Category: Rally Cry

Inspiration to motivate you and keep you traveling on the narrow way.

Boots on The Ground

Please pardon the interruption from our regularly scheduled gospel story for a post of a more personal nature. 

This post is, ultimately, a prayer request. 

First, a bit of a back story.

Last summer I attended a conference put on by a local pastor in my community.  He and his wife network with other likeminded pastors, leaders and teachers who address some of the more “messy” aspects of our culture.

Thank God they do.  Somebody has to.

 By messy, I mean dark issues like satanic ritual abuse, pagan and cult activities, sex trafficking, abortion, and the deep state underbelly of our political system, just to name a few (and they connect most of these issues to each other in a disturbing way).  They are a hard-hitting bunch of warriors who aren’t afraid to lay it all out on the line for the sake of those who can’t necessarily hold the line for themselves.  This was not a pleasant conference. I spent two days learning about the devilish things these men research, expose and confront on a daily basis. I did not walk away with warm and fuzzy feelings, and I was exhausted. 

I was also deeply convicted.

I drove home and just tried to process it all.  I started to realize how self-centered and shielded my existence was.  I had no idea that MOST of those things went on at all, let alone in my country, my state, or worse, in my own community.  I didn’t know because, to be honest, I go to great lengths to protect myself from the messier side of life.  I like my world predictable and… safe.  I keep darkness at a distance on purpose. 

But now all of a sudden, my tidy, safe life felt… benign.  Impotent.  Cowardly even.

I knew that God had used that conference to open my eyes to the sinister workings in the world around me, and that I was not doing enough to oppose it.  Not even close.

So, I did what I have learned to do before I do anything else.  I prayed and asked God to show me what He would have me do.

First, I needed to repent for living my day to day purposely with blinders on.  I repented for being content with a life that was unaffected by the lost and dying, the molested and abused, and the deceived and betrayed.  And I repented for being distracted and satisfied with the things of this world that had absolutely no eternal value at all. 

Next, He revealed to me that my understanding of the true gospel and its power to transform lives for His kingdom was shallow.  This is not easy to admit. I am not a young Christian. But it is true none the less. 

Through the gracious teaching of the Holy Spirit and diligent study in the Word, I learned the depth, the breadth and the beautiful intricacies of the whole gospel message as it is revealed from Genesis to Revelation.  He taught me about the nature of the kingdoms of heaven and earth and His plan for the ages in ways that I had never before understood.

It took root in me.  It changed me, and it changed the way I looked at the world.

 Much of what I learned I am sharing through this blog.

And now it was time for the roots to produce fruit.  I needed to step out of my safe, sterile and calculated world and actually share with others what I had learned.  I had to be brave in a whole new way.

I say all of that to get to the real reason for this post, the part where I need your help.

A few months after I began this journey, I realized how little experience I had actually sharing the gospel on my own. I had witnessed to others in group situations or in organizational settings, but I had done little to proactively, purposefully and directly approach someone with the sole purpose of sharing the gospel.  I didn’t even know how. And I was scared.   So, I asked the Lord to teach me.

Only a few weeks after praying that prayer, a divine opportunity presented itself.

As a profession, I work as a dental assistant. A coworker and good friend of mine had just been approached by a dentist she knew from another state about going to Belize on a mission trip.  It seemed they needed assistants and wondered if she would be interested. Unfortunately, conflicts in her schedule prohibited her from being able to go, so she asked me if I would be interested.  Immediately, I knew I was!

I had a gut feeling this was the answer I was waiting for.

 I learned that this doctor had many years of experience organizing dental and medical mission trips all over the world and that he used it as an opportunity to spread the gospel.   God put a man right in my path who could teach me exactly what I wanted to know and put me in a situation specifically suited to my skill set.

