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I am, starting this issue in the closing hours of September, having
just decided to change
the manner in which I create the mastheads
for the newsletter. Software changes, and you either change with it,
or you get left behind, with no solutions for your challenges.
Beginning
with the October issue I discovered that my method for creating the
mastheads was no longer working as expected, so, after hacking an
issue out, I, only today, discovered a better way of making
the mastheads, and I will be pursuing that in the next issues. The
changes will, hopefully, be subtle. But I think the results will look
more professional and more artistic.
I
have been learning more about a particular software package, and that
learning curve began to be applied with this year’s anniversary
issue in its cover art, which was designed, largely, in a package
known as Inkscape. It is Inkscape that I will
be using to apply the planned changes to come.
As
I wrote above, I do not plan changes that would come across as
drastic or jarring, but simply as quiet, perhaps smoother, and
hopefully, pleasing to the eye.
Drastic
changes can be particularly stressful and daunting things to deal
with and to wrap your life around, and I do not enjoy those things,
so I will not, willingly, be
committing them myself. In fact, I find anchors much more
enjoyable.
An
anchor is a marker of stability. In the midst of chaos it can hold
you steady. Instead of getting smashed against the rocks, it uses
those very same rocks to keep you steady and secure against the
storms of life.
As
I, those years ago, now, was fighting more and more desperately to
keep the home that I loved in the neighborhood where I felt safe, the
ragings of the storms of my life kept getting stronger and stronger
and stronger until, finally, something gave way that I could not fix,
and, the keystone smashed, my house of cards fell, and I had to
leave.
I
am certain that there are those from my former life who, even to this
day, given all that has happened to me and for me and through me, by
Christ since coming here, would still accuse me of having given up;
of not having fought hard enough, of being lazy, or unresourceful, or
unmotivated, perhaps even of being a coward.
It
is, perhaps, instructional that, since I joined the leadership
training program here, and gave permission to those holding them to
do with my possessions what they thought best and to keep any
proceeds for themselves, and having even visited
their church on more than one occasion, I have not heard word
one from them. People quite often mistake the calling of their own
lives as being a necessary calling on the lives of each and every
Christian in the world.
I
remember the look of deep disappointment in the face of Dr. David
Ludwick when I replied to his hope to consider going to the Ukraine
by saying, “That is not part
of my calling.” He seemed to think that every Christian
should go on a missions assignment. How odd, then, that he did not
seem to recognize the missions field in his own metropolitan area. I
did not know, then, what my particular calling was, only that the
Spirit was telling me to remain where I was.
How
can people
be leaders of
Christian missions organizations, all the while failing
absolutely to see the missions
field right under their very noses? How can such a thing possibly be?
And yet it is so very wide spread in this oh so Christian nation!
“Is
it time for you to palace dwell”
while the
temple of the Holy Spirit lies desperate and desolate at your very
door? Will
you continue
to
congratulate yourselves for foreign missions
while your own city slides the slope into hell?
How
interesting it is to live among those who would risk their very lives
to spread the Gospel to foreign lands but refuse to lift a finger of
risk to serve the hurting and the homeless that languish
outside their own door!
Where
is the anchor in their lives? Who is the anchor in yours, and why do
you not trust Him to hold? How
is it that your temple for praising the homeless Savior of the world
holds no bed for the homeless outside your own door? Who is your
anchor, and why do you not trust Him to hold? Are the storms of your
life so relentless and severe that even God Himself cannot hold? Who
is your anchor,
and why do
you not trust Him to hold?
I
most truly discovered my own
anchor when I finally let go of the things of this life and
determined to walk with Him wherever He might lead, be that over
lands and seas, or into slums, or into hell itself. I, having always
been at His mercy, was finally coming to realize what a fine place
that is to be. He is the
anchor of the most high God, and He has amply
demonstrated, by His very life and death,
His willingness to step into and vanquish hell itself to keep you in
His care. He has held my life
in His hands and He will also hold yours.
In
recent days I have taken to a particular way of describing the events
of my walk with Him. It involves
a vision that was granted me on more than one occasion, each time
using the accouterments of my surroundings to
fill in
the self same message of the repeated vision.
Standing
in the venue in which I found myself, I would suddenly be in the
Spirit and see myself kneeling in prayer in the place where I was
standing, and, so long as I remained in that posture of prayer, by
the end of the vision I would find myself kneeling amid the rafters
of the roof where I was.
The
truth of my attitude during that time can be evidenced by the fact
that I felt as if I were being held, indeed squeezed, down, and this
continued until I finally let go of those possessions, that home, and
that neighborhood. Though it took some months to realize, it became
apparent that once I did this, things changed; the squeezing down of
me transformed in such a way that, when asked, I usually describe it
as being as if God were lifting the floor beneath my knees. As
I have ceased my striving, He has engaged His on
my behalf.
When
Gideon gathered his army, the Lord rebuked him and sent more than 99%
of that army back home, using,
of them, only the very weakest, who could not stand on their own. It
is only those who cannot that God comes in and uses and does. When
you strive to stand on your own, you bar God.
Your
own anchor—that
one in which you most truly trust—is the one that will not stand
the test. You, instinctively, demonstrate your knowledge of this by
refusing to even try to step up and stand against the ragings of life
that demand that you not do what God has commanded every one of His
people
to do, when
He commands, in Deuteronomy,
that you will
provide—within
your בשׁעריך,
your doors—for,
yes, the church, but also for the stranger, the widow, the orphan,
that they may be satisfied—within
your doors.
This
is not a command of ceremonial matters. It
is a command of how to treat one another!
For those
who have no provision, you
will provide—within
your doors.
When
you refuse such a command you refuse the one who makes the command
that you refuse. When you refuse to stand against the demands of the
storms of life you also refuse the anchor that can make that stand.
We have not been given a spirit of fear that we should cower before
the haters of this life. No!
Instead, we have been given an anchor that will stand!
