For years I was in a storm trying my hardest on my own strength to work from the outside in starting with my behaviors and habits…I needed to surrender myself as a living sacrifice and let Him change me from the inside out…but this process takes time on the altar and time in the fire…
A couple months ago I found myself traveling south through Agra and into Ongole to work with a church planter. There were years of tension and unsettling that were coming up and I knew I was sitting in the fire. Like any precious metal, I had to stay there and let my dross and inpurities come to the top. It really takes courage and a bit of desperation to choose to let the crap come to the surface. It takes a vulnerability to let the ugly stuff surface in order to be dealt with…and it did.
There were a couple hard weeks for me and I'm sure for my team mates. We were all facing things and dealing with each other as we were going through it. For me pride, lust, selfishness and criticalness came to the surface and I'm sure you could see it from the outside looking in. I could see it and was repulsed by it but this time I didn't try to supress it with Christian discipline…instead, I let it sit there and I tried to remain vulnerable and attempted to stay engaged with what He was trying to do.
For weeks it was there as I wouldn't completely submerge it…it nagged at me and mocked me…it frustrated me. Yet meanwhile God used me to encourage others, to preach, to teach and to challenge. How He uses messes like me and you amaze me but He does. Regardless it was there as we traveled north to Kolkata and remained as we were heading north…and then after hours of being dirty and out of place we hopped on a train… The Freedom Train.
You see throughout these weeks I was at another stage of counting the costs in my life. When you first commit to something or someone you don't really know all the costs involved until they come up…So counting the cost is often a commonly reoccuring step. Well, in lieu of freedom and His love for me coupled with staying in the fire and seeing the crap, He thought it was time for a conversation.
The others on the train were quickly asleep as we were traveling once again through the night. Yet I lay there with God on my thoughts and willing to just talk with him. The topic of lust was again at the forefront of my mind. You see when I had written in that blog a couple months ago that I was struggling with lust, it was predominantly a different struggle than you'd probably imagined. It had far more to do with the fact that I knew that going home was going to be rough. I've been away from the States and back a number of times and so I know how I often react. Being overseas usually is easy for me on the lust front but I often get hammered when I first get home.
My struggle with lust was generated not by really struggling a ton with lust in the moment but with the question of will I when I get home. My flesh desired and looked forward to an opportunity to fall back into when I returned. It was almost taunting me saying that I could finish out my time here and then slip back when I got back. It made my stomach sick thinking about the possibility of getting stuck in it again…and yet I wanted to address it before I got back.
The real question was: Do I really want to be free from something that's disabled me?
It's a valid question…Jesus once went to the pool of Bethaisda where there were tons of disabled and invalid people and he walked up to one man who had been in that state for decades…Jesus asked him "do you want to be healed?" That's a loaded question. There is a "usual" and a "comfort" that this man knew and if he was healed, his whole life would change. He'd have to get a job to support himself now…with no skills, experience or anything…He'd been taken care of his whole life…the disability was a part of him…"do you want to be healed?"
Well…laying in this train amidst the chorus of snoring that sounds much like my hunting camp, I heard Him distinctly ask me…"Do you want to be free?"
ARE YOU SERIOUS!!??? Man, what a wave of emotion coming over such a calm question in my head…
My whole body screamed in unison…"YES!!!" I do….
"Then throw off anything that hinders…" was His response.
I felt like I spent hours on that train in conversation with Him and those are the only two sentences really mattered…I can't tell you how much that question and response changed me…Since I was little I was looking for affirmation from Him and all at once I felt like Peter… I felt affirmed…I felt free…and I knew with all of my being that even if I am to stumble here or there again my heart is for my lover and my desire is to be free…I am determined to walk in freedom and He's determined to help me…and today is a good day.
Peter, the same man who boldly said that he would die with Christ and I'm sure wanted to with all of his strength, was the guy who also denied Jesus three times within the night. In shame after his strength failed him, he went back to catching fish. This is where Jesus met with him…again.
Jesus even made a charcoal fire which is only in the bible another time…the time Peter denied Jesus to a little girl…and sat him down. He put him back in similar surroundings and asked him the similar questions in order to reinstate him…Three times He asked Peter if He loved him…once for every time that Peter had denied him…why? to rub it in his face? no…
Jesus already knew that Peter loved him…but He also knew that Peter needed that reaffirmed within himself. Jesus, the great encouraged I'm sure saw Peter's face light up a little bit each time as he answered because Peter was realizing both how much at the core of himself how much he really did love Jesus and he could see that Jesus knew that…
That's how I felt this night. I felt as though at the very core of me…after the dross was skimmed away, there was a pure love that affirmed me…There He was asking me if I wanted to be free. He knew the answer already. I needed to hear my being respond unanimously in order to walk away from it and closer to Him…
I was free…I had been free before when Jesus took it on the cross…but this was the night that I KNEW that I was free…and the thing that drew me in and balanced me that night was love.
In this moment, nothing else mattered. I was free and I was with a God who loved me to death and was now loving me into life…
