After my unfortunate run in with the fallen me at the inn door the other day, my thoughts have turned to other characters of the birth tale.  Hoping to pick myself up and dust off the bruised pride, I begin to think, “Wouldn’t it be nice to be the wise man?”

This morning, my kids and I were looking at Philippians chapter 3.

I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.  Philippians 3:14

We talked about how often Paul uses that phrase “press on” and how it imbibed thoughts of training, working out, striving.  (Again with the I Timothy 4:7). In order to truly press, there must be resistance.  We get that from without and from within.  There must also be will and persistence and devotion to the goal and a clear vision of what that goal is and how to move in order to reach it.  

This, to me, best epitomizes a wise man.  

In order for them to find themselves at the feet of a mere Child, a King in hiding, a number of things must have been true.  

One, they must have been looking up.  

They would have never attained their renown had they been looking anywhere else–at self, at circumstances, at others around them, at a grocery list, at a meeting agenda, at a box of memories of days gone by, at their enemies, at their achievements, or at their regrets.  These men were looking in the right direction, following a map of heavenly making.

Wise as they were, they didn’t have all the answers.  Secondly then, they must have been humble.  

It might have begun with a late night conversation among friends.  A casual observance of something new, something uncharted, something only someone with discerning eyes would ever notice at that distance. But rather than simply note that it was interesting, they followed their observation with action. They took a moment to step aside and investigate.  Just like Moses at the burning bush, they moved in action toward that which seemed to be calling their names.  

You know Jesus was a toddler by the time they got there.  It took them time.  Add to that long and arduous thought that they really had no idea where they would end up until they were mere miles from Him.  A third thing we know of them:  despite their unanswered questions, the length of their struggle, the tiredness of their bones or the resistance that pressed them back toward the familiarity and comforts of home, they persisted in search of a King.  

There will come a day when Christ will be very easy to find, all eyes will rest on Him and He will ride on clouds through the air.  This was not that day.  The One they searched for was tucked away in a tiny town, in an innocuous home, with no fanfare, no golden halo with neon arrows.  

They had to be willing to press on.

No one ever fell into holiness.

It takes work.

Fourth, they had all the resources the world had to offer, but the greatest thrill worth striving for couldn’t be bought.  The one thing they hung their hats on, the one story they’d lay on their beds at night reliving would be the moment when they knelt before a Child King who all the heavens had announced in a blaze of glory one night.  The prize was more than worth it.

A final truth:  they came before the King, they didn’t just talk but they moved, they offered Him their time and their possessions, they knelt at His feet, they grasped the enormity of that moment, and then they went home.  What of that story would ever make them think, “Hey we’ve done something monumental here!  People will be talking about this for…EVER!”  

Nothing.  In their own limited vision, they probably just thought they were the most blessed guys on the planet, never dreaming that by making their offering, moving in faith toward a King they knew had come, they would be shaping history, contributing to the Kingdom of God in a way that would be known to countless generations.

You never know what might come from moving toward the King.

The impact of our lives, our place in His story is beyond our ability to see or understand, we have to have something more within our realm of possibility.  We have to have a point of reference for who we are, where we’re going, what our lives are meant to be.  

And so we find ourselves back at number one.  With eyes heavenward, we cease striving for all that is available and we, with our humble offerings in hand, press on toward the kneeling bench at the feet of a King.

I could be a wise man.  But it won’t just happen.

My husband has a very firm “no Christmas music before Thanksgiving” rule.  

I love, love, love Christmas music.  I see the need for the rule.

And so today is day one.  Christmas music echoes through the house and I’ve already found myself crying on my knees as the words pierce my heart with aching accuracy, ripping through all that I so successfully suppress at other times.  

The song is Just a Girl by Brandon Heath.  It’s quite beautiful.

I taught this morning on Gideon from Judges chapters six and seven.  Throughout this week I had to deal with myself and some realities I came to see as I looked at his life and his incredible faith.  There are parts of me that are content where I am with the Lord at times, where I’m ok with halting the progress of my faith.   There appear to be places of depth with the Lord I’m not even drawn to go actually.  I didn’t like this reality.  I like thinking that I’d both live and die for Him.  I like thinking that I will never settle for less than all that He has for me and desires of me.  I like thinking I never falter in my striving to be more every day than what I’ve seen myself to be today.

