Kingdom Living

What is a missionary? I have asked myself that many times in the past few years. In my quest to fully understand, I need to release my pre-conceived notions as I seek to know God more and understand His purposes for me.

The following is a quote from the July 2nd passage in Oswald Chambers’ My Utmost For His Highest.

“Discipleship means personal, passionate devotion to a person — our Lord Jesus Christ. There is a vast difference between devotion to a person and devotion to principles or to a cause. Our Lord never proclaimed a cause — He proclaimed personal devotion to Himself. To be a disciple is to be a devoted bondservant motivated by love for the Lord Jesus. Many of us who call ourselves Christians, are not truly devoted to Jesus Christ.”

When I ask myself, “What is a missionary?”, I come to believe that a missionary is a disciple. And as the quote above says, “To be a disciple is to be a devoted bondservant motivated by love for the Lord Jesus.” So what does it mean to be “motivated by love for the Lord Jesus Christ”?

God is Love, when we know who He is, we are motivated by Him to love as He would. I suppose I have found that loving God and being motivated by that love doesn’t always mean that I am caught up in “a cause”, but that I am caught up in Him and motivated by Him, who is Love. This brings about many things that aren’t about “a cause”. Mainly, it is about people, the body of Christ, and learning to love one another in that body so we can become effective in sharing that love to those who haven’t yet come into the body of Christ.

Have you ever sat in church or some other “family group” and wondered to yourself, “who are all these people around me”? Have you ever really longed to know them and love them? I know I have. I believe that is what we are called to do in the body of Christ. This is what being motivated by Love (God) is all about.

What did Love (God in the person of Jesus Christ) do when He walked on this earth? He demonstrated who He was (Love) by genuinely loving and knowing people, especially the 12 disciples, so that when He died to save us all, those who experienced that genuine love from Him would spend their lives loving others. In this way, those others would know their salvation (Jesus).

This is what I believe living for Jesus should be all about, not about a cause or what I am doing for God. But what God is doing through His body as we love one another and our neighbors.

So how does this happen? As we begin to receive God’s love as He seeks us, we will begin to desire a loving relationship with Him and consequently we will desire loving relationships with those around us. Through these relationships, we will begin to understand who God really is and what Kingdom Living is all about.

Getting the hang of this, eventually!!

I just wanted to let you all know that if you’ve been reading this blog, thanks!! I’ve enjoyed the process so far. I just realized that I can reply to comments, by simply commenting as well!! I spent a bit of time going back to all the comments that have been posted and I responded to those. So, if you have any desire to go back to those and read them, feel free. Sorry it took me so long to figure that out! I’m getting the hang of it, however!!

Also, I’m still in the process of constructing this site to be one of interest. So, stay tuned!! My blogger guru friend, John, is filling me in on all the details. It will just take me time to process it and figure out how to get everything I can picture being here… on the page!! Pray for me!!

Thanks for all your visits and comments thus far!! God is good!

Christopher was listening!

I happen to teach Sunday School for elementary kids. If you have never looked at the world through the eyes of a kiddo, I encourage you to do so. Today, the lesson was about Samson, and Christopher was listening.

We have a class that ranges from kindergarten all the way through the 7th grade. It is always interesting for us as teachers to adapt the lesson for all the ages of kids. One of the most refreshing parts is to hear the responses and interaction from all the students. I must confess that the kindergarteners make me smile the most. You never really know what they are thinking or picking up, or quite what they are going to say.

Today, our Bible verse was from Psalm 119:2, “Blessed are they who keep His statutes and seek Him with all their heart.” I proceeded to go into an explanation of what this verse means to us. I talked about what it means to be blessed and to seek God with all our heart and how we are blessed when we follow what God tells us. I explained the word statutes and on and on… Somewhere in the midst of all this, Christopher raises his hand and when I called on him, he said, “I have a hole in my pocket.” Just like that, that’s all he said. I stopped and said, “Wow, Christopher, do things fall through the hole?” With wide-eyes, he nodded and smiled sweetly as I told him he should let his mom know so she could sew it up. I smiled back at him, on my face and in my heart, as we moved on.

Later on, I was beginning to share the story of Samson and how he was born with a promise and a blessing. As he kept that promise, he was used by God and was blessed. When he broke that promise, however, he lost his blessing until he repented and then God used him again for his original purpose. In another attempt to have the kids understand obedience and blessing, I asked this question from the lesson: “What might happen if a person didn’t follow the instructions while baking a cake?” It was then that I knew that Christopher had been listening the whole time. Because he raised his hand to answer my question. I called on him and he said, “They wouldn’t be blessed.”

Again, I smiled deeply. Not because he had misunderstood the question, but because I had underestimated his answer. He was absolutely right and he had fully understood the Bible verse and the lesson. If I do not follow the instructions while baking a cake, I will not have the full blessing of eating the cake. As far as that was concerned, we could close the book and go home!! Christopher was listening and he got it! I learned a few things as well, I love when that happens!!

No wonder God tells us to have a child-like faith. We tend to complicate things as adults. I love kids!

