In the Old Testament, the Israelites often set up memorial stones to remind themselves and their ancestors of what God had done. I have done this a few times in the past couple years and wanted to share them with you.
My first one was on my first Race in month 8, August, 2015. I was in Malaysia and during an “off day”, I went to a beach. I was getting into the hang of doing ministry in each country and was not spending a whole lot of time investing in my relationship with God. It was here that I was having a conversation with God about where we were at and God was restoring what was lost or neglected. So after talking to Him in the ocean for a while, I came out and took sea shells to make a “Memorial Stone” to remind me of the choice I was making to keep pursuing Him. It says, “Relationship Restored“.
The next one I made was in October 2016, right after I got finished with Squad Leading April Expedition. I was in a transition time and was sitting in the woods alone with God. He asked me what it was that I wanted to do this coming year. My 2 desires were to go home or go back out overseas again. I decided to go back out and I gave God my “Yes” to serving Him, to going back out again and “yes” to giving Him my life. So I wrote out “Yes” with sticks as my “Memorial Stone”.
My last one I made last week here in Western Mongolia. The other day I put out my hands in a receiving manner and asked what He wanted to give me. To my unexpected surprise, He said “Suffering”. It was what He wanted to give me so I accepted it, trusting that He knows what’s best for me. Then a couple days later, I was going on a walk with God and He kept bringing up the subject of suffering, dying to myself and taking up my cross and following Him.
He gave me a picture of Jesus walking with His cross and a bunch of people following Him. Some were also carrying crosses, but some were not. Then they got to a 10ft wide gorge and the people with crosses laid them down and walked across them to the other side. The other people couldn’t continue on following Jesus because they couldn’t cross the gorge.
The interpretation I was getting for it was that their comes a point in our walk with Jesus that we need to be carrying our cross with us to get to deeper intimacy and relationship with Him. He desires for His children to lay down their lives for Him. John 15:13 says, “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” If we want to truly be Jesus’ friend and follow Him, we need to be okay with suffering and laying our life down for Him.
So on my walk, God was drilling this stuff into me and I decided to make a “Memorial Stone” with what I had around me. I found some rocks and wrote out “I Choose Death“. It represents me taking a step towards death to myself and picking up my cross and following Him. I have to choose this daily, but this is my reminder to not forget what He has spoken.
Matthew 10:37-39 says, “Anyone who loves his father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me; and anyone who does not take his cross and follow Me is not worthy of Me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.”
How have you been laying your life down to follow Jesus?