On this particular trip, we will be treating prisoners in the Central Belize Prison.  (Talk about going in a dark place!) and through another effort to share the gospel, we will also be reaching out with food and basic necessities to some local needy families. I am so grateful and humbled that God has opened this door for me.  I pray that He uses it as a type of “basic training” and that I too, will be developed into a “boots on the ground” warrior for Him and His kingdom.

I share all of this with you to ask you to pray for me and our mission team as we travel to Belize in a few weeks.  I am traveling by myself to a place I have never been to work with people I have never met. Pray that we work cohesively as a team and pray for our safety and protection.  And most of all, pray that God will work in the hearts of those to whom we go to minister.  If we do not first appeal to the realm of heaven, what we do on earth, we do in vain.  

Thank you for your help and for your faithfulness to His Kingdom!

Let’s Make This Personal

If you have made it this far in reading my blog posts, then you are probably sick of hearing me harp on and on about how bad the church is for wandering so far away from the gospel.  But listen, this isn’t a railing against the church so much as it is a railing against me.  This is personal.  That is why I am so passionate about it.

Look, this is what happened, in my own life as well as that of the church, we got cold and lazy.  The culture of the world started pushing back hard against the church and the gospel.  The world doesn’t want to hear it, it’s just that simple.   And the louder the world got about telling Christians to shut up and keep their religion to themselves, the quieter the church got.  You know what I am saying is true, because YOU got quieter.  We stopped being bold about sharing our faith because we didn’t want to be labelled as being judgmental or bigots.  We just wanted the world to like us, so we just focused on LOVING everybody.  The church quit talking about God’s judgement and His wrath and just started telling everybody how much God loves them.  Well, that’s true, but that’s only HALF the message!  We only wanted to proclaim the parts of the bible that the WORLD would accept.  That is crazy! But it happened just like that.  And now we have generations of people who profess to be Christians that don’t even know what the Gospel is, let alone defend it when it is questioned or opposed.

Somewhere along the way, things have to get turned around and I think that time is now.  Someone has to recognize the deficiency and do something to fix it.  My hope and prayer are that this change can start with us – you and me, learning together and then getting excited about what we discover and then telling others.  The road to Glory is paved with the bricks of the gospel.  There is no other road and we were not meant to travel it alone.  Point the way, friend.  Do not be content that your family and friends know Jesus.  Look around you.  A sea of humanity is lost and blind.  Lift up your head out of your hand-held devices and LOOK AT PEOPLE all around you!   Look at their faces.  Look at the shape their lives are in.  They are being devoured by the enemy unhindered!  If you are a Spirit-filled, bible-believing, born again follower of Jesus Christ then YOU have the answer!  You have to care! Do not let your love for mankind grow cold.  Let’s decide right here to stop being calloused and lazy.

Ok, enough about that.

IF you continue to follow my posts, then let me tell you things are about to get crazy exciting. Why, you ask? Because I think I am going to show you things that will revolutionize the way you see God, yourself and the world around you.  Hey, I have been a Christian for over 28 years, and I am finding out just how ignorant I have been about the gospel.  When God first started revealing these truths to me, I was blown away.  Sometimes I would just sit for a long time with my mouth hanging open marinating in my own “wow” moment.

I know scripture.  I have been an avid bible student for all my Christian life.  But sometimes we filter His word through what other teachers have taught us that may not be exactly correct.   Our view gets distorted and it’s hard to “unsee” through those lenses.   It’s like trying to put a puzzle together wearing your grandma’s glasses.  If we take the glasses off, we can see the pieces more clearly, put them together more correctly and see the whole big picture start to take shape.  All of a sudden, those difficult pieces that sat sidelined for so long start to fit in too.  When we get our understanding in focus, we get high definition revelation!

About ten years ago I decided I wanted to become an EMT.  Turns out I didn’t really like it and wasn’t all that good at it.  But I learned a whole lot of stuff that is still with me today.  One of them is the ABC’s of CPR.  Airway, breathing, circulation; over and over again that got hammered home because it didn’t matter what else your patient had going on, if he didn’t have those 3 very important things going on, it didn’t’ matter what else you did to help him. 

