Giving Up

What is it in my life that's not worth giving up for God?

Today I spent a little time reading Catherine Booth's "Paper's on Aggressive Christianity"(which you can find at the link provided). She wrote, "Oh friends! will you get this baptism of love! Then you will, like the Apostles, be willing to push your limbs into a basket, and so be let down by the wall, if need be, or suffer shipwreck, hunger, peril, nakedness, fire, sword, or even go to the block itself, if thereby you extend His Kingdom and win souls for whom He shed His blood. The Lord fill us with this love and baptise us with this fire, and then the Gospel will arise and become glorious in the earth, and men will believe in us, and in it. They will feel its power, and they will go down under it by the thousands, and, by the grace of God, they SHALL!"

The Lord has been filling me with this love and baptising me with this fire. That's all there is to it. I'm not boasting - I'm rejoicing. The Lord is stripping away from me all that is unnecessary. Showing me all that I need to give up and am slowly gathering around His conclusions as well. Catherine talked about suffering shipwreck, hunger, peril, nakedness, fire, sword or death and I can't get past going into a country where I would have to suffer a hold in the ground instead of a toilet, dirt floors instead of carpet, rice at every meal, or the threat of terrorism and uncomfortable conditions. How shallow I am! How weak my faith! How small my discipleship. Western Christians talk about being willing to give up their lives for Christ and yet we can't even give up our cable! We want to be better than we are. We want to be more sincere and yet we give in to the lies we're fed - what we need, what we should look like, how we should talk and act.

I want to give it up - all of it. I'm yearning for it. Captain Stephen Court wrote a couple of days ago in his blog about not waiting - not waiting until you're 54 to start something, not waiting until everything seems to fall into place - not waiting. Well, what am I waiting for? I don't know but I know I'm sick of waiting. I'm ready. I want to go. I feel like the Psalmist in Psalm 32 who talks about the Lord's hand being heavy upon him. That's me! I WANT TO GO!

I think the Lord is just teaching me that He won't allow me to go if I give him limitations. If I keep telling Him where I do and don't want to go. So, I'm working on giving up - giving up my home, my plans to fit missionary service in between work and family, my desire to have comforts and clean hands (I am a little OCD about germs). It might take weeks, months, years but it will happen. I'll go. I know that much for sure. Where? Not so sure. For how long? Only God knows. But I do know I'll go. I want that kind of love - the kind of love that makes me ravished and pushes me on and makes me feel like it's never enough. That's the kind of service my God deserves. After all - He loved me that much.

Ready for the revolution,
Joy