"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. 

Brokenness

So lately brokenness seems to be the theme in my life. When talking about it in youth the other week God really struck my heart with the phrase "less of me and more of you". This is the essential theme to brokenness. The desire for you to diminish and God to increase. God is being very faithful in the promise right now. So in November of 2005 i wrote this little story to kinda describe the beauty of brokenness and also the seriousness of it as well so here's putting it out there....

The Stained Glass of Her Heart

She walks in grace and beauty, cradling in her hands a mystery sustained. She approaches cautiously, painfully aware of her every paralyzing fears. She shifts her eyes nervously around waiting for the next attack. As she turns she gasps at the sudden realization of where she is, who she is, and what lies before her. Tears push past the crumbling walls as she breaks. She is now captivated by the vision before her. Could this really be him? The one? She feels everything around her stop moving as she locks into his gaze. She is enraptured by the full weight of his glory. Overcome she is drawn closer. When she reaches the throne, she extends her clenched fists. Glass falls engraving its existence upon her tattered hands. A sob escapes at the shattered remains of her heart scattered upon the steps. He leans down and wipes the stray tear from across her cheek. She sighs as his fingertip graces across her like velvet. He sweeps her up and settles her upon his throne. His gaze never leaves her as he bends down on weathered knees and embarks on collecting her heart from off the floor. As he places it together she cries out in pain as her existence and being is shifted. His blood stains her glass as it cuts his gentle hands. She collapses exhausted. He is done. He turns and places it upon her lap. It is stunning.

For he has presented the beauty of the stained glass of her heart.

Outerbanks Excitment!

So, I found out this week that I will be able to make the treck with my family to the outerbanks this year. I cannot even begin to describe how flipping excited that makes me. Honestly I think its one of my favorite places, and that says a lot. I don't know, however, if it is the place, or if it is what God taught me there. Either way it holds fond memories. So I thought i would share some of my favorite pictures from the trip. Know that these are copyrighted by Jesselynn Photography.


Ok so imagine this...
You are innocently walking along the beach so you can view a beautiful sunrise. When you realize that along with the sun, these little creatures rise too. Now for anyone who knows me you know that I am petrified of crabs. Seriously they terrify me. I think the backstory of this may have to do with the fact that crabs were one method of torture from my brother when we were at the beach as children. So here Allison and I are walking innocently on the beach at 6:00 am. We are oohing and awwing over the magnificent light show, when we start to hear scuttling, digusting nasty little scuttling. So we look around and to our horror (please at this point reference the picture above) we see these little cretins, thousands of them and I so wish I was kidding! Our reaction: scream bloody murder and dance in one place. We finally gathered our wits and threw sand until we had this little boundary that the crabs wouldn't cross out of fear of being pummeled with tiny projectiles. Needless to say we made it out of there alive, but it was a close call. :) Now just imagine how you would react if a thousand little creatures with pinchers rushed you in a battle formation!

An introduction to Gary

So I guess, first I should explain who Gary is and where Gary came from. Well I have had internal digestive issues since pretty much my senior year in high school. The problem has progressively worsened over time. Well my freshman summer of college I traveled to Poland, while there I became really sick, it is at this time that Gary developed. While standing in Warsaw rubbing my belly, my friend Matt that I had met while there asked me if Gary was acting up. To which I responded po co? He said Gary, you know your gastric goblin. So it is at this point that Gary was born. Gary over the years has afforded me many awkward opportunities to laugh over, and in many ways has allowed me to fall back on God completely.

For many reasons I hesitate to write this blog today, the main reason being that I really don’t want to admit that I have a serious illness, and I need to start doing stuff about it. Gary was this cute little quirk about me that I knew nothing about. I was comfortable in the not knowing stage. In fact I had convinced myself that I was a hypochondriac, because let’s be honest anyone who has known me for more than a month knows I tend to be panicky. I am by very nature a very dramatic person, so creating drama I can handle, having uncontrollable drama happening to me…I’m not so good with. But alas I am jumping ahead of myself.

So here is my story of Gary’s diagnosis.

On May 20, 2009, I went in for a CT scan with a new Dr. named Dr. T. I sucked down a nice pint of barium (imagine chalk mixed into a paste that they lovingly have tried to flavor with berries to somehow make it better…), and walked in for my CT scan. Which by nature I love all things medical… really… so I was utterly fascinated. So after my 30 minute run of machinery, they had me change, and then they would release me. So I sat and waited and waited and waited… and then 45 minutes passed and I personally got to meet the radiologist on call, when he came out to tell me I was going straight to Dr T to then go to a surgeon to have my appendix removed. So I was sent on my way, amazingly enough I wasn’t at this point panicking. I made it to Dr. T who was slightly confused by my CT scan due to the abnormal size…of…well of everything down in the appendix region. So out of caution he sent me straight to my surgical consult. Well after a long phone conference with Dr T, the radiologist, and all three of my surgeons (by this point I had become a medical mystery so my surgeon multiplied). They finally said we don’t think its appendicitis, in fact if we took out your appendix we would have to take out your appendix, 6-7 inches of your small intestines and the right side of your colon, because everything in so inflamed it would collapse. I am very grateful to report I still have my guts in me, and very blessed that God blessed me with Doctors who know what they are doing. The surgeon then mentioned that he had seen cases like this that were Crohn’s patients. So Dr T agreed and I was scheduled for an emergency colonoscopy the next day. Well that was an experience in itself. I was scheduled for my procedure at 1:00 I don’t really remember anything after 12, and I woke up at 6:30pm (apparently according to my mother after throwing up in the kitchen trash can). I remember walking out in a stupor and asking, “so what happened?” It was at this point that I was told I have Crohn’s disease. Gary was now official, and officially a pain in my butt (no pun intended).

So what is Crohn’s? I honestly can’t tell you. I know it’s a chronic inflammation of the digestive system that may or may not be correlated to your immune system. I can tell you I have it in my colon and ileum (this is the last 8 inches of your small intestines that attaches to your colon). I can tell you that my small intestines are strictured, and closing. I guess I can name all these facts to you but overall I am confused on what this means. And it’s scary not knowing. It’s also scary knowing I have the same disease that killed my friend Pam Darnell. It’s ironic really I spent the majority of the last 3 years trying to kill myself only to have God convince me that living for him is so worth it and valuable to feel like, death actually is a possibility (really it’s a minute one at that but it’s the knowing someone that died that gives this a really weird feeling).

But as not ok as I am with this I do find security in the fact that God is bigger than all of this. I know that there will be good days, and bad days, and days where I am paralyzed in terror, and days where I cry all day, but I also know that none of this compares with God’s character. And through this I am being taught the very discipline of resting within Christ. We are not always called to go and do, and seek, but sometimes just to sit still and listen, and simply absorb his character, through our surrounding situations. We don’t need to do in order for God’s glory to be shown, sometimes we just need to be. Like in Psalm 46:10 “Be still and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations; I will be exalted in the earth.”

Today my heart aches and is confused, and I am anxious about what tomorrow brings, so today I am determined to stand still and be enveloped simply by whom God is. Just like an oyster binds the pearl that is within it, I am placing all I am in the center of Christ’s character. This won’t make these fears disappear but they will seem significantly smaller compared to how vast my God is. And for today I am more than ok with that.