Following Christ Even When it Hurts

God has me here, planted right where I am, for reasons I may never understand. He’s in charge of my life, my future, my dreams – my everything. When I surrendered to His calling years ago, part of that yielding was saying to Him, “I’ll go wherever you want me to go and do what you want me to do, even if it means walking down paths that are hard and uncomfortable.”

I remember sitting on my bed for hours contemplating the cost of following Christ and what it meant for me – leaving behind a world wrapped around my fleshly desires and interwoven with sin patterns that had nearly destroyed me. But in spite of the destructive nature of my sin, I feared letting it go and embracing something new.
A whole year passed as I wrestled with these thoughts. And no matter how hard I tried to water down the Gospel message, He continued to remind me daily that following him required that I not only count the cost but that I daily be willing to take up my cross. Because I saw how much pain and suffering it brought to his life and to the lives of the disciples, fear often gripped me holding me back. How could I endure such difficulty if, in fact, it came my way? Was He worth it?

I still recall vividly that Easter morning in 1988 when I woke up knowing  it was time – time to let go of the fears and throw myself into the arms of the one who I was certain beyond a shadow of a doubt loved me. I held out my hands and offered up the sacrifice of my life, acknowledging that apart from his redemption I was hopelessly lost and in bondage to sin. I told him that I trusted his death and resurrection to save me from this misery and to redeem my life from the pit. For quite some time before this moment I had the intellectual understanding that Jesus was the only Son of God, perfect in every way, and that his death and resurrection paid the price for my sins. But until that moment, I’d refused to transfer my trust to Him.

There are days when I forget what I promised him that Easter morning, when the skies are blue, circumstances pleasant, and all seems right with my world. Then there are times like today, when I find myself living in a place, a situation that’s completely out of my comfort zone. When in my flesh I would choose something alltogether different. And that’s when I remember the cross and hear Jesus asking, “Will you follow me?" He never said it would be easy, or fun for that matter. He simply promised that He’d go before me and be with me through it all. And that His grace is sufficient; His power perfected in my weakness.

The world wants me to forget the cross, to deny the struggle and live for myself. But I know there's no way to do both. Either I’m living for Christ and following Him or I’m living for the world. I choose Christ even when it hurts.
"Then he said to them all: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me." Luke 9:23

Prayers that Move Mountains

I encounter seasons when prayer comes as naturally as breathing -- when I find myself desiring to talk with God about everything. And then there are times, many of them, when praying becomes so difficult I struggle to find even rote words to say.  Though prayer is simply communication with God,  God uses our prayers to accomplish his purposes on earth.  He doesn’t need them, and our prayers don’t change his decretive will, but he works through them to transform lives and circumstances.

Jesus taught that if we ask anything in his name, according to God’s will, he’ll do it. Using the analogy of casting a mountain into the sea he made his point -- that God is able and willing to accomplish the seemingly impossible through prayers of faith, prayed according to the will of God. When the disciples were praying in the upper room, Peter’s chains were loosed and the prison doors opened. Prayers uttered by Jesus and the apostles brought healing, deliverance and salvation. 

As I walk through the Gospels, following Jesus on an exciting journey from one miracle to another, I watch in awe from a distance as he not only lived out the Word, but as the Word transformed the world and the people in it. And the miraculous didn't end with his death and resurrection. In fact, I put on  walking shoes to journey with Paul and the apostles through Acts and find that I need running shoes instead. Keeping up with their travels, and the miracles they performed as well as the difficulties they encountered along the way is like moving from one climatic event to another with little rest.

Fast forward a couple of thousand years to my own life. Though I  believe that signs and wonders, in the dramatic way they were performed in the NT, have ceased. I don't believe that God has ceased being God! He still has the power to move mountains. And though I may not witness miraculous healings on a daily basis, I see and experience God’s power at work in the world. The impossible becomes possible. A declared atheist embraces Christ. Healing comes to a marriage once deemed hopeless. A loved one receives news that he's cancer free. Friends step out in faith to adopt an orphan. Longtime enemies move toward reconciliation. God amazingly provides for our needs when there’s no logical solution in sight – we’re suddenly offered the “right” job, a raise, and new opportunities. We pray for our church, our communities, our world and we see the miraculous as people come to know Christ, neighbors work together to bring order after a devastating storm, world leaders make a wise decision.

Behind all these actions, people are praying in Jesus' name. We cry out for God to intervene and then often fail to notice when change occurs. Not because we’re indifferent, but because change happens so gradually and in such a different way than we’d imagined that it’s almost unrecognizable. Unless we’re carefully watching each day, we miss the miracle God unleashes through our prayers.  But to the watchful eye, it's like a beautiful sunset unfolding in our sight.

Recently a close friend sent me a video of time lapse photography of nature. The pictures, taken every few minutes over the course of many days, didn’t reveal impressive changes on their own. Yet when melded together in a video they showed an amazing transformation. The fog, which rolled in slowly throughout the day, came to resemble a raging sea when shown in fast forward. The sun, seemingly immoble, danced across the sky.

            I wonder what we’d see if we zeroed in on a specific part of our lives that we’d prayed long and hard about, then placed the scenes together in time lapse motion so that five years was reduced to five minutes or an hour. I think we’d be surprised at the incredible changes.

God is at work in our lives and through our prayers. We can be absolutely certain of his love for us and his ability to move any mountain he chooses. So by faith we persevere in prayer, refusing to focus on the seemingly unchanging circumstances but on the God who is able to change all things. At the right moment, sometimes when we least expect it, he breaks through with the miraculous. Then when we look back, gathering snapshots from the past, we'll  see with clarity the movement, the action, the transformation that was slowly taking place all along.

“Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us,  to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever! Amen.” Eph. 3:20-21

God is Good All the Time

   “God is good all the time.” Whenever I hear the lines to that song, I think of my sister-in-law who determinedly quoted it when she was diagnosed with cancer, reminding herself and others that walking by faith means taking his character at his word rather than allowing circumstances to determine the truth. For someone to be good all the time, it means that there’s not a single element of darkness in them. God is obviously the only one who can claim this title.  In James, we’re reminded that he "doesn’t change like shifting shadows." He’s the same good God today that he was thousands of years ago and he won’t be any different in the future. His goodness permeates his every thought, intention, plan and motive.

    In his goodness he's devised a plan for each of us. It’s easy to fall into the world’s trap of thinking that we’re all creating our own destiny, forging our own way. There are people, even Christians, who draw up future plans that unfold in story-tale fashion with such great similarity to their initial desires we find it fascinating to say the least. Then there are others, like myself, who try as they might to force future plans end up watching them flop to the ground, where they suddenly, almost miraculously, morph into something different.  

   These foiled attempts at determining my future are the ones that continually remind me that God is not only good, but he has a master plan. He’s the one who determines my steps, my true destiny. I still work and pray, set goals and move toward them, but all the while resting in the promise that he will fulfill them according to his will.

     Holding on and letting go – that’s the tension of the Christian life. We’re commanded to live our lives to the fullest, investing ourselves heartily in all that we do. But we're to do it with a lose grip and a surrendered heart that ultimately, like my sister-in-law, proclaims, “Not my will but yours be done.”

     God is good all the time. I’m in the process of holding on and letting go, remembering as I struggle with releasing my desires that God desires only the best for my life. He is faithful, and I can trust him. 

"For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."