"Will you give Me everything?"

Well, it's been a while since I posted. Hopefully this will make up for my slacking.

We leave for South Asia in one week. One week! Crazy! As I sit in my room, thinking about the trip, a question that God has been asking me for months is at the forefront of my mind again.

Will I give God everything? Everything.

Seems like a silly question when faced with this reality--what do I possess that I could ever give the Maker of all things? The One who threw the stars to the sky, who gives sight to the blind and makes the cripple walk? The One who took the impossible state of fallen, broken sinners, and gave them life to save them from their impending death?

How could everything we possess ever be enough to offer our King?

Yet, He continues to ask the question. Will you give Me everything? Will we give Him everything? Literally, our very lives?

I find I'm learning daily to answer "Yes" to this question, but most days, I don't even give a single thought to it. After all, it's a painful question to answer "Yes" to. But He says that it will be worth it.

Despite my tendency to hold back, it seems God continues to ask the question, continues beckoning me to have the same heart of countless others that have given everything for the sake of their King. Like the widow who offered the only money she possessed, "all she had to live on" (Mark 12:41-44). Like the woman who took her costly perfume and instead of saving it for herself, she poured it all on Jesus (Mark 14:3). Like Corrie ten Boom, who risked Nazi capture by hiding Jews in her home. Like Gladys Aylward and Amy Carmichael who left their comforts and chose instead to live among the poorest, most despised souls, all because their Lord told them to.

When the voice of God calls out, will we answer? Jesus says that His sheep know His voice (John 10). It seems that learning to respond to it is where we struggle.

So...if God were to ask you the same question He has been asking me--Will you give Me everything?--how will you respond?

"Now Jesus sat opposite the treasury and saw how the people put money into the treasury. And many who were rich put in much. Then one poor widow came and threw in two mites, which make a quadrans. So He called his disciples to Himself and said to them, 'Assuredly, I say to you that this poor widow has put in more than all those who have given to the treasury; for they all put in out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty put in all that she had, her whole livelihood.'" (Mark 12:41-44 NKJV)

His command is not beyond our reach

Alright. This might be carrying over from a conversation I had with a few people last night, but it is certainly still on my heart. It will probably be quick, but I feel like it's important.

In this life, you will have a million different voices telling you which way to go. Which path is the best to travel, which things are the best to meditate on, which aspects of this Christian life are most important, which Scriptures are worth dividing over. Many of these different voices will come from within the Church, which can be confusing if our eyes are not fixed on Christ, on the essentials of walking with Him.

So as all these voices fight for your devotion, I think I'll simply relay to you what Moses said to the Israelites right before he dies, right before they head into the Promised Land. Now, wouldn't you figure that if Moses' earthly life is about to end, whatever advice he gives the Israelites is probably pretty important? Just read, and answer that question for yourself...

"...The LORD will again delight in you and make you prosperous, just as he delighted in your ancestors, if you obey the LORD your God and keep his commands and decrees that are written in this Book of the Law and turn to the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul. 

Now what I am commanding you today is not too difficult for you or beyond your reach. It is not up in heaven, so that you have to ask, 'Who will ascend into heaven to get it and proclaim it to us so we may obey it?' Nor is it beyond the sea, so that you have to ask, 'Who will cross the sea to get it and proclaim it to us so we may obey it?' No, the word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart so you may obey it.

See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction. For I command you today to love the LORD your God, to walk in obedience to him, and to keep his commands, decrees and laws; then you will live and increase, and the LORD your God will bless you in the land you are entering to possess.

But if your heart turns away and you are not obedient, and if you are drawn away to bow down to other gods and worship them, I declare to you this day that you will certainly be destroyed. You will not live long in the land you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess.

This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the LORD your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the LORD is your life, and he will give you many years in the land he swore to give to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob."  [Deuteronomy 30:9-20 NIV]

As I've read Scripture, it seems to me that God speaks so much more highly of loving Him with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength than of  having a million answers to the most challenging theologies.

Sit at His feet.
Meditate on His word.
Treasure up in your heart all the things He shows you.
And LOVE Him. With everything you've got.

"One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: 'Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?' Jesus replied: '"Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind." This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: "Love your neighbor as yourself." All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.'"  [Matthew 22:35-40] 

Refiner's Fire

"He will sit as a refiner and a purifier of silver;

He will purify the sons of Levi,

And purge them as gold and silver,

That they may offer to the Lord

An offering in righteousness."

Malachi 3:3 (NKJV)

I'm kind of in an interesting season of my walk right now. Not really sure exactly how to explain it to you all, but I guess the best I can say is that it's a season of waiting, learning, breaking, healing, and loving. Waiting on God's timing, learning what being a "woman" of God actually means, breaking for burdens of those around me and of certain things in my own heart, healing of those things being broken in my heart, and loving those that are hard to love. (Which, really seems to be EVERY season in some manner, but it's just so much more apparent right now...if that makes any sense?)

Anyway, all of these things are a part of God's refinement. Refinement. I've heard that word a lot, and people have explained it to me a million times, but only when I sensed God's actual refinement in my life did I begin to grasp it. The reality of it, the pain of it, the joy in it. Doesn't make a whole lot of sense to the world, but for the child of God, it's a beautiful shaping of a life to look more like Himself.

