Thursday night worship this week was amazing. Before Lauren got back from furlough and even some sporadic nights since then, worship has consisted of me, Ryan and Alice. However, this week there was quite the crowd there. Dusty and Marlena had a team that came in addition to the Vanguard team that is here right now. I love the intimacy of three, but something special takes place when that many believers come in and worship in such a manner (Ryan is a very anointed worship leader). The worship led to about fifteen short sermons from various people and that led to a time of prayer and impartation.
I have the utmost respect for Lauren. There isn’t another peer of mine that I revere more. If you don’t know who I’m talking about, she was one of my housemates last summer and is in Moshi with an organization called Courage To Be You. She is preparing a home that will house girls broken out of the brothels in the region. Anyways, enough tooting her horn… she said something at worship that really struck me as true and I think diagnoses most of the ills of my generation. I’ll steal it from her, but to be honest she said she got it from a Beth Moore study.
She was speaking specifically to our generation and said that she sees our biggest ailment as unwillingness to sacrifice specifically stemming from selfishness. I concur.
Do you ever read the scripture and realize certain passages don’t really reflect your life? The word of the Lord: “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it and whoever loses his life for My sake will find it” (Matthew 16: 24-25). We’ve trivialized the cross. We’ve made it the symbol of a religion as opposed to a symbol of torture and death, yet ironically the symbol of the true way. Francis Chan wrote about this (I want to say it was in The Forgotten God, but it may have been Crazy Love). He talked about the Church’s trivialization of what it means to take up the cross. We equate “our cross” with things that are everyday troubles, things that are common inside and outside the congregation of believers. “Ah, my car broke down, just gotta bear that cross.” “Oh no, my son isn’t passing his math class, just gotta take up my cross.” And so on. That’s not your cross. A cross is something you get nailed to. Jesus was being figurative I know, but the car breaking down isn’t your cross. The truck literally broke down on me today, that’s not my cross though. That’s an old rickety truck doing what old rickety trucks do.
On the contrary, “taking up the cross” (note the progressive tense) entails something specifically for followers of the Way and entails a pain and sacrifice that is chosen by each follower continuously. Now is Jesus, and therefore am I, advocating for a masochistic calling? No, there’s a lot more to it than that and pain for the sake of pain, even to the point of suicide, is the most wasteful event that could take place. Later, Jesus sends the Holy Spirit to fulfill the calling of each follower and His fruit includes joy, peace, love and so on. That’s beautiful, that’s fun and satisfying to possess. Regarding the cross, Jesus is instead saying that if you aren’t willing to sacrifice and endure hardship specifically for the cause of the Kingdom, nothing is going to get done. And yes it does take more than saying you’re willing, if you are truly willing to endure hardship and sacrifice for the Kingdom, it will actually happen. You will suffer pain and the Kingdom will advance. That will actually be the marker of your true faith.
Yet the comment had two points; one, unwillingness to sacrifice and two, based out of selfishness. Everybody get your mirror out…
Lydia was telling me not too long ago about a book she read about a missionary in India. The woman wrote about how, despite the need for help in her ministry, she stopped taking on American short-term missionaries because they were too self-involved and everything was about them, as opposed to just serving the people humbly. Ouch.
Can we be honest with ourselves for a moment? There is a high level of vanity to those things that we consider tied to our lives and personalities. Each of us wear the right clothes, watch the right TV shows, listen to the right music, like the right sports teams and so on. These things are mostly innocuous in and of themselves, but they begin to be exalted in our lives. I’m not only speaking about the amount of precious time these things suck up (which is very important to note), but they all add to our level of comfort and security that inhibits us from doing anything worthwhile for the Kingdom. Far more than that, comes the security and comfort that we find in the relationships we have and the positions that we hold. “These are my friends, I can’t leave them.” “This is my job, I can’t witness here, I might get fired.” All the while, Jesus is calling you to something greater, something that requires sacrifice and hardship, something that will truly satisfy you and fulfill purpose.
In a passing moment last weekend, someone that was visiting TOA said something that briefly frustrated me. She didn’t know it and didn’t know the implication of her statement so I had grace to not respond beyond a smile. She said “I would totally do what you do.” Word to the wise, don’t say that to missionaries, at least not this one. I would love for the Lord to send her to an African nation if that’s what she’s called to, but until then… Anyways, the thing that bugs me about that is that people don’t realize the sacrifice that it takes to be here. I will be honest that one of my biggest struggles/sins is pride, but that doesn’t mean I need to have false humility. I had to sacrifice a lot to come here. I had stuff going for me in California. Amazing friends that I saw regularly, a wonderful church, a blessed job in ministry and a much higher probability of not being single. I had to sacrifice those things to be here, I can say that objectively. Furthermore, I wish that I could tell you that I’m in contact with all those people, especially after I basically wrote a whole blog on it a few weeks ago, but still only a few friends from California talk to me regularly. That only adds to the sacrifice. I’m not saying this because this week has been particularly painful or hard, that’s not the case. Rather, it continues to be something that is perpetually weighing on me. It’s a cross and it’s not getting any lighter.
What is it that you are not willing to sacrifice for the Kingdom? What is keeping you from taking up your cross and following Him closely? Maybe its something trivial, like an obsession over a TV show (yes, I’m tired of seeing status updates on Glee and LOST). Its probably something bigger also. Your friends? Your work? Our job on this earth is to give our highest love to the Lord. That doesn’t come without sacrifice and the best prayer to take up the cross and deny selfishness is “less of me, more of You.” If you pray that, be willing to act on it after the prayer. The most painful and loving sacrifice to take place was Jesus giving His life on the cross. He then sent His Spirit to enable us to fulfill our purpose and take up our own cross unto His glory, for this we give praise.
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The Rundown: A mostly normal week. The Vanguard team is here right now so that’s pretty cool. My friend Denny is on the team and hanging out with him has been a good encouragement to me this last week. I was able to take him out to El Rancho last Sunday since there was no basketball and we had a good time talking and catching up. Things at TOA are pretty much business as usual. The changing of the month is always extra work with the books, but its all going well. Ryan is starting to have his interns come in as well. There is one here named Delilah and then a guy working with New Life is here for a month and a half and his name is Austin. Lauren and I were reminiscing just thinking about how that was me last year. Like I said worship was amazing. Friday night I was over at the girls’ place and they prepared a bomb meal as usual followed up by Catch Phrase. Lauren, Vicky and I were on the same team, which is my favorite team and we threw down the gauntlet only lost one of like five games. Today was children’s Sunday at church so all the students led which was good and quite humorous. Tanzanians do stuff different and it comes off a little odd, but then funny. It was a blessed service. Anyways, other than that all is normal. Thanks for the prayers!
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