Death and Taxes

I don’t know if you read My Utmost for His Highest, but Ozzy nailed it today. He cut through much of my pretense. I hate realizations of that magnitude: the kind you either agree with and make the necessary change, or try your best to ignore the new knowledge that is now currently stuck to your frontal lobe (the latter, of course, only serves to make you miserable).

“Do you agree with God that you stop being the striving, earnest kid of Christian you have been?”

Well, no, actually. I don’t know how to not strive. How does one not strive?

“Die.”

Excuse me?

“Do you agree with Him that this is your last day on earth?”

Man, I so often forget that when He calls a person, He bids them come and die. Keith Green, one of my favorite songwriters from the 70’s said, “God doesn’t want to hurt me. He wants me dead!”

And all of this, of course, is merely abstraction unless I make it personal.

Die.

Die to personal ambition. Die to the personal ambition that seeks to make you a person who gets to do the epic things for God, for your admiration and fame. Be faithful in the small things. Right here. Right now.

He hasn’t called me to Uganda...yet (and the reality is, He may not ever). Be faithful here.

He hasn’t opened the doors yet for me to reach exploited girls... yet (and may not ever). Be faithful here.

He hasn’t provided the kind of community for which I long to be a part. Mentor young women. Be community for them.

Husband.

Children.

Grad school.

There’s a point and time where and when one must act. But He knows the desires of my heart, and daresay, has placed them there (I was the one who added the faulty motives). “You lead me in the right paths for the sake of Your glory” (my paraphrase, Psalm 23:3).

But to get to those desires, for them to be made pure, I must first be made pure. I must attend a funeral: my own. Working in a church, in “vocational ministry” has opened my eyes to the further faults of the church, blinded me to many of my own, and made me insensibly defensive and arrogant. I have attempted to hide my messiness (anger, jealousy, lust), while casting judgment on those brave enough to admit their shortcomings.

Death is the only answer. And just like Lazarus, the dead cannot rise on their own accord. He must also call us to life. The great thing about that is simply: He has. "Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature; old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new" (2 Corinthians 5:17). And perhaps it is the realization that abundant life is on the other side of death to self that will revive these dry bones. 

Peace, my loves.