But liking it doesn’t make it so.  

I discovered parts of me that don’t mind being extreme or fanatical, but there are limits within other parts.  There are some extremes that just don’t appeal to me now.  There are even some places I’m not drawn to go even with the Lord at my side.  

There is much of myself I don’t want to see and may have never looked upon before.  John Ortberg calls us all rag-dolls.  Too often we see ourselves more like china dolls. I have this week dealt with these truths and only now am I in a position to change them.  

Now back to Just a Girl.  

It’s about the innkeeper.  I’m the innkeeper.  

God Himself has knocked on my door and I was too busy, too full, too used to looking at life through the lens of business and to-do’s and self-sufficiency to notice that the God of All Creation has stepped into my world.  

First I listened to Pentatonix Hallelujah.  I stood and raised my hands and cried out my own broken hallelujah to the King who loves me in all my fallenness.  Such is the duality of life.  Some days I’m among the angels singing hosanna’s in the open fields and some days I’m the innkeeper lamenting the foolish turning away of my Savior and friend.  

Lord may I not be too busy for you in this season.  May I not pass up an encounter with my Loving God in favor of …anything–busy-ness, tradition, self-seeking, pride, rest, desire, comfort, ignorance, short-sightedness, pick your poison.  May it not be said of me that when the season passes I must say, “What have I done, He’s just a babe.  I could have…”

Instead may we all be shepherds: leaving sheep, discarding social etiquette, chancing being rude and turned away, not caring that the timing is wrong or that the whole story doesn’t even make sense.  

Toss tradition, leave behind social acceptance, resist the pull of societies demands, stand expectantly upon your doorstep awaiting the arrival of the Child King for a visit.

Do Christmas differently.  

Just sit right back and I’ll tell the tale…of two slightly different men.  

(Anybody else still singing Gilligan’s Island?)

In keeping with the amazing, incomprehensible continuity and usefulness of God’s Word, I have a little story for you from a genealogy in early Genesis.  II Timothy 3:16-17, it is indeed ALL useful!

It all hinges on two tiny words, they make an eternity of difference:

Terah took his son Abram, his grandson Lot, and his daughter-in-law Sarai, and together they set out from Ur to go to Canaan.  But when they came to Haran, they settled there.     Genesis 11:31

Now’s a good time to check your maps, the ones you rarely notice in the back of every Bible.  Check the first one.  Only one name from the above verse is listed on that map, but two men began that journey.  

Ok, I’ll show you.

Ur was a beautiful place, very near where the Garden of Eden had been (Genesis 2:14).  Terah and select members of his family left this paradise headed for…where?  The verse tells us.  They were headed for Canaan, somewhere they had never been, nor had anyone else they likely knew.  They were willing to move, they were willing to leave behind some lovely things, they were willing to do something their ancestors had refused to do despite God’s commands to do so (Genesis 9:1).  They put forth some effort.  Good enough?  

This isn’t a story about good versus evil, about sin versus water walking.  This is a story about two men who had to choose between good, better, and best.  This is the story of us.  

Terah chose the good, he chose to pick up and leave, but at some point he looked around and decided that where he was looked quite nice and where he was headed was daunting and unknown.  Good seemed quite good enough, and best was just plain frightening.  Notice the map, what lies between Haran and Canaan?  It was such a mighty river that in Genesis it is often simply referred to as the River.  Various maps chart their course differently, some have them crossing the River a time or two before arriving in Haran some never have them crossing it at all.  The story is still the same, the excuse is still flimsy.  “I’ve crossed that River before, I have no interest in going there again!”  “I’ve never crossed anything so frightening and cumbersome, I can’t possibly wade into there!” 

The gods were the same in Haran as in Ur, the moon god.  His lesser gods in one hand and the One True God in the other, he walked into newness with them both.  But when the time came to leave the moon god behind and walk with God alone, Terah figured he’d gone quite far enough (Joshua 24:2-3 lest you feel I’m being too harsh on the old guy).

Don’t forget that Terah was no young man.  He was old and tired and Haran was so nice and inviting.  Who would want to leave the fertile metropolis for an unknown world of mystery and fears?

