What’s Love Got to Do With It? OR Luke 14:26 (conclusion)

I thought I might tie up a few of the ideas I’ve shared this week.  I felt like in the first post I was all about sacrificial living and dying to self and as I re-read the second post it sounds a lot more peace and love-ey.  Truly those two flowed as they played out and maybe they did for you as you read those posts, but I want to make sure I share how they played out in my heart.

Over the first few months of this trip I have held on to worries that have to do with life after the Race like, “Where will I live?”, “What kind of job will I have?”, “What kind of woman will I marry?”, “What color will my house be?”, “Will I drive a car or a scooter?”, “What will I name my first son?”.  OK, so maybe some of those were bigger concerns than others.  Until now, the Race has felt very much like a transition thing.  It’s been like I graduated college and now I’m doing this to figure out what life looks like.  And God was starting to show me new parts of myself.  He was making me cool promises about the kind of person I am and the kind of person I will be and I wanted to run at them.  This is where that Peter thing comes from.  Jesus told Peter right away that he would be the rock on which he builds the church and so Peter jumped out on the water, swore his undying love, and cut off a dude’s ear thinking the rest was up to him.  God was showing me stuff about the kind of guy I am and I started looking for ways to color in the rest of the picture.  I had my idea of where he was headed and I thought I needed to get it done quickly, because life is coming.  Now we’re in the thick of month four and I’m realizing that this is life.  That, for this year at least, I’m a real missionary.  This is no youth group trip.  Most of those concerns about life are not for now.  God has me living this life, because he has a lot of telling me who I am to do and very little of the work to be done is mine to do.

So with that Peter spirit I felt like I could be letting go of things to expedite the process.  I felt like my spiritual life was slowing down and I needed to step into God’s work and start picking parts of myself to let go.  Then I remember how I got here in the first place.  The work that has been going on in me happened because I asked myself where God was in my life and I asked God how I could follow him more.  On my way there a lot of my self fell off.  And yes it was hard, and yes it hurt a little, but that wasn’t because of him.  That was all because of the sin the world and the sin scars in my life.  Walking in his will and resting in his arms has been wonderful.

And so now there’s this quotation from a book I’ve been reading: “According to the devil, God rejoices in the suffering of men and, in fact, the whole universe is full of misery because God has willed and planned it that way.” (‘New Seeds of Contemplation’ by Thomas Merton)  I think that’s the kind of thing I was starting to believe.  I was seeing how my team and I had been growing so much out of discomfort and I thought that’s where God wanted us.  Really it’s just that God wants us near him and the getting there requires a lot of our sin self to fall off, and that hurts a little.

Learning to receive love is not easy.  You have to let go of your pride and allow God to grant you grace – getting what you don’t deserve – and mercy – not getting what you do deserve.  That’s not how we like it.  We like to know that everything is ours because we earned it.  The truth is that nothing is ours.  It’s all his, even the gifts he gives us.  They’re all for his glory.  So when he tells me there are all these cool parts of myself that he put in me I have to remember that they are gifts I’ve been given, but they are his to use.  So I wait for the time and opportunity to use them, knowing that he will tell me in his time.  Until I continue to receive from him and praise him all the more for it.

OK, I think that wraps it up.  I love you all.