WHORTY OF HIS CALLING
Life is hard. Why make it even harder? I don’t like stress, I hate what it does to my husband, and I fear its affect on my children. So it’s tempting to create protective barriers that ensure my preferred calm life rhythm and give the illusion of a “balanced” life. Isn’t that what we are taught to value?
It’s just that God doesn’t seem on board with that program.
“He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me. He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for My sake will find it.” (Matthew 10:37-39)
Sure, I’ve tried to modify this and the many agreeing Scriptures to better suit the kingdom of my imagination. But every time I attempt to shrink the Gospel into a more manageable size, I shrink with it.
My passion, my joy, my sense of purpose dim in direct proportion to my compromise. And it is compromise. No matter the eloquence of my excuses, no matter how many applaud this decline, my endeavors to diminish the Word are a dismissal of its Author. And I lose the very thing I hope to save.
Why did He say that, anyway?
As long as I cling to my understanding of life, clutching my idols like a possessive toddler tightly embracing her favorite toy, my hands aren’t open to Him. Rather than open to His grander love, my heart is hardened around my entitlements. Mine! Turning my back on His ways, equally turns my back to His grace. It’s cold on the dark side of the moon.
But the reverse is so glorious, even with the stress and sleepless nights. Letting go of control, of ideals, of anything inside me that raises its fist against Him, is the most freeing lifestyle.
Yes, I habitually feel like I’m going crazy when I’m flung into situations for which I’m inadequate with a frequency that leaves me dizzy. But I also feel alive! Pulsing through my veins are now His energy and endurance, because this is His agenda.
A self – or family -centered life, however comfortable, is a small story that requires small faith and produces small fruit and small souls. A God-centered life awakens the thirst for the epic quest where good and evil battle for human souls, and eternity hangs in the balance.
We are responsible for our generation.
Whatever happens now, happens on our watch.
How wild that God invites us into this cosmic war! We were created for this! Seeds of freedom fighters opposing oppression are woven into our DNA. That’s why movies like Braveheart and The Hunger Games so resonate with us. That’s why we, in the small life, tend to cast ourselves as (misunderstood) heroes, while the grand, surrendered life flings us into dependence on the only true Hero.
There’s no shortage of oppression to fight! And we are often the most effective against the specific kind we ourselves have conquered. Life is hard, regardless. Rather than the futility of striving to avoid pain, why not propel the frustration into rescuing others? Into abandoned obedience.
Otherwise, we risk protecting ourselves right out of His will.
As He sends us into His mission of extending His goodness beyond our family unit and chosen friends, we taste His compassion for His people, and as we lose ourselves in His purpose, He heartbeat becomes our own.
“And what happened, then? Well, in Whoville they say
That the Grinch’s small heart grew three sizes that day.
And then – the true meaning of Christmas came through,
And the Grinch found the strength of *ten* Grinches, plus two!”
Perhaps a portion of my continual stress is really my heart’s growing pains? If so, I pray it never stops. I pray He never answers my prayer for an easier life; instead I pray for, not only strength for my tasks, but His sense of destiny.
It’s in an honor, not a chore, to fight for the Love that gave everything for me. It’s a privilege to be entrusted the needs and healing of others.
But a sweeter, higher motivation than honor is taking root in this ex-Grinch’s heart:
“For the love of Christ compels us, because we judge thus: that if One died for all, then all died; and He died for all, that those who live should live no longer for themselves, but for Him who died for them and rose again.” (2 Corinthians 5:14-15)
“Therefore we also pray always for you that our God would count you worthy of this calling, and fulfill all the good pleasure of His goodness and the work of faith with power, that the name of our Lord Jesus Christ may be glorified in you, and you in Him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.” (2 Thessalonians 1:11-12)
I see Him there, surrounded by olive trees and sleeping, self-indulgent disciples, His sweat turning to blood as He contemplates the suffering He faces in the buying of my freedom.
This generation of Jesus-Followers has been given the high privilege of standing shoulder to shoulder during what may be the final season of battle for the souls of men.
Will we choose to be soft, simpering, and selfish? Or will we rise up in the amazing grace about which we often sing songs, and refuse to give in, refuse to shrink back, and choose death-to-self that His life might fill us to overflowing?
