March 23, 2023

Twenty-five hours ago thirteen people stepped into a calling to leave the comfort of our daily lives and fulfill Matthew 28:19 in a small coastal town in Ecuador.  Our desire was to step into the great unknown and use the gifts the Spirit has placed in us in order that He might work through us.  That’s ultimately what Matthew 28:18-19 is calling us to.  That passage is calling us to show the world why we follow Christ.  To demonstrate His redemptive story in such a manner that would draw the hearts of others into the very relationship that has transformed our own. 

 

I heard someone express discipleship this week in terms of what it looked like to follow a rabbi in Jesus’ day.  It was the idea that you would follow a rabbi so closely that the dust from their sandals would cover you to the point that their dust became your dust.  But the only way for that form of discipleship to be real is proximity.  Proximity that requires intimacy.  You can’t be that close to someone without them, and everyone else, noticing.  Yet recognize that is not just a season in one’s life, that is one’s life.  You don’t follow closely one day and then from a distance the next.  To be known as His disciple means I keep His dust on me each day, each hour, each minute.  I don’t leave His presence for my own desires, my own dreams, or my own agenda.

 

See Matthew 28:18-19 seals this idea with the call of baptism.  See baptism signifies my life in 

Christ as one that is sealed.  Meaning that I’m buried with Him in the likeness of His death, and I am raised to “walk” in the newness of His life.  When I walk in the newness of His life, that life never loses its shine.  It never fades.  I must recognize that I’m walking in the newness of His life, not mine.  My life has nothing to offer the world.  For my life to truly matter means I’m walking so closely with my rabbi that people don’t see my life, they see His.    I don’t follow Jesus because it makes my life better.  I follow Jesus because it makes my life matter.

 

I’m not approaching this week in Ecuador asking what I get out of it.  I’m not even truly looking for personal fulfillment during our time here.  I’ve traveled the world from Belarus, Zimbabwe, Serbia, South Africa, China, Thailand, Haiti, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Canada, Honduras and the Caribbean Islands.  The Lord has blessed me with the great privilege of experiencing His church on a global scale.  I’m walking into this moment looking to get dusty.  I want to find where Jesus is at work, and I want to join Him.  I want a conscience experience with the Rabbi I follow.   I want someone to see the evidence of His grace in my life that points them to the Rabbi who’s working through me.  I want someone to get dirty because of the dust on me.  I want someone to find the waters of baptism because they recognized how dirty they are from a broken and fallen world.  I want to witness what happens when someone encounters the grace demonstrated by the Rabbi’s blood washing over them.  Rabbi lead… I will follow.  Let me get dust in my eyes.

 

                                                                                                                                     March 21, 2023

There are certain seasons that seem to come with more questions than answers.  You know, those seasons where the weight and silence seem overwhelming?  It’s not just the idea of things not going my way, it's that I'm uncertain as to what my way even means.  I struggle with my way.  I like my way.  I always have.  I don’t like my way to be micromanaged or dictated to by outside voices.  There is a reason it’s called my way.  

 

There is a selfishness to my way that is captured by my pride, my ego, my ambition.  It wakes up speaking to me even before I fumble in the darkness to find that ever elusive snooze button.  It clammers for space and attention in my mind like the gnawing pangs of an empty stomach.  It finds its way into my identity and purpose, clouding my vision as to who I am as a child of the King, because my King cannot be King in the midst of my way.  They cannot coexist.  He cannot be Lord and yet bow to my way.  

 

I wrestled with my way today as I walked through Romans 1.  Paul attempts to warn and plead with believers to identify this crab grass of my way that sprawls across our hearts like a withered lawn on a hot Texas July day.  See, like an invasive weed takes root, my way begins to produce an unrighteousness even in the best of soils.  It suffocates the truth in my life.  It chokes out His voice and replaces it with mine.  

 

I wrestle with this pursuit of righteousness, like the endless quest of ridding the obstinate weeds from the fresh soil in the garden of my soul.  See Paul makes the claim with a certain ambiguity, which is meant to bring clarity, “The righteous shall live by faith.”  But at first glance that is not as clear as it should be.  Paul is saying, “The one who by faith is righteous shall live.”  I began to see that I don’t have faith because I’m righteous.  My righteousness is the very reason I have faith, but not in my righteousness, His.  My way is rooted in the idea that I’m pursuing my own righteousness, but Christ declared there are none righteous, no, not even one.  

 

I know what it feels like to sense my life slipping away with the passing of each minute, hour, or day.  My joy, my hope running through my fingers as limited grains of sand held by my frail finite fingers.  What do I do with the season where there are more questions than answers?  Where I’m suffocating because of the pursuit of my way, what do I do?  I must recognize what brings life.  

 

I’m reminded of the backyard hose we as kids would drink from on those scorching summer days where we were “encouraged” to play outside.  If you were the unfortunate one to drink from the hose first, you experienced the taste of rubber lava. It wasn’t the water that was different on the front end, it was the hose that made the water less appealing.  The hose had sat in the piercing sun, looped around itself, openly exposed to the heat.  However, if you allowed the water to run for just a minute or two the water would change the environment of the hose.  The water dictated the temperature, not the hose.  

 

My way must allow the water of the Spirit in my life dictate the temperature.  However, that can only happen when I spend the time to let it run through me.  Through my heart, my mind, my soul with the purpose of exposing my way in exchange for His.  Recognizing that silence in my life is the product of my way crushing the beautiful sound of His way.  Its living in the knowledge of His righteousness verse the pursuit of my own.