The gospel has got its own ABC’s that is foundational knowledge and we need to know it well, so we are going to hammer them home, too.  Not to overuse my puzzle analogy but, when I do a puzzle, the very first thing I do is find all the edge pieces and start putting that frame together.  Once I have that done, I organize my other pieces in order to start filling it in.  The ABC’s of the gospel is the framework.  All the other stuff are the pieces that fit together make up the whole message of the bible.

The gospel ABC’s have 6 basic elements, which we went over before, but like I said, we will go over again and again.  They are,

  1. The Virgin Birth of Christ
  2. His perfect, sinless life
  3. His death
  4. His resurrection
  5. His ascension
  6. And His promised return

In studying each of these elements in depth, we will have a foundation that all the other truths in the bible build upon.

Another thing. 

The good news is only good because of the bad news.   To completely understand and appreciate the wonderful, life giving message of the gospel, you also have to have a good grasp on the BAD NEWS! 

Not to put you on the spot, but do you know what that is?

Well, don’t feel bad because I didn’t either. 

The bad news boils down to one thing, we are all sons and daughters of Adam.  Adam lost something that we cannot regain on our own.  And I don’t think I am exaggerating when I say that most Christians today probably do not know what that thing is.

We are going to discover what that thing is in our next study.  And when you learn of it, you will see how there is nothing you can do to earn your ticket into heaven, no matter how saintly you are.  You will see how important the works of Christ are and how we can apply them to ourselves.  You will understand that Christ came to do ONLY what He could do, and how it is impossible for us to achieve any of it without Him.  The message at the heart of the gospel is the “undoing” of what the devil did through Adam.  Christ came to do what I call the “re” words- redeem, renew, recover, restore, regenerate, reverse, reveal, regain, remedy- all that our earthly father Adam lost.  So, guess what, we are starting at the beginning of the Ol’ Glory Road and if you join me in my next post, have your bible out and turned to Genesis 1:1!

Praying you will join me!

The Consequence of the Crisis

What Happens When the Church is Ill Equipped for Its Commission?

In my last post, I suggested that the greatest crisis facing today’s modern church was the widespread ignorance of the gospel.  Now, notice that I said the church has this problem, not the world.  We expect that the world would be generally unaware of the true biblical, gospel message, but… the Church?  Really?

Yes, really.

And if the Church is even somewhat illiterate to the Gospel, the consequences are no less dire.  An ill-informed Church promoting a distorted and diluted Gospel message has the same effect as not preaching the Gospel at all.  Its commissioned purpose is to proclaim the Good Message of Jesus Christ unto Salvation.  Without a pure gospel, can you have authentic salvation? 

Turns out, this is not a new problem for the church.

Even in the history of the early church Paul issues the same warning to the believers in Galatia.

I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting Him who called you by the grace of Christ, for a different gospel; which is really not another; only there are some who are disturbing you and want to distort the gospel of Christ.  But if even we, or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed!   Galations 1:6-8

Paul issued the same admonition to the Corinthian church.  He hotly chastised them for being so willing to accept “another Jesus whom we have not preached”, receiving a “different spirit” other than the Holy Spirit and accepting a “different gospel” which he had not delivered to them.   (2Corinthians 11:3-4)

Sadly, many so-called believers today have bought into the “inclusion and tolerance” gospel the world is advocating.  They espouse a Jesus of their own making; a one-size-fits-all savior that simply came to make the world happy, rich and comfortable in its own skin. They are not receiving, through this “gospel”, the rebirth and regeneration that only the Spirit of God can deliver.  Folks, this false spirit, gospel and savior will not grant us solid shelter in the coming storm. 

There is another consequence to this widespread lack of comprehension of the basic gospel message:

And He summoned the crowd with His disciples, and said to them, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me.  For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel’s will save it.   Mark 8:34-35

A church not schooled or confident in its basic, fundamental message will not risk life and reputation to proclaim it. 