To add to the millions of explanations of refinement you've also probably heard, here's just one more:

Amy Carmichael - "One day we took the children to see a goldsmith refine gold after the ancient manner of the East. He was sitting beside his little charcoal fire...In the red glow lay a common curved roof tile; another tile covered it like a lid. This was the crucible. In it was the medicine made of salt, tamarind fruit and burnt brick dust, and imbedded in it was the gold. The medicine does its appointed work on the gold, 'then the fire eats it,' and the goldsmith lifts the gold out with a pair of tongs, lets it cool, rubs it between his fingers, and if not satisfied puts it back again in fresh medicine. This time he blows the fire hotter than it was before, and each time he puts the gold into the crucible, the heat of the fire is increased; 'it could not bear it so hot at first, but it can bear it now; what would have destroyed it then helps it now.' 'How do you know when the gold is purified?' we asked him, and he answered, 'When I can see my face in it [the liquid gold in the crucible] then it is pure.'"

"When I can see my face in it, then it is pure." When God can see His face in us, then we are pure.

Just for fun, here's one more quote for you:

"The Christian life can be explained only in terms of Jesus, and if your life as a Christian can still be explained in terms of you--your personality, your willpower, your gift, your talent, your money, your courage, your scholarship, your dedication, your sacrifice, or your anything--then although you may have the Christian life, you are not yet living it!...True godliness leaves the world convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that the only explanation for you, is Jesus Christ." - Major Ian Thomas

When you walk about your daily life, is the first question you ask "What do I want to do today?" Confession--quite often, that's the first question I ask, too. And much too often, it's the only question I ask :/  ...Yet, somehow, in all our failings, God keeps scooping us back up and cradling us in His arms before setting us back on our feet to take the next step. And once we gain our balance again, He sticks us back in the crucible, and heats the fire a little bit hotter. But this time, we're not hurt by this hotter flame. It would have destroyed us before, but because we are a little bit more like Jesus today than we were yesterday, it is simply refining us.

Not sure I still fully understand "refinement." But one thing I know for sure, God certainly is refining me! My prayer is that if you are His child, then you are trusting His refinement. That you are staying in that crucible, though it might hurt. But it will not destroy you, because the Great Refiner is the One holding you :)

Moonless Trust

This morning, I read from a little piece of paper that I'd written a quote on, more like an excerpt really from a book that I have. I'm in a little bit of a place of uncertainty in my walk right now, and as I've been taking these things to the Lord, He graciously directs my eyes to things that will touch my soul so sweetly, all that I may turn the praise back to Him.

So here is the little excerpt that I read this morning, that I'll share with you, too, since I'm positive that I am not the only one around here needing the Lord to guide me.

Some of you are perhaps feeling that you are voyaging just now on a moonless sea. Uncertainty surrounds you. There seem to be no signs to follow. Perhaps you feel about to be engulfed by loneliness. There is no one to whom you can speak of your need. Amy Carmichael wrote of such a feeling when, as a missionary of twenty-six, she had to leave Japan because of poor health, then travel to China for recuperation, but then realized God was telling her to go to Ceylon. (All this preceded her going to India, where she stayed for fifty-three years.) I have on my desk her original handwritten letter of August 25, 1894, as she was en route to Colombo. "All along, let us remember, we are not asked to understand, but simply to obey...On July 28, Saturday, I sailed. We had to come on board on Friday night, and just as the tender (a small boat) where were the dear friends who had come to say goodbye was moving off, and the chill of loneliness shivered through me, like a warm love-clasp came the long-loved lines--'And only Heaven is better than to walk with Christ at midnight, over moonless seas.' I couldn't feel frightened then. Praise Him for the moonless seas--all the better the opportunity for proving Him to be indeed the El Shaddai, 'the God who is Enough.'"

Let me add my own word of witness to hers and to that of the tens of thousands who have learned that He is indeed Enough. He is not all we would ask for (if we were honest), but it is precisely when we do not have what we would ask for, and only then that we can clearly perceive His all-sufficiency. It is when the sea is moonless that the Lord has become my Light.

--Elisabeth Elliot, Keep A Quiet Heart

I pray that this blesses you, as it has blessed me in unspeakable ways. I pray that as you walk down paths of uncertainty, you come to find that Jesus is Enough.

What to do now that camp is done...?

Well we've been back from camp for a few days, and I knew from the moment I got back to my house I wanted to post something about camp to this blog. But it's taken me some time to think of what to say. I guess my encouragement to you guys as you go on with life after returning from camp is this--by all means PLEASE stay at Jesus' feet. The most precious growth will always take place when you have been in His presence. When the world starts to try turning your heart away from the Lord, when your parents pressure you, when your friends don't understand this change in you, when your own heart fails you, remember your God. Run back to Him all the time. ALL the time. I can't even begin to tell you how purely sweet it is to sit with Him. Just to sit with Him. Even if you hear nothing from Him, haven't you ever wondered if He simply wants us to sit still with Him? Our lives are busy and distracted, but may God give us UNDIVIDED hearts, that we love and fear Him alone.