Someone to whom God had promised greatness on the other side.

In the life of the one who gets to walk among God’s promises, there has to be a point where you lay down your lesser gods, where you refuse to settle for half measures and halfway efforts, where you dare to go where you–or possibly anyone–has been before, because you believe God when He says there’s something better on the other side.  

Could we live a ‘decent’ life in Haran?  Maybe, maybe not.

Could we live in the fullness of God’s promises in Haran?  Not a chance.

What’s in your River?  Of what does your Promised Land consist?

Name your fears, refuse to settle, dwell instead on promises, hike up your pant legs and step into the waters!

God has offered us the best, BUT we so often settle for plain old good on the safe side.

We are told that Terah died at 205.  That’s when his body died, but I believe that process started far sooner.  

Wake up, oh sleeper!  Rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you!  Ephesians 5:14

Like so many today, Terah turned into the walking dead.  A little piece of us dies every time we say no to the lives we have been called to live, the adventures we were made to endeavor.  Terah may have died the day he arrived in Haran.  He may have looked out over the thriving city to the north and the raging River to the south and let all his future die at that moment when settling looked better and the River looked too wide and deep to forge.  Maybe he looked too long with human eyes and he stopped believing in that which he could not see.  

Be a water wader.  Don’t let unknowns and half measures and mud pies and ‘good’ things steal from you the promises that lie on the other side of full and complete obedience!  Don’t leave promises unexplored and rivers uncharted.  You know when the Israelites crossed into the Promised Land, you know how that story goes?  The river didn’t just pile up as they slept, dry and ready when they were.  No!  Before the waters ever cleared, the priests had to put their feet in it!  They had to begin, they had to move in faith, they had to be willing to wade in the water before God revealed that He would not require them to! (Joshua 3:15) Don’t settle for a half fulfilling, decent life.  He died an extravagant and brutal death, not so that you could live a mediocre life, but so that you could be FULL!  

The other man here tied up his robes and went for a swim in the land of Promise.  Abram wouldn’t settle and he received all of the blessings of his obedience. His story we know–it’s the one that follows the course of the truly faithful.

Wade in the water, explore the promises on the other side, never settle for going halfway, follow in fullness, and watch the Lord deliver you to the greatness of the Promised Land.  

Then Manoah took a young goat, together with the grain offering, and sacrificed it on a rock to the Lord.  And the Lord did an amazing thing while Manoah and his wife watched: As the flame blazed up from the altar toward heaven, the angel of the Lord ascended in the flame.     Judges 13:19-20

Gideon’s offering in Judges 6 was a tough one to make, it was a family bull when his family was starving.  Abraham’s offering in Genesis 22 was bordering on impossible, laying down his promised son.  Paul’s offerings were innumerable and steeped in suffering (Acts 9:16).  Elijah’s offering in I Kings 18 bore his very life blood on it’s flames.  

It is in the offering of Manoah, the father of the judge Samson, that I’m moved today.  I believe there is a truth in his story that speaks to the offerings of saints through all the ages and that speaks encouragement, excitement, and persistence to me.  

Manoah and his wife put their offering on the altar.  They laid down before the Father something of value, something they felt led to relinquish, something that- in their futile human ability- they had to give to Someone who needs nothing.  

We have opportunities to do this every day.

In all of life, there is a rock on which we must choose.  Harsh situations, hard people, sacrificial callings, testing challenges, disappointing moments, unexpected hardships, all have their own rocks.  We have to choose: will I pick this one up, add it to my load and attempt to trudge on under the burden; wilI I cast it at the one who brought me to this place, hoping to spread my hurt on to them; will I lay my offering upon it and watch for the Lord to set ablaze what little I have to give.

Manoah laid his offering upon the rock of a difficult and burdensome calling, to raise a chosen son who would be Israel’s deliverer from the Philistines, and to do so with utmost purity.  Under the weight of such a call, he made the choice to use the rock as an altar.

Here’s where it gets really good.  With that offering, “the Lord did an amazing thing while” they watched.  

As followers of an Almighty God, we do not need to carry the burden of doing amazing things ourselves.  We are just the ones who bring the offerings.

