greatest joy of my life. I think I would have had to slit my own throat just to escape God's command! Thank God I'm not Abraham. I may not need THAT test (please, God!). I most likely need some other test-a test designed for me-designed to show me what I'm made of. I'm sure I would be depressed by my vast failings, but maybe I would be pleasantly surprised at hidden strength. I want to be like Abraham-one who trusts God and has no other person, place or thing that takes precedence over my Lord. I want to lay down my life to answer His call, with nothing standing in the way of my passion and love for Him. I also want to be like Peter-one whose personal failings drive him to change-to transform him into the person God called and equipped him to be.

Seasons

As I rapidly approach my fiftieth birthday (YES, I said FIFTY!), I started thinking about what generational "season" my age puts me into. I'm guessing autumn, which sort of depresses me, as autumn represents aging, slowing down, flowers dying, stuff shriveling up... Realistically, however, I'm past the spring of childhood and the summer of reproduction and youthful vigor, so I must be into autumn. Rather than focus on the shriveling and dying part, I'm focusing on the brilliant colors, the frosty, beautiful mornings, hunting season, harvest and Thanksgiving...now I feel much better and can continue!

Ruminating on seasons of age transitioned into thoughts of other life seasons, and when to recognize when a chapter is over, a season has ended, and how to move into the next one without becoming mired in grief and inertia.

Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 says, "There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under heaven:
a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,
a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain,
a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,
a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,
a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace."

I love that scripture passage. It gives me hope that no matter what sort of disturbance is going on in my life, it means something. It's a "time" that needs to occur. And when some friendships fade or become unwieldy, it may be ok to let go of them, or at least let them adjust into a new season, a new dynamic. Sometimes I've even had to "kill" a relationship, and later on, when things changed, healing came in, and the friendship was later reborn in order to be established in a much healthier manner. There are also times to confront, and times to shut up and pray for a person. Times to tear away from a job or ministry when it's time to embrace a new opportunity. It's often difficult to let go of something and plunge ahead into the unknown, when the way isn't clearly marked or laid out. This is the time of relying on FAITH. Trusting we've heard from God to move on, and to do it, relying on the fact that He's faithful and will lead us into the new season.

During these times of letting go or uprooting, I have often lapsed into fear, holding onto to the known longer than God wanted me to. Sticking with a ministry out of guilt or the fear no one would emerge to take it on. Remaining an enabling friend when the Lord has called me to show "tough love" and let the friend flounder on her own, flapping her wings in order to build strength and trust in God to care for her. Interfering with natural consequences that would teach a friend to make wise choices.

I have decided that this season of my life will be one of beauty and harvest. Not natural, physical beauty, but beauty of the soul...beauty that, "Instead, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God's sight." (1 Pet. 3:4). And harvest. The reaping of sowing into the lives of others, whether they be my grandchildren or chance meetings in the grocery store. The harvest of the fruits of the Spirit that come only by living by the Spirit, not according the the flesh. "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit."(Gal 5:22-25). Not operating out of my logic and dysfunctional guilt or letting the emotions of others manipulate me, but operating out of Truth, being led by the Holy Spirit in all my relationships and encounters. Letting the King direct my paths, choices, and schedule. Submitting my life to HIS perfect will and plan. Amen.