Post date: Oct 05, 2014 3:6:23 PM
Here 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!