To be completely sold out to the appointment, you must first absolutely buy into it with everything you are and everything you have. Sadly, much of the so-called church today has not done this.  They want to follow Jesus and keep their life.  Not only their life, but their BEST life, an ABUNTANT life, and a PROSPEROUS life.  This false gospel proclaims that this is the evidence of Gods blessing in their life when, in fact, the true gospel bids a man to come and die to himself.  This is the true evidence of the real gospel of Jesus Christ. That one would be willing to lay down his life for sake of Christ and His gospel message.

Now trust me when I say that I am not pointing an accusing finger at you or anyone else. I thought I knew what the gospel was, and it wasn’t until I felt the Lord strongly pressing into my heart that I needed to share it that I questioned my own comprehension of it.  After many months of hard study, I concluded that my own handle on the gospel had been shallow and weak which in turn, paralyzed my desire to proclaim it.   

And it did more than that.  It blinded me.

Because I did not understand the POWER of the gospel to transform the world around me, I was willfully unaware of it’s LOSTNESS.   I had no desire to reach out to people who were obviously held in the bondage of their own sin because I did not see it as such.  Instead, I would create a safe distance from people whose dysfunction disrupted my life, even in the simplest of ways.  I had to learn what it meant to “love my neighbor as myself” and recognize that all men everywhere were my neighbors.  I had to be CONCERNED with their souls and not put off by their sins. I loved myself enough (even in my own sin) to receive salvation through the gospel of Jesus Christ, did I love them enough to share it?

For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes…(Romans 1:16).

You see, it’s not that the Church today isn’t busy.  Oh, it is.  It is busy fighting hunger, fighting social injustice, fighting against abortion, same sex marriage and government corruption. The church is busy fighting with itself over heresy, doctrines, worship techniques and territories.  The Church is busy trying to make a name for itself.    It’s busy fighting the issues and as a result it is tired, battered and bleeding.  All because it forgot its true purpose-

To declare the Gospel!

The source of every woe and plight of mankind is the nature of his heart and his loyalty to his kingdom.  A man is devoted to the kingdom of darkness and its culture because his own heart is darkened by sin.    Of course, we want to end all of the issues the Church is fighting against, but should’t the real solution be to change hearts so that men would not WANT to do them? Proclaiming the true gospel message carries with it that power of transformation, the power to deliver from darkness, and the power to break free from blindness and demonic strongholds. 

We, as the Church, have to be willing to proclaim this message of the Gospel to our lost and dying neighbors at any cost. 

Can we even call ourselves true followers of Jesus Christ if we are unwilling to do this?

 I urge you, if you have never done this, examine your own heart and mind and ask yourself, what am I willing to die to for the sake of Christ and the gospel? Am I willing to sacrifice myself for the sake of my lost and dying neighbor? What is prohibiting me from sharing the gospel? Is it fear? Is it because I am afraid of rejection or because my own ignorance will be exposed? My guess is, it is all of the above.

What is the answer to this crisis?

Each individual, everyone who claims to follow Christ, must make it their own responsibilty to know the Gospel as it is presented in the Word of God. Search it out. Study it. Pray that God gives you a passion and desire to know it and then to share it. Pray that God opens your blind eyes to see the sick, lost and dying all around you and pray that He gives you a heart to love them.

Friends, we do not have time on our side. The storm approaches. The fringe of it is already here. People you love may stand unprepared to face it. We must get our own feet planted firmly in our faith and in the word of God so that we can fulfill our commission proclaim the Gospel!

That is worth fighting for!

How Do We Get Home From Here?

GLINDA-  It’s all right.  You can get up, she’s gone.

The Munchkins all rise and start to move toward Glinda and Dorothy as Glinda speaks to them.

GLINDA- It’s all right.  You can all get up.