In such a dramatic display of unfairness though, we do the smallest part of the work and the One who does the most blesses us for it!  The Lord did the amazing thing and He did it as they watched.  They enjoyed the benefit of seeing the miraculous.  They laid down their offering and stood aside to watch and the Lord gave them a show they would dream of for the rest of their lives.  

On the mission field recently, I laid my offering on the rock.  Now I must trust that “amazing things” will be done with what has been offered.  Sometimes we see glimpses of the blaze, and sometimes we must simply trust that there’s a great show going on somewhere in the flames.

You do your part.  Choose to use the rocks in your life as altars on which to make an offering to a God who can do something amazing with them.  Lay it down and stand in rapt attention as you await the miraculous thing that God might do with what you’ve brought.  

When the Lord first called me to quit my office job and come home to invest more time in ministry to the Kingdom, He wasted no time in eradicating all that didn’t fit that new life–obligations, desires, volunteerism, time-wasters, nearly everything on which I spent any amount of time.  He cut and He cut and He cut.  

So when He started having me say yes to things again, I was a little thrown off.  I was loving my days spent almost entirely with Him alone, the relaxed nature of my schedule and obligations.  Then, all the sudden, I kept hearing Him say yes over and over and my calendar began to get rather full once again.  

Over the course of those next months, I came to learn that God didn’t intend for this to be a long season with an empty schedule, just a long season of a schedule empty of fruitless things.  I learned a ton in those months.  Prior to that season, I had this thought somewhere in me that God was pleased with what I had offered and when I was done, we could both sit and bask in the glow of that sacrificial offering and have Him tell me what a great thing I’d done.  I wasn’t wrong, I was just shortsighted.  

If all I have to give Him today is a few minutes or a meager offering, He does indeed delight in my gift.  He does indeed see me as the apple of His eye, and He is indeed pleased with my sacrifice.  But.  But what I hadn’t realized before is that He doesn’t have a cap on how many offerings He will accept and be pleased with.  While He was pleased with my all-day-Sunday offering and my daily moment, while He did love the two-hours-a-month and the whatever whatever I laid at His feet, I had not tapped out His love and delight at what I might offer Him.  

Is God pleased when we offer Him our time and our resources?  Yes, He loves to know that we love Him more than those things.  He also blesses those offerings, returning to us all we’ve first offered to Him (no, not necessarily in the financial sense, but usually in something of greater value than that.)  Here’s what became so clear to me: if I give Him my Sunday, He’ll take and bless it.  If I give Him my Monday, He’ll take and bless it.  If I give Him my weeks, my hours, my calendar, my every day, He will take and bless it. The more we offer Him, the more He will take.  The more we allow Him to take, the more He will fill to the max with life-giving, satisfying, and productive things.  

This is a picture of my church…one of them.  I meet with other ladies weekly in this room and pray.  Last week, one of the ladies got there early to set up our table and chairs.  There was a bigger table already set out.  Her first thought was that this table was too big for us, she should change it for one of the smaller ones.  She didn’t.  God filled the bigger one instead.

Sometimes in life we have to realize that if we will just set a bigger table, God may have plans to fill it.

If we’ll just offer Him a bit more than we think He wants, can use, or would like, He will take that sacrifice, burn it on the altar, and light up the whole world in it’s glow.  

Set the bigger table.

A new command I give you; love one another.  As I have loved you, so you must love one another.   By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.                         John 13:34-35

I had a conversation with an Asian unbeliever once a number of years ago.  I don’t remember all that much about what or when or whom, but one thing I have never forgotten.  America carries the mantle of a ‘Christian nation.’ We also celebrate and endorse by our devotion, investment, and interest, certain individuals who may or may not exemplify our own beliefs or convictions.  In this conversation, it became apparent that the individual believed that some of the celebrities our country tout most highly must be Christians because why else would a Christian nation endorse them so whole-heartedly.  His vision of Christian faith:  Britney Spears.  Could be any number of other souls these days, heaven help us, it’s more like the Cyrus girl now.  

His world was watching the lives of the people we endorse and assuming that, as Christians, they reflected the morals and convictions of believers as a whole.  Imagine his surprise when I managed to keep my clothes on, never appeared drunk or disorderly, and didn’t require a ‘bleep’ button to sensor my speech.  

