privileged to answer His call

There seems to be something about the changing of seasons or transitions that the Lord often seems to leverage for growth and renewed clarity.  What joy to serve such a Saviour who is no content to leave us stuck in the mediocre - ever upward and onward!

"And He was saying to them all, 'If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me.  For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake, he is the one who will save it.  For what is a man profited if he gains the whole world, and loses or forfeits himself?"  

Luke 9:23-25

I have been reminded lately of Amy Carmichael's description of life in ministry.  She said simply "It is a chance to die". And to those who do not know and love Christ, that may sound both overwhelming and unappealing.  But to those who have seen and known their Savior there is a desire to live such a life, that in all things He may be known and preeminent.  

Yet lately the Lord has been revealing the difference in my life between knowing this truth and truly living it.  You can be involved in full-time ministry but still not truly daily dying to self.  You can be doing all the right things, reading the right books and saying the right things, but still be clinging to your life.  And perhaps it is in little ways, unseen or unnoticed by those around you.  We can be clinging to hidden comforts - silly things really - when there is a greater call upon our lives.

And the choice has been laid before me with such clarity.  We could try to live a self-preserving existence, one that clings stubbornly to trite and worldly things.   That clings to 'life' so tightly that the abundant life in Christ is never seen or lived.  But let us know this and neither avoid nor justify it no longer - in trying to keep our lives, in holding on to those things which make us more comfortable or life more easy, we lose the our life.  

The life of a Christian is to be an offering completely given, a sacrifice completely spent.  That is the life we are both called and enabled to live.  Let us answer the call upon our lives with abandon that in all things Christ may be preeminent and seen - and let us live our lives in a way that the supreme worth of Jesus is manifest!

"So the mixture of our message is life and death, laughter and tears.  But for us, life is never ordinary, life is never flat.  I'm here with a plea for you.  If you've known the love of God, if you have tasted of His sweetness at all, there is no other way to serve Him except to give up your life.  And this is voluntary. This is not a sentence of death at all. . .we are privileged to answer His call."  

Jackie Pullinger