GLINDA- Pooh!  What a smell of sulphur!  I’m afraid you’ve made rather a bad enemy of the Wicked Witch of the West.  The sooner you get out of Oz altogether, the safer you’ll sleep, my dear.

DOROTHY- Oh, I’d give anything to get out of Oz altogether! But which is the way back to Kansas?  I can’t go the way I came.

GLINDA- No, that’s true. The only person who might know would be the great and wonderful Wizard of Oz himself!

DOROTHY- The Wizard of Oz?  Is he good or is he wicked?

GLINDA- Oh, very good, but very mysterious.  He lives in the Emerald City, and that’s a long journey from here. Did you bring your broomstick with you?

DOROTHY- No, I’m afraid I didn’t.

GLINDA- Well, then, you’ll have to walk.  The Munchkins will see you safely to the border of Munchkinland.  And remember, never let those ruby slippers off your feet for a moment, or you will be at the mercy of the Wicked Witch of the West.

DOROTHY- But, how do I start for Emerald City?

GLINDA- It’s always best to start at the beginning, and all you do is follow the Yellow Brick Road.

DOROTHY- But… what happens if I…?

GLINDA- Just follow the Yellow Brick Road.

And the camera pans down to Dorothy’s ruby red clad feet to show us that she is standing at the point of the spiral shaped beginnings of the Yellow Brick Road inlaid within the midst of Munchkinland.  All the Munchkins gather around Dorothy as they point the way to the Emerald City and to the Great and Mysterious Oz, and her only hope of getting home.  “Just follow the Yellow Brick Road…”

 

We all have buried deep inside of us a desperate desire to go home.

Somehow, we know innately that this world is not our home, we ultimately do not belong here and we feel uneasy and discontent here no matter how appealing it may be at times.  Yes, we may have love and beauty and creature comforts in this world, but something of a Greater Love draws us, Something or Someone more beautiful than this existence can offer.  Sometimes it’s hard to explain, we can’t seem to put into words the dissatisfaction and longing we feel so deeply in our hearts.

 

Home.

Home to the love that loves us so completely in spite of our flaws.  Home to the love that shelters us in the worst of storms.  Home to the One who sits by our side and patiently waits for us to awaken from the illusion of our dreamy false realities.  Home to the arms that will encompass us in a perfect and consuming Peace; safe and warm and satisfied.

But how do we get there from here?  We can’t go the way we came.

And it’s a long journey from here.

Where do we find our Yellow Brick Road?

Which way to the Great and Powerful, this Mysterious “Oz”, who is our only hope of ever finding home?

The deeply ingrained longing for “home” is real.  It is a desire that transcends us; in other words, it doesn’t originate with us. That desire was planted there by our Creator.  It is a desire for Him and will only be satisfied in Him.  The problem we face is that so much of the world today not only doesn’t know Him, but they do not even entertain the possibility for His existence.  The world tells them that there is no Emerald City and there is no Great and Powerful Oz.  You can follow the Yellow Brick Road all you want, but it leads to nowhere.  What a hopeless state they are in!  It’s no wonder that so many people are committing suicide!  It’s no wonder so many today are escaping their realities with drugs and alcohol, or with pornography or video games or online shopping.  They know the craving is real.  They just have no idea how to satisfy it.  No matter with what they try or how much or how often, still they find themselves empty; hungry for a home they don’t know how to find.

But friends, I am here to tell you there is a Way.  There is a hope.  There is One who made a way for us to satisfy the desire for Home, Who indeed IS our Home.  And there is a Road that leads us there.

 

It’s simple to find.  And you do not have to start at the beginning.  You can start from wherever you are!

 

Your journey Home begins with your first believing in the Truth that there is a God who made you, who formed you intentionally and who desires to be known by you.  In this way, God our Creator is not like the Wizard of Oz who was “mysterious” so as only to hide the fact that he was not who he portrayed himself to be.  The Wizard of Oz was, in the end, just a man like everyone else.  Our God is not at all like anyone or anything else.  He is Who and What His word says He is and through His word He is revealed and knowable.  John 1:1-5, 9-13.

