I've come to realize something incredibly inconvenient.
When God calls you away from home, there comes with that journey the inevitability of separation.
You see, as human beings, we build and nurture relationships, habits, and connections to everything from places, foods, music, and of course other people that we love.
These are the most precious commodities we have on earth.
Our experiences.
Our favorite places.
They are our attachments.
It is typically how we identify ourselves.
I am a person who holds so tightly to those things.
Sometimes God calls us away from those people, places, and things.
Sometimes its forever.
The disciples got up and left where they were IMMEDIATELY and followed Christ. They then proceeded to shake the world and crack the sky, bringing a flood of God's Kingdom here to earth through the teachings of Christ and the very Spirit that raised Him from the grave.
All because they were willing to go, and follow Him.
One thing though…
None of them ever went back to those places where Christ plucked them from for longer than a visit.
So what is true discipleship?
Is it being willing to do something that for me, is much more dangerous than dying for the message of the Cross?
It is to live a life unhindered by anything else?
My friends?
My country?
My comfort?
My earthly provision?
My very own will?
My everything?
The thought itself even as I type this brings tears to my eyes. I get upset at the idea of having to give up these things for Christ.
I don't write this to condemn. If anything I am writing this down because I realize God has not simply called me to 11 Months away from the things I hold dear, but that He has called me to a LIFETIME of being WILLING lay down everything else for the sake of His Kingdom.
It is something that is said in churches all over the world every Sunday, and it is met with thunderous applause by congregations full of people who don't grasp the weight of that call.
What happens then when we receive such a call on our lives?
Does God not do this very often anymore, or is it just that we are so unwilling to let go of the things our hearts love that we miss out on the things our Spirits are created for?
His wish isn't to rob us of those things we love, in fact He promises to give us our hearts desires.
Yet it shakes me to the core of who I am to think that it may serve His Kingdom greater if I don't have some of those people, places, or things I hold dear.
Sooner or Later it seems, that call comes in one shape or another in the life of a disciple of Christ.
Inconvenient indeed…
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