I drove the same Honda Civic for nearly 15 years.  During almost the entirety of those years, I had something in the glove box: a little metal icthus- a Jesus-fish- that was designed for the back of my car.  It never made it that far.  I’m not a great driver now, but I used to be truly awful.  I was known to read the Wall Street Journal on my way to class after work every night.  Speed limits were merely suggestions and other drivers simply had no idea what their cars were capable of.  And I knew that if all someone knew of me was how I drove, they might not have a very good opinion.  I also knew that I didn’t need to be dragging that little fish down into the gutter with me.  (I now humbly admit that I do not have such a fish on my current automobile either.)

My mind is something of a mass of images that speak to this point.  My daughter loves emojis.  There are some with monkeys covering their ears, eyes, or mouths.  There’s an older song that features a child singing “be careful little eyes what you see….”  I think of young men who teach at my kids school who are fun and funny and jovial and kind.  And God-fearing.  I think of my daughter who just loves some of the high schoolers who come and hang out in the lower school classrooms and treat the younger kids with kindness and respect.  I think of the professional athletes who have and who have not represented themselves, our country, or their families well.  I think of those whose vision never seems to reach as far as their own noses, failing to see the many eyes just outside their line of vision, eyes watching them so intently.  

All these things share this thought in common:  All the World is Watching.  

Our lives are not solitary events of little or no consequence on the surrounding world.  We are all in this together and what we do is fodder for little eyes and a map for those who will follow.  

Around the world, unbelievers have been led down a winding road of Christian representation.  They’ve seen torment and anxiety, hate and discord, philanthropy and kindness, generosity and love.  And they’ve all born the same mantra, “It’s what Christ would do.”  What are they to think?  

I don’t see how anyone could come face to face with my Jesus and ever believe Him unkind, unloving, or undesirable.  

And yet much of the world holds just that opinion of His image bearers and namesake.

A friend commented to me today, “They all react to kindness and form opinions of Christians from the interactions they have with us.”  History and propaganda, abuse, strife, and misrepresentation, these things have given the world a rather jaded view of believers.  I see only one way to set that right.

They will know us by our love.

I may not be able to change an entire nation or people group’s opinion of my God, but I can indeed challenge the opinion of the one soul I will encounter on the street today. I can attempt to make right that which has gone so terribly wrong.  

We’ve been appointed “ambassadors of His love” (again my friend’s beautiful wording) and that is a high and lofty calling toward which we ought to daily strive.

You did not chose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit–fruit that will last.                                     John 15:16

Dedicated to DD, whose words of encouragement have sent my heart soaring today.

I’m convinced that many believers today go through their lives attempting to pry open pickle jars, shimmy tight windows, do the spiritual heavy lifting of life like Popeye without his good stuff.  Untapped strength.

If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there’ and it will move.  Nothing will be impossible for you.              Matthew 17:20

We’re told we can move mountains. Do I really have the muscles for that?

This Popeye needs her spinach for that kind of grunt work.

If I can but build the muscles of my spiritual faith, nothing will be impossible for me.  Mountains will move, lives will be altered, and, in boldness, courage, and conviction, I will walk unflinching through the fires of a storm-filled life.

This kind of faith, this kind of living, is available to me and yet I sit in fear of…so much;  my kids protection, the preservation of my ‘image,’ the guarantee of my freedoms and my ease.  Some mountains seem immovable and my faith proves so very small for the task.  

The kind of faith needed to cast aside mountains must be fully bounding, it must soar above the cares that so tempt my anxieties and human limitations, it must spring high above all the realities on which my eyes are so continually called to feast.  It must defy my sight.  (2 Corinthians 5:7)

The faith and love that spring from hope…          Colossians 1:5

For my faith to soar, the springboard of hope must give it flight.

Know God’s promises that serve as a solid foundation for our lives.  

Believe He is faithful to fulfill every one.  (That’s what biblical hope is.)

Then walk confidently amid the storms of your days knowing on what foundation your feet find their rest.

Hope is the spiritual spinach that gives muscle to our faith.