And that Word became a man, but not a man like anyone else (John 1:14). He was also God revealed to us in human form, clothed in flesh and blood, entering time and space in order to bridge the great divide that separated us from Him.  That great divide is the sin that we are born into, sin that we commit and sin that we cannot escape or deliver ourselves from.  Our sin is what separates us from our Home.  But the Word that became a man -Jesus Christ, came to pay the penalty for our sin, to die in our place, to satisfy the righteous requirements of God in our stead.  Because He did what we could never do for ourselves, we now have access to the “Great and Powerful” God, the only hope of ever satisfying the deepest longing and hunger of our souls.

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“Do not let your heart be troubled; believe in God, believe also in Me.  In My Father’s house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you.  If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am, there you may be also. And you know the way where I am going.” Thomas said to Him, “Lord, we do not know where You are going, how do we know the way?”

Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.  John 14:1-6.

 

Our hearts long to be at home with our Father.  The only way to get home is through Jesus, who indeed IS the Way.  When we trust in the work He did for us on the Cross by shedding His perfect, sinless blood, our faith in that work gives us access to the Father.  The Holy Spirit comes like a dove and lights upon us and sinks down within us and takes up residence in our spirit.  He unites with our spirit in a way that resembles a marriage, we are made one with each other.  When God looks upon us, He sees that union and the holiness that is bestowed upon us through the Spirit.  We come to KNOW Him.

 

In that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you. He who has My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me; and he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and will disclose Myself to him.” John 14:20-21

 

It is no longer us He sees, but the Spirit of Christ within us.  Our identity has changed.  We are made a new creation.

Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.  Now all these things are from God,who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation.    2Corinthians 5:17-19

 

It really is a marvelous mystery!  And one you do not have to fully understand to reap the benefits from.  You only have to trust that it is true and accept that truth within your heart.  God performs the rest.

 

The next step in the process of going home is to follow.  Just as Dorothy had to follow the Yellow Brick Road, we have to follow Jesus.  Following Jesus is in every sense following the “Glory Road”.   Following Jesus and His commands keeps us in the center of Gods perfect will for our lives.  No matter where you are in this world; in a field of poisonous poppies or in the middle of the haunted forest surrounded by flying monkeys, if you are on the Glory Road you are going the right way.  God’s eyes are on you.

Jesus answered and said to him, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our abode with him. He who does not love Me does not keep My words; and the word which you hear is not Mine, but the Father’s who sent Me.

“These things I have spoken to you while abiding with you.  But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you.  Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you.

 Do not let your heart be troubled, nor let it be fearful.”  John 14:23-27

 

 Following Christ means reading His word.  Following Christ means surrendering your will to His.  Following Christ means to live according to the Spirit and not according to our own sinful desires. And even that is something we cannot do in and of ourselves, but only as the Holy Spirit empowers us to do it.  Praise God that He has provided every need we have.

If we do these things according to the prescribed plan of God, we will find our way home.  In fact, we will find that we are already home in Him.   We will find that our desperate, unexplained longings are satisfied in Him.  The things of the world will, over time, fade away.  And we will rest in the hope that we will experience an eternity with the God of all creation, Who formed us for His good pleasure, to enjoy the riches of His Grace and Mercies, living in the Presence of His Glory forever!

Way better than Kansas!

