If I thought God wasn’t the most exciting and interesting person in the universe, I would probably look elsewhere for another God. After all, that is what worship is all about: finding someone worth giving your all and “throwing down” all you have and putting it all on the line for Him.

Life’s too short to waste time doing anything else.

One of my favorite words in the English language is enthusiasm. I like the way it rolls off the tongue. I also like what it communicates. When you break this delicious word down into bite sized pieces, it yields its root meaning: “en” means “in,” and “thusiasm” comes from the root “theos.” So basically “enthusiasm” is the state of being  “in God”!

God is the most enthusiastic person in the universe! Every moment of His existence is infused with love, discovery and the joy of being alive. If this is true of Him, how much more should it be true of us?

Isaac Newton once wrote:

“I was like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”

Here is one of the greatest scientists of all time sharing his secret to life–he was a boy playing on the seashore diverting himself now and then! And all the while the great ocean of truth lay undiscovered before him!

Youth missions trips to Mexico, Australia, or anywhere we have not been before offers an opportunity to learn something new, engage in interesting relationships, find dimensions of your personal faith you didn’t realize even existed, experience new dimensions of God’s grace, and discover how big and beautiful our world really is.

We serve a Mighty God who says to us:

“Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.” (Matthew 11:28-29 TMSG)

I want to learn those unforced rhythms of grace! Like Isaac Newton, I want to run free on the seashore of God’s country and see yet another dimension of His love for me!

Jul 20, 2010

The longer I live, the more convinced I become that life is about the journey and not the destination.  It’s about the little things that go on from day to day and week to week that put the color in the story of our lives. The “marrow of life” is really, when you think of it, what happened this week, and more specifically, today. Henry David Thoreau says it well:

“I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately, I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, To put to rout all that was not life and not when I had come to die Discover that I had not lived.”

 

It’s true in a short term mission trip, and it’s true in life. Goals are important. Vision and purpose is the heartbeat of Christian living. But at the end of the day, God calls us to trust Him and walk with Him in the moment that is now. The greatest inroads we make in life and in mission trips are those serendipitous breakthroughs we never expected, could not have engineered, and will never forget as long as we live.

Sometimes we feel like we can’t see the forest for the trees—or that worse, we are stuck in the forest.  Yet perhaps it will be those forest encounters and stories of survival that we end up talking about the most to our grandchildren as we sit in front of the fire and no longer have the energy to do what we once did.

In a survey given to people  90 years of age or older, there was one question that asked “If you had life to live over again, what would you do differently?” The three top answers to that question were (1) I would take more risks, (2) I would reflect more on what I was doing and (3) I would give myself to something that would outlive me. It is that second answer that applies here. So often we rush forward toward the finish line in such a fixated manner that we forget to smile at the faces we see and smell the roses we find along the way.

Without a doubt, all members of the “human race” seem to be sprinting toward the finish line of life from the time we’re born until the day we die. It’s as if we fully expect to arrive, yet when the race of life is over, we all settle on the final conclusion that the search has just begun. If you spend some time down under, you will so realize that a missions trip to Australia MUST include a deliberate effort to dial down your American anxieties and take on the  “she’ll be right mate!” mentality. Life will be sweeter and more productive if you do this on a youth mission trip in general.

Getting what we want is one of life’s great achievements and also one of life’s greatest disappointments. The joy of satisfaction lasts but a moment, then we discover that it wasn’t everything we thought it would be; it was not enough to make us happy and fulfilled. We need more. And so it is, because so were we created.

Jesus touched on this in his conversation with the woman at the well when he said

“Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”  (John 4:13-14)

Here was a woman who had had been married 5 times and was back at it a 6^th time with another man, trying to make a relationship work, trying to arrive at happiness. But inside she has a thirst for something more. Jesus knew this.

We are all like the Samaritan woman. Our thirst is never quenched in this life, and our sources all eventually dry up. But Jesus promised a source of on-going fulfillment on the inside of us “welling up to eternal life.”

The Message version reads:

“The water I give will be an artesian spring within, gushing fountains of endless life.” (vs 14)

Life is in the journey, not the destination. Eternal life is a never ending journey of victory after victory, joy after joy, discovery after discovery.

When I was 16 years old, I had a radical conversion to Christianity. I fell in love with Jesus. I told all of my friends I had found Jesus, I knew Jesus. When it first happened  I honestly felt it was a done deal—a one-off experience. I felt like I had arrived.  But I hadn’t. In fact, I was just getting started!

My relationship with Jesus  continued in the many years that followed, and I can say, looking over my life, that I have discovered Jesus again and again. And again.

Knowing Jesus isn’t a one-off. It’s an on-going experience. In fact, I am convinced there is so much of him to be known and experienced, that we will never stop discovering new and wondrous things about him.

