Love

God, please tell me I am getting somewhere, I am accomplishing something. If there is one thing that might fringe on making me crazy at this moment, I think it would be to realize I had accomplished nothing--wasted my life and lived for myself. Have I forsaken the Kingdom? (I spew this type of worry when I begin to let performance define me.)

As Chambers writes in "The Ministry of the Unnoticed", not all Christian disciples can be Peter or the Apostle Paul, but that in no way disqualifies their fervency or sincerity, because they were not central, not visible at the lead. (There must have been hundreds of completely sincere disciples besides the twelve.)

Over and over again I see God as a Shepherd of Shepherds, A Servant of All. I know this can mean any number of things, but most of all Jesus was a servant. He was not a gatherer of the public eye. He was not popular in the sense that we know the word.

His life was made less than anything, though He had everything. I want to learn this humility, because it means rest; the rest that will carry me through being seen and unseen, as the Lord's will takes me.

No, I do not think Jesus is sympathetic with my perceived lack of popularity, or the opportunities I want to make fit that pass by me. I think these surface quandaries lead the way to His heart, so there is no obsession or reason to live other than knowing Him. There are no eyes that must see me any certain way. Least of all my own, and what I wanted for my own life has been forgotten a long time ago (I declare what all I dream of forgetting.)...in order for His dreams to take me. What I do or do not do does not so much matter. The way I love Him matters. If I lived in a jail cell, physically doing nothing but loving Him with my whole heart, my life would still not be wasted. In fact, love within limitations all the more shows the freedom He has given me to give myself to Him.

I am not deciding today to do any certain thing or start an particular work or project. I hear from God it will be more than sufficient to love Him and see what happens.

Matthew 5:3 Blessed are the poor in Spirit/Chambers pg. 661
"Literally: Blessed are the paupers in Spirit" (A pauper is exceedingly common place.) The average type of preaching emphasizes strength of will, beauty of character--the things that can easily be noticed. The phrase "Decide for Christ" which we so often hear is too often an emphasis on the thing our Lord never trusted. Our Lord never asks us to decide for Him, He asks us to yield to Him--A very different matter. At the basis of Our Lord's Kingdom is the unaffected loveliness of the common place."

For those of us who look at those in the lead and wonder why we ourselves have not been placed in similar positions, we must wrestle with this ambition and jealousy, overtake it, and allow God to put into our own hands our own destiny. Truly, we would not be happy living someone else's. In short, at the root of my struggle with the mundane is my rebellion against God and my unwillingness to accept His precise goodness in His placement of the times of my life. The idea Chambers expresses is that to abort our divine pathway with God in order to steal someone else's or conjure up our own, would plunge us into un-Christlikeness, as opposed to an immersion in His presence--the cure for every antsiness known to man.

What was the last thing God asked me personally to do, no matter how "small"? He assures me,there is no lack of power in any act of love.