Martyr's Hill

One of the most devious tricks of the devil is to get us to say, "I can't" to God.  Is it really that you can't or that you won't?  Every creature, from the snail to the leopard is made perfectly by God for whatever purpose our Lord has planned.  We make much of genetic deformities as if that is sensible.  What we may call a deformity is in fact a way of expressing disbelief in God's handiwork...as if He is a flawed artist.  If at any point God gives you direction and you are clear it is God, you can be certain you are equipped and prepared for the task.  Nothing about you is out of place or lacking.  It must be dumbfounding to the angels that any born-again Christian would question God's call based on skill sets and talents.  Yet even Moses stood at the burning bush arguing with Almighty God over his fitness to lead Israel out of Egypt!  What slander to confuse defamation of God's work in you with humility!  It is not humble to turn down our Lord because we think we are inadequate for the task!  It is rather outright rebellion against His rule.  Nothing amazes the world quite as much as the fisherman who stands the world on its ear with his preaching or the tax collector who composes the very first book of the New Testament or the lunatic who Christ proclaims will be remembered eternally for her holy devotion.  How will heaven remember you?  Will you be compared to all those called by God who turned aside out of fear or indifference or will you be known as the one who scorned the devil's mocking of your readiness for the task and gave God all you had for your Savior's glory?   Will you stand on the hill of your martyrdom and plant the banner of Christ there, declaring the land irrevocably God's and His alone? 

 "Get yourself ready! Stand up and say to them whatever I command you. Do not be terrified by them, or I will terrify you before them.     Jeremiah 1:17-18 NIV

Today See God

Is it a crazy assumption that God will do now as has been described of Him doing in the past?  Nothing unsettles our sensibilities quite like the long wait for God to act today as we have heard He did before.  Every rational thought argues against willful  anticipation of supernatural entries into our fussy world.  It seems absurd to the common mind that the Lord still operates within the same paradigm as records indicate He once did.  And yet that is precisely what we are expected to believe when we take even the most casual glance at the Scriptures.  The" Fairy Tale" motif swirls about within the interpretive dance steps of  the normal Christian's take on life lived out daily.  In fact what is "Christian" today is generally not what once was Christian when everything said about God in Scripture was believed.  The Church assumed rightly God acted in their today as He had during the today of Moses or Elijah.  They realized the Lord would grip them relentlessly "now" even when they went through the fire, even when they fell into the water.  It did not come easily.  Peter had to first get wet and Silas had to wait in twitching pain for his prison midnight but eventually they came around.  Personal experience made the difference for them just as it does here for us.  The prayer had to be uttered, the cry bellowed, the worship to the God of heaven offered.  It was only then that Elijah saw things just as Moses had, Peter saw things as Elijah had and Paul saw things as Peter had.  The skeptic does not die peacefully but in fits and starts and with loud moans and lusty screams.  The man without God is a hollow shell.  But add the Lord Jesus Christ to him and He lives vivaciously, vividly, like a bright beam of sunlight piercing the night sky.  You, joined with the Lord will see all that Elijah did, all that James did and not feebly either but decidedly, firmly.    We stumble over little unseen miracles because we live with meager faith; we grip the majesty of God with the loosest of holds because we are  more content to hear about God than we are to know Him.  "Taste and see that the Lord is good", implies that you must do something about your hunger and thirst if you are ever to gain the smallest sense of God.  The historical documents have been given us not that we might dream of days gone by but that we might do the very things the saints of the past did.  Stay in the shallows of common faith and you will merely read the tales of God; go out of the harbor where storms threaten to dump you in the sea and the Majesty of the Almighty will find you .  You will no longer make your way through the shadow lands of legendary ghosts;  you will instead enter the actual world where Christ reigns and you join with Him in His Glory.  Stop making so much of the God of ancient times if you don't intend on taking hold of the Christ who today stands before you and whispers, "Come".

Aware of their discussion, Jesus asked, "You of little faith, why are you talking among yourselves about having no bread?  Matthew 16: 8 NIV