This post is the details I left out of a long email I sent to my missions email list. I hope you enjoy this & that it provides you with a sense of how the Lord is working in my life, & why I believe He has called me to be “home” during this time of my life.
Life as I know it now, in all reality is hard. Now, I do not want to paint some sob story, because the honest answer to my life “being hard,” is that it is not at all. Compared to those all around the world that daily have to ask, “Will I eat today?” or “Will I get any water today?” In that sense, I know my life is not hard. Yet, this does not mean that it is easy. Spiritually, things are just dry, challenging, & in general discouraging. This is the very beginning of why I am home.As I have said to folks recently, if I were to be abroad in a role of full-time service, I would be on a collision course with disastrous results. I will never be able to serve the Lord or my fellow man effectively, through the power of the Holy Spirit, if my communion with the Lord feels like walking on glass, instead of the deep, soul-satisfying & quenching, reality-filled presence of God in my life. What a shame it is that I am constrained by words to depict what I mean. I have to use phrases like “I feel” to convey my meanings, which does not really cut it. But I digress.
I feel like I have not experienced the presence of God in a long time, & an even longer time since I felt that presence in any on-going and consecutive way. Now, is what I feel reality? No! I know the Scriptures & His promises, “I will never leave you nor forsake,” & I cherish that, obviously among countless other promises. It’s just that my perception of reality is altered because what I feel has a major influence on reality. So it is all interrelated and fairly complex. But back to the last time I felt God’s real, unmistakable presence? … February! Yes, that long ago. You can see the problems this poses. Now, God has & is working in my life, but I am making a distinction between His working in me & in my life & times that I have been, as it were, in the very real presence of God.
In February 2010, I was in Costa Rica. In February, God blew up my mind & heart with an unreal, new, & profound insight into His love, into the real, tangible, & perfect love that is always overflowing with & from Him. This I can recall with great fondness & gratitude of heart, along with some tears of joy if I linger long enough, because God does that to me. We have a history like that… So, that’s the last time I felt the Lord’s active presence in my life, & I MISS HIM. That is basically what this comes down to. I miss Him so much. I miss Him and I want Him back … I want what I had in February, except for it to never leave. Christ promised us the Holy Spirit, to each who belongs to Him, we have the Holy Spirit in us. But what happens if we quench the flame of the Holy Spirit? If we live in sin? If we neglect God? We basically “disable” the Holy Spirit and stifle the presence of God in our lives.
In February, the Holy Spirit was flowing through me like water through a broken dam. Now? Well, I guess the dam has been plugged up … but with debris. This debris filling my heart & mind is another reason I will be in Birmingham for a little while. Part of the resting that is to take place includes a lot of cleaning and restoration, by God’s grace! In Costa Rica the Lord stirred a lot up in my heart, a lot of sin matters. Some of it I knew was there, other things revealed were a great surprise, things dredged up that have long been buried. There are some heart dealings to be undertaken. I don’t expect these to be fun, but I do trust the Lord that there will be much more luster and glow from my heart after this phase of life passes. The other side will be remarkable, and I praise Him now for the hope and encouragement I feel going into this, and I will praise Him in due time on the other side of this.
Still there are reasons for being in Birmingham that have to do with the development of my person and spirit for the sake of God’s glory, mission, & call on my life. My desires & dreams are big in relation to this. The central theme of this has to do with discipline, and because all things are spiritual (1 Cor 10:31) they all become spiritual disciplines, including the “physical,” the “mental,” the “emotional” parts of life. So when I talk about discipline, I mean more than reading my Bible and prayer. I am referring to disciplines such as running, riding, working out; such as learning to eat the right portions (not “US” sized portions), limiting my consumption of coffee drinks to one a week (the kind from coffee houses), to cutting out unnecessary expenses, & learning to live well within my means. I am referring to disciplines like being out & about sharing the gospel on a regular basis, ministering to those in town who are “the least of these,” plugging diligently into my home church and being in community, finding someone to disciple me while finding someone to disciple! I am referring to working out my brain muscle by seeking to become more mentally disciplined!
I want to find the appropriate balance in life during this time, one that honors God, by training myself, my senses, and my thoughts & perceptions to be more like I might live as if I were somewhere overseas. I want to live in a way that says “No!” to more, “No!” to materialism … no to America, or more so the American Dream!
So, this is a little more about why I am going to be in Birmingham for a while. It’s a staggering position to be in, one in which I find that if I am not fully reliant on God, I will be at odds with all of life. But, God is more than gracious, and He is full of grace and truth and overflowing with loving-kindness, so I trust Him fully and welcome it!
That is life, as I know it now.
Adam,
ReplyDeleteYour courage and openness astound me. I could never have confessed these things when I went through the exact same experience(s)as God prepared me before He allowed me to come here--the most painful, prolonged difficult time of my walk with Him. You know this is not discouragement but only acknowledgment of what you have already been experiencing for a while now. Rather it is encouragement to let you know that this is only a phase that He must put you through to prepare you for what He has assigned for you in the not-distant future. I praise God that He allowed me to get to know you. Along with a few others He placed in my path here, you have been a great source of inspiration and blessing on my first outing He has allowed me after a lengthy process of decontamination from so much 'debris'. So it is necessary for us to go through this if He is to keep His promise and fulfill the desires of your heart. Somewhere sometime you truly surrendered all and asked Him to use you according to His will. Now you have to show Him what you're made of. He is too Good, too Worthy, too Holy, too Valuable, too Precious, too Wonderful to give His intimate relationship, His ministry, His treasure to every Tom, Dick or Harry who has a 'moment' in an uplifting church service. This is where we show Him we're willing to break for our heart's desire. Show Him you will punch, kick and scratch to not let Him go. Fight like Jacob fought all through the night. This is His doing. The enemy only lurks around to attempt to confuse and weaken you. God only allows it/uses him to toughen you up and yield a glorious end. Stand on what you know to be the truth from the Word, as you already have stated, and on your faith. Imagine, the Great God of EVERYTHING chose us to be His servants, sons, reflection. It's gotta hurt for Him to dwell in us, keep in mind "that He who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus..." II Cor. 4:14. Only the very near presence of His Spirit dwelling in you allows you to go through this (and to be sustained by what you could not endure alone in your flesh). This is not for the light-hearted. He knows that most cannot/will not endure this. It is beyond(words really are inadequate) wonderful to think that 'we have this treasure in earthen vessels'. All this to say that this glory does not come cheap. It will cost you everything. You have already been forgiven of all sin, but such as we are with corrupted earthen vessels He must throw the wheel again and again to repeatedly, painfully reshape us and remove the dross each time. If He did this all at once it would destroy us.
Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty. But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.
II Cor. 3:17,18
I could go on forever. You are the person in verse 16. You turned to the Lord so He is taking your veil away, little by little. Painful, but a small price to pay for the glory that is to be revealed.
This is not lost time. You are not some problem case that He has to deal with. You are only one of the few who allow Him to take you this far. You can understand why James says, "count it all joy when you go through various trials......" He wasn't counting it all joy when he was going through it, but once he came through it and understood the value of the experience and what he reaped afterward he could state these words with true joy, conviction, authority and exaltation. This wasn't just some uncomfortable, brief experience that people go through when they overuse this text.
So congratulations. Glad to hear what God is doing in your life. This is good news. I will be praying for you. Post Phil. 1:6 on your bathroom mirror, on your door, on your wall.
I love you Brother