God still puts people in the belly of a whale

wwfblogs.org

I haven't blogged in quite some time.  It seems that every time I begin a blog, something happens that prevents me from blogging.  I become suddenly distracted or I encounter a stressful situation that leaves me with no desire to write.  Tonight, I fight through this to write in service to God.

"Then Jesus said to his disciples, 'Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.  For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.'" Matthew 16:24-25 (NIV)

"And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life.  But many who are first will be last, and many who are last will be first." Matthew 19:29-30 (NIV)

Those verses used to excite me and now they trouble me.  In fact, there are a lot of things that used to excite me that now trouble me.  I used to see spray paint graffiti and skyscrapers and feel this passion in my heart for the inner city, where God is working miracles daily to the few laborers who choose to serve those who do not want to be served. Now I see expensive homes and nicely trimmed gardens and get excited.  I used to see the homeless and gang members and see ministry potential, but lately I've been regarding them as societal problems that a just and compassionate government can solve.  The very thing that I preach against is happening to me: the crisis of comfort.  And God was saying to me through the Bible that if I sought to be comfortable, I would be totally uncomfortable.

Jesus was so accurate when He told us that we must daily pick up our cross (Luke 9:23).  I think He put "daily" in there because of people like me.  I feel like I would pick up my cross until it led me to a three story home with a three car garage and then I would set up the cross as a lawn ornament.  God confronted my heart through His word not because I wanted security or comfort, but because I had forsaken Him as my source of comfort.  I realized that I was balancing my checkbook one too many times a week, looking at the overtime schedule too many days a week and planning for a future that I was not guaranteed.  It is not that planning and budgeting are sins.  The problem is that my plans are not obedience to God but a replacement of trust in God.  God wants us to pick up our cross, I wanted to hang a marble one.  The irony of it all is that the more I pursued comfort and the more I planned on how to be comfortable, the less comfortable I felt.  

Notice that Jesus tells those who want to be His disciple to pick up their crosses.  I think Satan has crafted a lie to the Church that we have embraced - that we can be believers without being disciples.  Somewhere, somehow, we started to believe that the call to discipleship is to elite and super holy Christians and the rest of us are simply believers to whom Christ's call to sacrifice does not apply.  We mix our idea of ministry with the comforts of this world, never truly knowing discipleship.  We embrace the American dream with a Christian twist and create a mixed lukewarm beverage of mediocrity and complacency with a dollop of "Bless this Lord" and hope for the best.  I think that mixed drink would taste awfully and I think that's why Jesus tells us that He will spit the lukewarm out of His mouth (Rev. 3:16).

I repented last night for placing my faith in comfort and not in God.  I have to forsake houses and fields for the sake of God's Kingdom.  I do not want to be lukewarm and I do not want to be spit out.  Yet even as I write this blog, my flesh resists its message.  "Maybe I'm called to live among this social group to do ministry" or "Surely, God has prosperity for my life."  And then I think, "God doesn't want me to do something that I don't want to do.  He would give me a desire to do something if He planned for me to do it."  I have to recognize that those are not thoughts from Jesus.  How do I know?  Because God put a guy named Jonah in the stomach of a big fish until he finally decided to listen to God to go to a different social group where he would not be prosperous.  Whales don't go around swallowing folk anymore, but if we look at our lives through the lens of Jesus we might see our own version of a whale.  We might find that our jobs, our inability to have success in relationships, our financial struggles, our inability to move forward in our lives and so on are actually the answers to our prayers.  And God keeps us in these whales until we say, "Here I am, Lord, send me.  I'll pick up my cross daily and follow you."

My hope is that I will be spit out of a whale and not by Jesus.  True story.