Sometimes You Find that the Road Itself is a Destination

I love maps.  Sometimes when I am contemplating a trip somewhere, I will get a map out and start studying the area between where I am and where I want to go.  First, I will look for the major highways, calculate the distance I need to travel, and then figure the time it should take me to travel it. Then I will start looking for interesting things that may be encountered off the beaten path.   A couple of years ago, my husband and I decided to take a spontaneous road trip to Maine.  I was very excited because I had always wanted to travel to the New England area and the added bonus was that it was October and we would be able to take in the beauty of the fall foliage along the way.  Long before we packed the car and headed down the road, I was studying the map.  This was a road trip, so I didn’t want to over plan, I just wanted to have a destination in mind, have a rough idea how to get there, pack our clothes and a cooler, and just let the rest happen.  The whole time my husband was driving, I was navigating; atlas in one hand and google maps on my phone in the other.  The maps were a comfort to me.  Even though I was far from anything familiar, I was oriented. I was never lost. Oh I may have gotten us turned around a time or two.  I may have headed us down a road I didn’t really mean to go down. We had to negotiate a detour here and there, but we were never without knowing where we were or our ultimate destination.   And along the way, we got off the major highways and onto some pretty spectacular country roads with breathtaking views and country stores and we even stopped at a garage sale and found some New England “treasures”.  It was definitely a trip we will always remember.

The thing about that trip in particular is that while we had Maine as our goal, the trip wasn’t just about Maine.  It was about the road we traveled getting to Maine.  It was like the road itself was a destination. It was the unexpected wonders we encountered on the road between here and there.  It was the time we spent together in the car talking, musing about the sights we were seeing or the new food we were trying.  Maine was just beautiful when we finally got there.  What an awesome thing to finally experience the might of the Atlantic ocean from those rocky shores.  But in reality, the bulk of the memories we treasure now are the ones that were made on the road between here and there.

“And you were dead in your trespasses and sins,in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience.”

Ephesians 2:1-2

This was me before I knew Christ as my Savior.  I was truly lost in this world.  I had no direction.  I had no map.   The thing is I didn’t realize it at the time because I was so deceived and distracted,  busy chasing cheap and empty things that in the end left me feeling discontented, discouraged and depressed. And ultimately, I was on a fast track towards a destination of eternal death.

Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.     Ephesian 2:3

 

A road is meant to lead you from one place to another, but in a sense, the road itself is a place.

When I accepted Christ as my Savior, I started walking a much different road than the one I was on.    It was itself a place of transformation and refinement.

In scripture, the Glory of God is most often represented as a fire.  Fire does two things, and both of them transform the substance it which it comes into contact.  The fire will either destroy it or it will refine and purify it.   Sometimes it will simultaneously do both.

 

When we accept Jesus Christ as our Savior, we are inviting the Spirit of God to dwell within us.  He takes up residence in our spirit and becomes one with us.  It is very much like entering into a covenant  relationship of marriage.  We must understand that we are committing our heart, mind, body and soul to Him.  He, in exchange, gives us His eternal, supernatural, holy life.  He comes into us to “make us holy” unto Him.  We now have the ability to know Him, to understand His word and to walk in His ways.  We have entered the “Glory Road”.

The fire of the Glory of God comes into us through the Holy Spirit.  It begins to burn away and refine things in our soul.     It begins its transformative work within us to conform us into the likeness of Christ.  This part of the sanctifying process and work of the Holy Spirit usually takes time, much like getting from one destination to another takes time.   It is by way of the walking that changes us.

 

Sometimes this burning away isn’t very pleasant, in fact, it most of the time it downright hurts.

But no matter how painful the course, we must stay true to it.  It is the only way it works.  It is the only way beauty can come up from the ashes.

 

We may stumble and fall. We may take wrong turns and think we are lost.  Sometimes the detours derail us.  But as long as we have the Spirit of God and His Word as our guide, we can stay oriented!  We can never truly be lost again.   Just because something is hard doesn’t mean it’s bad.  It just means it’s hard.

For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.

For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.

Ephesians 2:8-10

The work of God is performed in us by walking with Him.   Enjoy the road, friends.  Understand that the road is part of the salvation experience and in fact, prepares you to reach your heavenly home.   May God bless you this day as you seek to follow Him and yeild your lives up to His refining Glory fires!