— Shout out to JD Small, my pastor, and more importantly, my brother in Christ. Don't know when you'll see this since you're getting ready to lead a group of Grovers to Belize, but I'm sure you'll see it sooner or later. I want you to know how much The Grove have changed my life. Even from 6,000+ miles away, God continues to wreck me through Grove podcasts. Your obedience to create an environment where our generation and the generations to come can experience Jesus impacts more people than you will ever know and reaches far beyond the walls of The Rock Church. You (and all my friends at the Grove whom I love and miss terribly) are a prime example of what someone's life can look like when they devote every breath to knowing and loving Jesus. You are a man for whom the world is not worthy!
igrove.org //shameless Grove plug
Alright, here we go. The last two blog posts have been focused around some stormy waters in my spiritual life. This post is going to wrap those up, hopefully in fewer words than I typically use to convey my blog topics.
Yesterday, my team and I were in Riga, Latvia. I woke up with terrible sinus congestion. I have a history of sinus issues, and frankly, I'm just sick of it (no pun intended). I've been fighting it on and off for about a week now and I'm more annoyed than anything. When I woke up, I was tired, I was tired of fighting and I'll admit that giving up and throwing it all away crossed my mind. I had a hard time focusing on anything all day, I had a hard time being joyful. You know that feeling when you're sick and tired of being sick and tired? That's what I've been struggling with. I'm telling you, folks, my walk with the Lord has been sketchy… but it's not His fault.
On the bus ride back to Saldus, I decided to listen to some new podcasts to keep my mind occupied. The podcasts are a new Grove series called Know Jesus: Luke and are all about knowing and loving Jesus. The first thing the podcast starts with is the voice of a guy I don't know talking about how he suffered from health issues including congestive heart failure, had water around his heart and would probably have to live on oxygen for the rest of his life. 2 months after him, his friends and family praying for him, he is now completely healed. Instead of being joyful, I'm in a bus seat thinking "What the heck? He gets a new heart and I can't get healed of freaking sinus congestion!?" Pretty crappy attitude, huh? In all honesty, I wanted to pitch my tablet out the window and have nothing else to do with that podcast, but something kept me listening and before I knew it, I was listening to God himself…
Is being perfectly healthy more important than knowing ME?
Talk about a kick to face. I sat and listened to the whole rest of that podcast without thinking of any other smart remarks to God. He had put me right in my place, but I never felt condemned… and that's how I knew it was my Father in Heaven. I won't paraphrase the entire podcast, but it focused on Philippians 3:7, where Paul talks about how everything in his life is nothing compared to the exceeding worth of knowing Jesus. That's when the dots started to connect. If I have sinus problems for the rest of my life, does that take precedence over knowing and loving Jesus? Are any of my problems bigger than Jesus? Is anything in this world more important than knowing Jesus?
Yes, I have a faith issue. That is true, and we grow in our faith by understanding God more, and we know and love God more by experiencing Jesus. We experience Jesus by spending time with Him. If you don't spend time with the Lord, you'll never have the faith to stick with Him. Your faith will be lacking, your works will be fruitless and you will wonder why you aren't experiencing God moving mightily on your behalf. It is all about relationship with Jesus and there's no way around it. Knowing Jesus is a process and it takes a long time to know Jesus. You can't be zapped with all the knowledge of Jesus and be done with it. It takes a lifelong process of trying and failing to know Jesus. I failed miserably (look at my last 2 blog posts!). In your walk with God, you're going to fail. But guess what? It's okay to fail because your failure doesn't change God. If you're committed to the process of knowing and loving Jesus, you'll grow in your identity in Jesus, and when you fail, you'll know that you are still a son/daughter of God and that your failure doesn't define you, God does.
I will tell you straight, right now, that this 'fog' I've been in hasn't completely lifted, that I don't have all the answers, that everything still isn't rainbows and butterflies and I writing this now, still fighting a sore throat and stuffed up nose. The difference is that I know that this is going to be a process, and I'm committed to it. I don't care if I have to run the world race for the next 6.5 months with sinus congestion, I will continue to commit my life to knowing and loving Jesus with everything I've got. There's no other option. If you're struggling with hearing God, being joyful, struggling with knowing where you are with God and even feeling like a failure, don't quit. Don't give up. God moving big time in your life takes faith, and having faith takes time. Knowing Jesus takes time. Loving Jesus takes time. Commit to that process.
Philippians 3:7-8 NIV – But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ.