Blinders and Healing

A few years ago, I had to get my dog, Sam, neutered. I love my dog. He’s a mutt that I brought home from Central America. He’s not with me right now, but one day we will be reunited! I was going through a time of healing when Sam got neutered, and God taught me an interesting lesson through Sam’s ordeal…

I brought my happy-go-lucky dog back from Honduras who had never known a fence or a leash. He was getting used to those two things in his new-found American home, when he came face to face with an American tradition for dogs… I never wanted him to meet that knife, but it was his inevitable fate…

He had the operation, we came home and I thought all would be fine. Well, not so… he ended up trying to “heal” his own wound and licked out the stitches in the process. As you can imagine, the wound swelled up. I had to take him back to the Vet and they put an “e-collar” on his neck, which is the equivalent of a lamp shade, in essence, with the purpose of keeping him from licking the wound since he would no longer be able to reach it with the lamp shade in the way. To add insult to injury, they made me keep him in his kennel as well, so he wouldn’t run around and aggravate the wound. This and more went on for about two weeks. I took him back to the Vet twice in these two weeks. Eventually, he did actually heal and all is well today…. But oh the lesson that was learned in the process…

One day, I went out to care for him and God opened my eyes to a truth He was trying to teach me in my own life. I let Sam out of his kennel to move around a bit and I just watched him. First of all, he was very disoriented. He had this big lamp shade on his head that he didn’t understand, and he wasn’t quite sure how to respond. Here I was, seeing it all, with a picture from beginning to end of what was going on. I knew what happened in the operation and why he needed to be neutered. I knew why he needed the medicine, the e-collar, and why he needed to stay in the kennel. I also knew just about how long all this should last before he would be well again. I understood that he had to endure all of this in order to get to the point of full healing…. I had the full picture in view.

That being nice for me, from Sam’s perspective, did not change his situation at that moment in time. From his point of view, as he looked up at me, all he knew was that life had drastically changed. It had changed so suddenly and he didn’t understand any of the full picture that I was seeing. All he could see was this lamp-shade blinder on his neck and he was disoriented to the point of, “What do I do???”, “How do I proceed?”. As he came out of the kennel, all cramped and uncomfortable, he knew he had to go to the bathroom, but he almost forgot how, under the circumstances. With this blinder on, he couldn’t go in the way he was used to. This made him just stand there, immobile, for a few minutes. Then he began to bump around into things, trying to figure out how to proceed with this obstacle around his neck.

As the days went on, I saw more and more of myself in Sam, and God in the position I was in as Sam’s owner. I was dealing with my own “life-wound” at that moment in time, that needed to heal. God began to show me that He had drastically changed my life too, and for the moment I was a bit immobile, trying to figure out how to move forward with this new situation. God knows how long it will take for our wounds to heal. He also knows that without an “e-collar” blinder, we would try to heal our own wound by “licking it to death”, only resulting in truly making it worse. So the blinder stays put for that season, for our own good.

As time went on, Sam did become a bit more used to the blinder, a bit more able to function. Each day, I would take the blinder off and let him go to the bathroom, which was interesting as well. God does the same with us, He gives us glimpses of life restored – after healing is done and we react in different ways. As soon as we go to the “wound”, however, he puts the blinders back on, for our own good; just as I did with Sam.

Funny, at the end, when I finally took the lamp-shade off for good, it was a freedom call for Sam. At first, he was a bit disoriented; then he ran and jumped for joy. When he finally stopped and sat down for a moment, his nose went to the wound to check it out… only to find that it was completely healed and there was no more need for his futile attempts to heal it on his own. At that point, he left it alone and did not lick it anymore. He was healed and free.

God is the same with us. One day, He will take the blinders off and we will run and jump for joy! We will also be pleasantly surprised that our “wound” is healed and we don’t have to make futile attempts to heal it on our own. What a profound and mighty God we serve, that He heals us in ways we cannot imagine while all along protecting us from ourselves!!

Synergy

I was reading this morning in Romans chapter 12…

“So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life — your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life — and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for Him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.”

When I think about what this means to my everyday life, I think of how selfish I am and how I always want to do things my own way. I believe God wants us to just give up our own agenda, and what our culture expects of us, and give it all to Him… when we are at our weakest, He is at His best. When I realize that I cannot do the intended thing for the day, that’s when He does it in me. My faith is strengthened when I read the passage above. I realize that by giving it all to Him, I am finding more of Him alive in me. Which brings me to synergy…

I heard it explained once that synergy is 1+1=11, two or more people coming together to make more than what they could have been individually. Synergy is bonding to be yet stronger for the bond. We do this by having deep respect for one another, a common vision, and committment to that vision.

I don’t find this concept in our culture. I find die-hard individualism in our culture. Quite frankly, I’m tired of being a product of my culture. I’ve spent many years outside of the culture I was born into and I’ve been blessed to have the opportunity to see and experience that there are other ways to go about this existence we have here on earth.

Basically it comes back to Romans 12 and Synergy… or at least that’s a good place to start.