It Is Not a Waste to Follow After You!

This blog was inspired by a line in a worship song that my friend Cristy Cash wrote...

It is not a waste to follow after You my Lord...

My baby is sitting next to me.  The one who has been grafted into my family the way I have been grafted into His.  Her beautiful almond shaped eyes bring me so much joy when I look into them...because I see Him.  She is one of 7 living daily in my home who look to me to be a mommy.  God brings so many others thru my front door and into my heart.  I am not enough.  Never enough.  He keeps me way out in the deep.  I am one person.  One very weak person.  But He lives.  

My life is spent on loving Him because I believe that it is not a waste to follow after my Lord.  I believe He lives thru me...and I see Him living thru so many others.  If His Word is true then my life is found in losing it.  Money and fame and man's approval can not be what my strength is spent on...it must be spent on loving Him.  So in the really hard moments when I see clearly that my strength is feeble and I have failed for the ten thousandth time....I remind myself that He lives. I remind myself that this all matters to Him. He really does consider my service to the least of these as service to Him.  It is precious to Jesus when I hold a child's hand in Africa or put a bandaid on their wound.  He really does care when I stand over the sock tub and make a choice to thank Him for all the big and little feet that are represented.  He cares when I take the time to laugh and play in the water with my 2 year old.  He sees when I excitedly enter into a lengthy bug-conversation with my 4 year old.  He takes delight when I open my home to one-more-child because they do not belong in a shelter but instead a family. When I write an impossible prayer request in my journal for someone I barely know He is moved by my faith and I can be certain He knows that person intimately.  When I fall to my knees on my closet floor desperately asking for help He bends low to listen.  When I weep over the way my sin and selfishness have affected others He weeps with me.  When I memorize His word and meditate on it convinced that this is the way to true freedom He rejoices. When I choose sacrifice over comfort and obedience over self-indulgence and humility over pride I know the Cross and it's power are real.  When I open up my home for people to worship Him and not for my own popularity I have confidence that He also is invited in.  

My life is going fast.  I walk thru my house and think years back.  The rooms have been filled up a million times with so many people that my memory can not contain them all.  But He knows them.  Each and every one.  He has given me honor by allowing me to welcome Him in as I have welcomed each person in. 

Everything is different yet the same.  The same God is moving in the same way as I see He has done for thousands of years in the Scriptures. Yet He is causing me to be different, more like Him. The same mirror over the the same vanity is revealing a reflection with a face that is a little more aged, with a little different glow of His glory.  My house has the same structure yet the rooms are now decorated differently as others have offered me new beauty and inspiration and added space for the ministry He is growing right under my roof.  

I don't have to leave my house to find Him.  He is here.  Always here.  Always with me.  If I want to live for the sake of the gospel...and I do...He meets me here and fills my desires with Himself. 

When I am tempted to believe the lie that peace and quiet are found in my circumstances He shouts out to me in the chaos to still my soul and look for Him.  He is here.  He is real.  I matter to Him.  All the people that come into my home.  They all matter.  Each one is an opportunity for me to serve Him and love Him.  

In three weeks I will get on a plane and fly to a little country in Africa filled with many people I love who look very different from me.  Yet we were all created in the image of the same God. Each time my heart aches to leave all these precious ones right here in my own town nestled comfortably in my own nation many who come right under my own roof so Christ can love them thru me.  Though God has called me to travel to a land very far away 12 other times the sacrifice is always a choice and a struggle.  All the really BIG decisions and the really little decisions (which are really BIG decisions) matter.  Every time I say yes to His will and choose His ways I lose my life to find His and I always realize in those moments that He really is worth it!  So I will not look for my life in a relationship or a circumstance or security.  Life will not be found any of those places because it is only truly found in Him.