There are so many things Jesus’ teaches us through His ministry, so many examples He sets for us to live. They are simple truths but harder realities. As I walk with Him longer and more intimately in each season of life, He has this pattern of bringing me to one of His simple truths at a time. Then He presses my heart for how serious He was about living His words out. He teaches me practicality; how to -step by step follow in His heart: with faithfulness, obedience, and especially joy.
<so please, if the truths in this blog seem elementary, don’t let your pride steal the oppurtunity for a fresh reminder. And honestly ask yourself if these truths are heart knowledge, transforming your life and the lives around you. If they are, can you identify the fruit? >
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Each time God brings me to a new country I (almost always) without hesitation claim it to be the most beautiful place I’ve ever been. (Seriously, God did a good job making the world. Props to Him.)
Lesotho was no different.
When we arrived in the middle of the night and the sky looked like it was filled with twinkling Christmas lights, you know the tiny ones that blink (I normally find those kinds rather annoying) but it’s the best way I can even attempt to convey the fullness of the beauty. The stars blanketed the sky in a way that appears almost unreal. My analogies are failing me, so I’ll need you to trust me and use your imagination from here.
The mountains here are especially stunning. They’re insanely perfect. My favorite is right before sunset when the sky is pink from the warmth of the sun, making the greenery of the mountains stand out a million times more.
(In all transparency, I love writing and I like to think I’m decent at it most of the time, but in this moment, there are no words that are quite conveying the emotions my heart is longing to share with you. )
When I stare into the mountains surrounding me here I’m in awe that my God created them. I’m awestruck by His work. By His perfection. Everything He’s created is just a faint reflection of His own beauty and majesty. Everything He’s made to be an expression of Himself so that we might offer up worthy praises and glorify Him as creator and king.
As I worshipped God for His work in the mountains over the past couple weeks, I felt the Holy Spirit whisper ‘while the rest of creation is indeed a faint, but ever beautiful, reflection of its creator, you were created in His very image.’ No other part of creation has such an honor as to bear His own image.
“The way you’re looking at the mountains, in disbelief at their perfection, their beauty…that’s the fathers’ face towards you”
The only response that’s appropriate is complete surrender.
I was made in the perfect image of a perfect God. But because of the flesh in which I was born into, I am a completely imperfect sinner. Yet God wouldn’t allow me to stay that way and so in order that I would still be able to bear His image, He sent His son to come and live in the flesh, a whole, perfect, and blameless life, then took on my punishment as a sinner and died in my place. Because He took my sins, I can now stand blameless. And I don’t have to live a perfect life because I am covered by the blood of the lamb.
I owe Him everything. He poured Himself out, He spilled His blood, fixing what I (man) messed up.
If I want to truly bear the image of my God I need to become a person who becomes broken and poured out so that others can be made whole.
When I became a Christian there wasn’t a difference to me in being saved and surrendering my whole life to Jesus. Weeks after I received the saving love of Christ in my life, I was on a plane to El Salvador to pour it out to other people who needed it as badly as I did. I lacked knowledge but I was on fire with passion.
I’ve said yes to every (impossible) thing the Lord has asked me to step into since that trip to El Salvador 3 years ago. Understanding that my life is only rightly lived in complete submission to the one who saved it.
But this past month living in such a place that literally radiates Gods’ glory, He’s shaken awake the parts of me that have fallen asleep to the radical reality of a life surrendered.
“Cali, you can’t love enough. You can’t encourage enough, you can’t give enough, you can’t serve enough, you can’t pray for people enough. This world is so desperate for hope and for truth. This world today is starving for it. And the only way they will get those things is if you allow yourself to be my vessel.”
A broken vessel.
“Because in of yourself, you’re too small for the God sized love, power, and truth that will redeem this world. So in order to use you, in order for anything to pour out of you that is from me, it’s going to have to break through you.”
I’ll challenge you with the same question the Father is challenging me with, are you willing to not to just sacrifice for people but to actually be the sacrifice?
I’m not suggesting that we are Jesus or anyone’s savior, but I am saying that we need to be like Jesus in the way that he gave himself up completely for people.
Can you do the same? Give all of yourself up? So that by your example people might be reconciled with the God, whose body was given as the greatest sacrifice.
This world is starving for love. Worse yet millions of people are walking around spiritually dead without the gospel, the hope of Christ.
We get to see people raise from this death into life when we rightly submitted to this call to be broken. It’s when we’re broken that Christ’s life can pour through ours into the millions dying without it. What.an.honor.
I recently finished Jen Hatmakers book “Interrupted” and she far better articulated this truth the Lord is reviving in my life. Even pointing to the very moment Jesus establishes this example for us.
“Not only was communion a symbolic ritual, it was a new prototype of discipleship. “Continuously make my sacrifice real by doing this very thing” Become broken and poured out for hopeless people. Become a living offering, denying yourself for the salvation and restoration of humanity. Obedience to Jesus’ command is more than looking backward; it’s a present and continuous reapplication of His sacrifice. We don’t simply remember the meal; we become the meal. “
Gods’ abudant grace and mercy is never so apparent to me then when I am in a cycle of learning to walk in new things as He takes me to places of deeper commitment. I’ll never be Jesus, but as I aim to be like Him, God is crazy patient. I’m grateful for that. im also grateful that though God wants our actions to match our hearts. When our steps fail, (as they will- for we all fall short of the glory of God, and even our righteous acts are like dirty rags) He ulitmately looks to our hearts.
There isn’t anything He delights in more than a heart that is in full submission to His, for the glory of His name, and the building of His kingdom.
