Hunger and Thirsting

 So work has been a bit of a bear lately. We are changing a lot of processes and policies (for the better) but we are changing them all at once which means there is a LOT more work and a LOT more stress and a LOT more failure on my part. This has dredged up an old lie that I have fought for most of my adult life. "You are not enough" or more truthfully, "You are useless." The story of how any why I came by this lie is a story for another day. Suffice to say that feeling like you are continuously not living up to expectations (your and others) knocks very heavily upon this door. I have had more breakdowns in the past two weeks than I have over the past two years before them. I knew what was going on, I knew that I was putting too much pressure on myself and caring too much about assumed opinions on other people's parts. But I was in so deep that we had already made it to survival mode by the time I got around to do anything about it. Now I kept telling people that I really felt like a lot of this was a spiritual attack. For those of you who have read previous blogs you will know that God sort of shook my world at a collegiate conference I went to a few weeks back. And it felt WAY to coincidental that all this stress would suddenly emerge the week (the day) after I returned. 

Well, last week was a "just hold on for a little longer" type of week. Seriously, I was counting down the hours to the weekend because I knew that this past weekend was going to be game-changing. I was going to be at IF Conference. For those of you who have never heard of the IF Conference, PLEASE GO LOOK IT UP!!! It is an amazing weekend retreat for women globally. And I knew God was going to be there and we would have hours of set aside time to be with one another. Not surprisingly I spent most of the conference crying my ever-loving eyes out. Some of it was from a place of deep hurt (see above) some of it was a place from deep longing, and some was from a place of joy. But the coup de grâce of the weekend was actually AFTER the conference. 

Having spent hours and hours focusing on God I suppose I was "in tune" to hear what I heard. It was Sunday and I was listening to a sermon on the tempting of Jesus in the wilderness. I actually was only halfway paying attention because my emotions were still in a torrent form the past weeks. I felt like I was in the boat on the sea when the storm came. Blubbering up in the tech booth where I was helping out (blissfully alone!) when all of a sudden I felt like God was telling me he wanted me to fast. Y'all, IMMEDIATELY the storm of my emotions calmed. Later I realized that I had been trying to deal with a Spiritual problem--spiritual attack--with physical solutions--I.E. coping mechanisms. God was (is) calling me to face this thing in the spiritual realm and fasting is one of the ways we step into that realm. Even later than that revelation, I realized that one of my coping mechanisms was (and has always been) food. God was asking me to give up this physical comfort in exchange for a spiritual one. 

You see, I've been hungry--really hungry--for a while now. Not physically speaking, but spiritually. There is a song that goes, "More love, More power, More of you in my life..." This is what my heart and mind has been crying out. So I will be embarking on a journey I have never taken before. I am going to fast, not just for a few days, but for weeks. Until Easter, in fact. It is a daunting journey to be sure. Please know that I am not telling you all this out of a place of pride, but one of deep humility and accountability. I am challenging you to ask me how it's going, to lift me up in prayer, and to stand with me. I have a feeling that this journey will lead to a breakthrough in my life. What kind? I'm not completely sure. And hey, I'll be praying a LOT so if you have something specific you'd like me to lift up, let me know! Who knows what God will do. I have no answers at this point. Only a desire to trust and be obedient. He must be calling me into this for a reason, and I can't wait to see what He'll do. 

As you are going...

 Make Disciples. Those were some of the last words recorded before Jesus' ascension. Chuck Davenport led a breakout session called "Become an Everday Missionary." He proposed that if you profess Christ, you are called to live missionally. And yes, "Missionary" is a term that most people reserve for the "super-Christians," who leave their homes and go live in a foreign country spending all their time talking to people about Jesus. But this wasn't the plan that Jesus set into motion. Let's look at the verses Davenport was referring to, shall we?

"Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. Then Jesus came to them and said, 'All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.'" --Mattew 28:16-20

Jesus begins his commission with "All authority has been given to me--> therefore go. It begins with Jesus' authority. He has the power and the right. We go because our leader has all authority and we go in that authority. So why do we go?

Going is one of the basics of our faith--it's a core class, yet so many treat it as an elective. Anyone remember those bracelets that used to be a big thing with the colored beads? The black bead stood for sin, the red one stood for the blood of Christ, the white bead stood for cleansing/forgiveness, the blue was for baptism, the green was for growth and the yellow was for heaven. It was a simple way for people to explain what it meant to be a Christian. Well that green bead in part is making the disciples. Think about what Jesus said to Peter, James, and John when he called them to be disciples. "I will make you fishers of men." 

Alright, but how are we do that exactly? As Davenport put it, by leveraging what you know. Look at the disciples! These guys weren't great scholars. They were tradesmen who hadn't make it far enough in the Jewish schooling system to even think about becoming a disciple to a Rabbi. And yet. 

And where exactly do we go? To Jerusalem--the people you come in contact with every day. To Judea--your physical town/city/area. To Samaria--to the people you don't particularly like. To the ends of the earth--everyone in between. One thing that I loved the Davenport pointed out was that we obviously can't talk to everyone. That would be quite physically impossible. And many of us may never leave the country. But one way we go is by going ourselves. Another way we go is by supporting those who go. I have two dear friends right now who are "fulltime missionaries." One is Honduras and the other in Greece. I don't have the time or vacation hours at work to go and minister physically with them. But I can support them financially and through prayer, and in that sense, I am helping to reach "then ends of the earth." (Caveat--this does NOT mean that I don't attempt to reach my Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria.)

Davenport pointed out that we in America (and especially the South) live in a culture that professes Jesus, but too many of us don't live for Him. We can change this! All we have to do is as we are going... make disciples.