"The Missionary's Master" By Oswald Chambers

“You call me master and Lord, and you are right for so I am.” John 13:13



To have a master and to be mastered is not the same thing. To have a master means that there is one who knows me better than I know myself, one who is closer than a friend, one who fathoms the remotest abyss of my heart and satisfies it, one who has brought me into the secure sense that he has met and solved every perplexity and problem of my mind. To have a master in this and nothing less— “One is your Master, even Christ.”


Our Lord never enforces obedience; he does not take means to make me do what He wants. At certain time I wish God would master me and make me do the thing, but He will not; in other moods I wish He would leave me alone, but He does not.


“You call me Master and Lord”—but is He? Master and Lord have little place in our vocabulary, we prefer the words Savior, Sanctifier, Healer. The only word to describe mastership in experience is love and we know very little about love as God reveals it. This is proved by the way we use the word obey. In the Bible obedience is based on the relationship of equals, that of a son with his father. Out Lord was not God’s servant, He was His Son. “Though He were a son yet he learned obedience…” If our idea is that we are being mastered, it is proof that we have no master; if that is our attitude to Jesus, we are far away from the relationship He wants. He wants us in the relationship in which He is easily Master without our conscious knowledge of it, all we know is that we are His to obey.

Overwhelmed

I am completely overwhelmed. I had maybe one day of excitement about going to Turkey, and now i feel i am drowning in fear and paperwork. I feel like i can't do this.
That being said, i think i am in a safe place. The place where you realize you can't do this. Now i am at the edge of trusting Christ to come in and fill that gap, to fill and overflow that need. I know i am right, there is no way i can do this. It's impractical, and stupid. And to be honest i feel so relieved, I will fail. It certainly takes the pressure off. 
I think i focus too much on the do and don'ts of Christianity, always striving to pay a penance for grace. A good friend reminded me on friday, to stop. What great advice! Seriously. I need to stop worrying about God's will and what is perfect and i am listening just right. Instead i need to focus on who Christ is. I have been so worried about God's will i have forgotten his character, and most importantly our relationship.


Here are 2 promises i am clinging to:


"so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith- that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God." Ephesians 3:17-19


"With what shall i come before the Lord and bow down before the exalted God? Shall i come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousand rivers of oil? Shall i offer my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God." Micah 6:6-8 

Catch 22

So i feel like i have lacked honesty in my life lately. I don't feel well. I know that is particularly easy to tell but it goes deeper than my physical body even. I am bummed out. A lot.  It would be really easy at this point to blame this on Crohn's which i have... a lot. In college i had several friends pass away suddenly, and to be honest most of them were not close friends that i hung out with everyday. But i feel like that in those 2 years my heart died. These were extraordinary people, the kind that love the Lord with all of their hearts, and are a blessing to everyone around them. The people who were born with a little piece of heaven attached to them. They gave so freely of themselves. When they were gone, i felt like God made a mistake. I should have gone in their place, because if they were left here they could offer so much more than i can. And i still can't shake that feeling, and each day it grows more and more. I feel like i don't belong here. I want my life to matter to affect people with God's glory to lead them to Christ and yet i fail at this daily. And when i feel him stir my heart to touch the world he hands me a disease. I don't understand and i am heartbroken because i can't make anything of myself. I am homesick. I long to be with my Lord to experience the fullness of who he is. Yet he has called me here. His purpose is true, and his character faithful. I will not let go of him, he will not let go of me. I am heartbroken and unsure, but i am very lucky that my God is steadfast and knows what he is doing, because as of right now i surely do not.

"O' afflicted city, lashed by storms and not comforted, I will build you with stones of turquoise, your foundations with sapphires. I will make your battlements of rubies, your gates of sparkling jewels, and all your walls of precious stones. All your sones will be taught by the Lord, and great will be your children's peace. In righteousness you will be established: Tyranny will be far from you; you will have nothing to fear. Terror will be far removed; it will not come near you." Isaiah 54:11-14

I like that promise. along with this one...

"The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing." Zephaniah 3:17

Now that's got to make you feel loved.

Pandora's Box

Hope.

“Hope is the thing with feathers 


That perches in the soul,


And sings the tune--without the words,


And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard; 


And sore must be the storm 


That could abash the little bird 


That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land,


And on the strangest sea; 


Yet, never, in extremity, 


It asked a crumb of me.”   Emily Dickinson

If love the foundation of our faith, I would like to claim that hope is its breath. I have really struggled this week with defining hope. All I know is though I cling to it, yet still its hold on me is stronger. There have been many times in my life I wanted to turn my back on Christianity, not because I believed it untrue but because it was the truth. The idea of intimacy, and trust scare me quite honestly. There is nothing more that I would love than to give up. But hope keeps its grip on me steady and secure, refusing to let up and allow me to give up. If faith is the wings that make us soar than hope is certainly the draft that lifts us up.

Hope has been dominant throughout generations, in stories, and myth. It confounds us and mystifies us. In Greek mythology when Pandora opened her fated box and unleashed the troubles on the world, hope was left within fluttering to get out. Without hope the world and mankind failed, for hope is the wife of despair, a companion to our pain. She pushes us and nurtures us. In a way she is a bigger curse than all the plagues on mankind. She keeps our dreams alive and makes us constantly walk on the edge of them being broken. She is the wind beneath our wings.

It has lead me to the conclusion I may never be able to define it, or completely understand it, but I will accept and praise God for it. Hope holds me within its embrace and today, I could not be more pleased for it.