God has made promises to all believers in His Word, from His promise to work all things for the good of those who love Him (Romans 8:28) to His promise to hear us when we call to Him (Jeremiah 29:13). He also makes promises to each of us specifically, from the particulars of the doing of “good works” He has called each of us to do to any number of day-to-day or big picture promises He’s laid on your heart to claim.

The more firmly we believe Him, the more assured we are in His faithfulness and ability to stand by His Word, the more solid our biblical hope.  From this hope–not wishing-well-pipe-dreams but solidly grounded assurance–springs forth the faith to move mountains.

Explore the promises of God.  Scour His Word for solid bricks that may serve as your sure foundation.  Discover the riches and power that are available to all who believe.  Hope in these things and on that may our faith soar.

I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened that you may know the hope to which He has called you, the riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints, and His incomparably great power for us who believe.           Ephesians 1:18-19

♬ “I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that He is able, to keep that which I’ve committed unto Him until that day.” ♬

    Train yourself to be godly.                                                                                                    1 Timothy 4:7

The pursuit of holiness is not a downhill stroll on a pleasant afternoon, an easy Sunday jaunt upon which one can hardly help but progress. It is an uphill traverse upon treacherous terrain!  It’s a workout!  

You cannot advance along this path in whimsical folly.  You will not one day awake to find you’ve tumbled into it’s tidy end.  This journey is one of blood and grit!  Of muscle and sinew, of sweat and determination, of persistence, effort, and down-right force of will!

Look around you!  All of life today belies the notion that we could ever ‘fall’ into holiness.  Without the work, THIS is what we become:  degenerate, immoral, loathsome, angry, selfish, lazy, conceited, shallow, foolish, vain, petty, deluded, and self-seeking!  

That path, that’s the one we stroll merrily, carelessly upon.  

Something more, something better, something more lofty, noble, worthwhile, and eternal, now that, that takes work.

Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed.  Simon and his companions went to look for him, and when they found him, they exclaimed: “Everyone is looking for you!”  Jesus replied, “Let us go somewhere else–to the nearby villages–so I can preach there also.  That is why I have come.”                 Mark 1:35-38

This story explains exactly what it is that is wrong with believers today.

Got your attention?

The heading for this section in my Bible says Jesus Prays in a Solitary Place.  We’ve already come to the first area of faultiness among so many of us these days.  The example we have from Christ is one of great discipline.  Just in the heading we see Him showing us that in order to live a life of design, we must be disciplined to do that which WILL NOT come naturally.  The one discipline you can easily pick out, prayer.  But did you know that solitude is also a discipline?  How well do you handle moments of quiet and solitude?  When everyone leaves you alone in the house, what is your gut reaction?

Do a little test for me, next time you get in the car alone, turn off the radio, get off the cell phone, and see how long it takes before you are itching for another way to spend the time.

If you want to hear your Lord talking, you might need to find a quiet place to listen.

Moving beyond the heading: ‘very early’, this one hurts me.  I’ve been through seasons where getting up before the crack of dawn worked great for me.  I’m not in that season now.  I’m a night owl, that I can do.

Christ is demonstrating a point here.  That which you deem important to do, you make sacrifices in order to get done.  You willingly give over things, not just things that you want, but things all of life around us tells us we need.  You know what the truth of the matter is, Man does not live by bread alone.  (Matthew 4:4) God can make us rested without our closing our eyes, He can fill our bellies without our eating a bite, and He can keep us healthy and fruitful without our worrying our little heads over those things.  He knows what we need and is good at providing it.  (Luke 12:22-34)

The next part is where we all seem to fall apart.  Picture it, Peter comes frantically searching for Jesus, astounded that He would run off at such a time as this.  There is a following, there are people who need Him and sickness waiting to be eradicated and demons to be banished.  There’s a lot to do and they don’t have time for all this silly sitting on mountainside business.  Quiet moments staring at the clouds, eyes closed in silent reverie, who has time for that!  Notice the urgency.  They search for Him, Peter “exclaims”, his cry ends in an exasperated exclamation point.  

How would you have responded if you were in the picture?  