“…that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.” (Eph. 2:7)

The Apostle Paul summed up his goal in life as he wrote from prison:

“Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”  (Phil. 3:13-14)

 

We do press toward the goal, and that is a good thing. As Victor Frankl pointed out in his landmark book “Man’s Search For Meaning,”  we all need  a goal greater than ourselves, something worthy of our highest commitment. He asserted what the 90 year old respondents concluded: we all need to give ourselves to something greater than ourselves, something that will outlive us.

We will ever arrive? I don’t think so. In the ages to come there will be more adventures, more mountains to climb, more joys to experience, and more dreams to build. Which is why I am thrilled that life, indeed, is about the journey!

(We would love to host your mission trip to Mexico. Use the contact form to get the process started!)

Below is a long quote that has everything to do with leading a participating in a mission trip to Mexico. Let this sink into your mind and you will be half way there. Press into God in prayer each day and He will take you the rest of the way!

“Your world tells you to win you must be invulnerable and invincible. It tells you to learn to be independent, stand on your own two feet, listen to no one. Your world is also full of it. God says the exact opposite. He says to win we have
to know our weaknesses and know how quickly we can fall. He says to triumph we must learn to trust Him, to expect His help, to be a continual learner. God delights in taking those the world writes off as losers and making them utterly
awesome. Your unchangeable limitations are also a great blessing in disguise. They are opportunities for others to see you serve an invisible Someone who can  make anyone who hangs with Him the greatest mover and shaker of them all. (I Cor. 1:26-31)

So HOW DO YOU START? What do you do that begins to make the difference? Do the exact opposite of what your world tells you. Focus on yourself and you will wind up with nothing more than yourself. You will stay stuck with all your inbuilt and inbred hassles and hindrances. A man wrapped up in himself makes a pretty small package. Jesus never said “Find yourself.” He said “He that finds his own life will lose it”. (Matt. 10:39) Jesus never said “Express yourself, be
popular.” He said “Except a corn of wheat fall to the ground and die it abides alone.” Jesus never said “Explore yourself”. He said “He that loves his life shall lose it.”( John 12:24-25).
Understand this: When an infinite God expresses Himself finitely it always comes out different. The SECRET OF BEING DIFFERENT is simple: don’t try to be yourself!

Forget yourself. Give yourself away to Jesus. Deny yourself – with all its limitation and hurt and small and shabby ambitions. Give up your life to the Infinite God and His eternal purposes. Lose your life in Him. Seek only to serve Him and others for Him. Set the pitch of your heart to learning and knowing Him, and making His glory great in the eyes of others. Let Him express His personality and power through you. And this I promise you: you will become utterly, wonderfully unlike anyone else in history. You will find that in losing your life you will find it.”

(For more of where this came from go to www.winkeypratney.com)

“I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus…”

Over  Easter weekend, as I watched the movie “The Passion of the Christ,” I finally got the answer to a question my 10 year old daughter has asked me countless times: “Daddy, what if you could go back in time and be any one you wanted to be?”

I have decided that if I had that opportunity, I would like to be the man who helped Jesus carry his cross on the Via Dolorosa. Can you imagine? What an honor and privilege that would be!

Knowing that opportunity will never come my way, I was encouraged to come across a classic sermon by one of my all-time favorite preachers, Leonard Fox.  This is a man who back in 1976 spoke prophetic words over my life as a part of the presbytery at my convocation in Bible College and whose sermons always challenged me to the core.

The sermon is on Galatians  6:17 where Paul writes:

“I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.”

Fox points out that Webster defines “mark,” among other things, as:

1) recognition of ownership

2) The outer sign of something that is stamped in written I the character of the person.

So when Paul writes “I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus,”  he is proclaiming Christ’s lordship in his life and testifying to the transforming power of God’s grace in his character.

These marks– distinctive traits– were first manifested in the life of our Savior…then the apostles….then passed on to us all who  are “predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son…” (Rom. 8:32) They are the distinguishing characteristics of all disciples of Jesus.

According to Fox, here are 8 distinctive marks of Jesus:

1. Forgiveness of injuries (“Father forgive them, for they know not what they do…” Also Col. 3:13; I john 2:6)

2. No self pity (“Don’t weep for me” …Luke 23:28)

3. Joy in spite of difficulties…(“Who for the joy set before Him endured the cross”…Heb 12:1-4)

4. Calm receptivity…(“I am telling you what I have seen in the Father’s presence”…John 8:38)

5. Courage (Jesus had courage in the face of growing opposition and certain crucifixion–Isa 40:31)

6. The power to take it…unbeatable (“obedient to death…therefore God exalted him.” Phil 2:8-9)

7. He cared deeply…every man’s hunger was His own (“he had compassion on them” Matt. 9:36)

8. He gave himself (“he suffered death, so that … he might taste death for everyone” Heb 2:9).

While only one man was chosen to help Jesus carry His cross on that fateful day 2000 years ago, today the invitation is open to us all:

” Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.” Matthew 11:28-30 (The Message)

(We would love to host your missions trip to Mexico. Use the contact form to get the process started!)