Your answer shouldn’t be hard to find.  Look at real life today.  Aren’t you the Jesus in this picture a hundred times a day? Someone needs you!  Something needs to be done.  Someone is searching frantically for you.  There are things to do and people to assuage and please and meals to cook and eat and meetings to go to and work to complete and service to conduct and hands to shake and connections to make and chores to complete and lists to write up and studies to conduct and errands to run and exasperation to feel!  

And then we come to what so many of us are missing so many endless days on end.  

Jesus says no.  

There is a need, there are people, there is sickness and demonic possession and urgency.  But He says no to them all.  How did He know that that wasn’t where He needed to be?  If you just look at the situation logically, who wouldn’t think it was the place to go.  

Now do you see how it all fits together?  Only by having His moments of solitary prayer was Christ able to determine where He needed to be.  

There will always be something vying for our time and attention.  There will always be need.  There will always be someone seeking you out.  It is only the Lord who know which needs to leave unmet, which are waiting for someone else to meet them, and which are on your list to tackle.

That is why I have come.

Why is it that you have come?  What are you uniquely here to do?  Is it to answer the frantic calls by countless people with selfish or hidden or even good-hearted requests?  Is it to follow the exclamatory cries of every soul needing healing and help?  Or might it be you’ve come for some reason you never even stopped looking logically long enough to find.  God often defies logic.  And somehow the plans still end up great.  

I don’t want to be logical.  I don’t want to be led around my own life by frantic voices pulling me toward the latest and loudest need.  I don’t want to take within myself other people’s anxieties and inabilities to slow down and trust.  I don’t want to spend all my energy chasing needs I might not be the best one to meet.  I don’t want to pour myself out for that which is temporal.  

It starts with checking out how Jesus managed to do that (there’s no better example of how it’s done!).  And then attempting to do the same.  

Be still, be quiet, be disciplined.  Let Him fill you in on why you’ve come.   

There are a handful of issues that I believe create the greatest barrier to belief in Christ in the United States.  One of those is brought out in the words of Romans 4.

Now when a man works, his wages are not credited to him as a gift, but as an obligation.  However, to the man who does not work but trusts God who justifies the wicked, his faith is credited as righteousness.                                                                                                                                       Romans 4:4-5

We naturally distrusts that which is free.  

Many years ago, I was visiting a jewelry store in Colorado.  I was wearing a t-shirt that I still own.  The young man behind the counter made a startling and searching statement that caught me off guard and to this day it stands as one of my greatest regrets and failures.  

                   This is the front.

                      And this is the back.

He said, “How is Jesus simple?  I don’t see that at all.”  I can’t remember what I told him, but it wasn’t anywhere near the truth his heart was longing to hear.

One day my husband came home and I had put a word on the wall outside the glass shower in our bathroom.

It had actually been a demonstration by a friend of mine who was selling those wall cling things about how easy they were to apply.  I found it fitting for other reasons.

Life is really much more simple than we make it out to be.  The idea that anything could be free or easy makes it seem cheap and not worth having.  Think about that.  “If it isn’t worth working for, it isn’t worth having.”  “If it comes cheap, it probably is.”  These are the mantras that Americans grow up being taught. And so when grace and freedom and life and fullness are offered at the bargain basement price of faith alone, our minds just can’t comprehend that level of simplicity.  

Once we have relinquished ourselves to believing that righteousness might be free–and only then because we know it wasn’t free to Him who offers it–we still have the obstacle of all the promises that stretch so far beyond merely entrance into eternity with Him.  “Yes, He may have offered me admission, but that just gets me in the door.  If I want an audience with Him, fullness in Him, a mansion in that eternity, surely that will cost me.”  

Life really is more simple than we allow ourselves to believe.  

Usefulness, purposefulness, fullness, they are all more simple than our minds can fathom.

It is as simple as this: If today I make myself wholly available to Him, He can and will make something beautiful of it.  

I don’t have to understand how or why.  I don’t need to know what it’s going to look like in advance.  I don’t need the answer to every question or a detailed itinerary.  I simply need to trust that He has all of that and then some.  It isn’t what we’re taught to believe, but it is what is ultimately true. It cannot be earned or bought.  It cannot be deciphered or created, it cannot be forced or manipulated.  It can only be freely received as the gift one cannot otherwise possess. It is that simple.  

Salvation, fullness, purpose, life.  While costly to Him, only come free to us.