Going Back about a year

Have you ever considered hiking a great mountain and reaching the peak?  Chris and I took an overnight hike up Mount LaConte when our oldest was 7 months.  We backpacked him, along with our supplies (diapers and a change of clothes for each of us, along with some snacks and waters).  We were on a mission to make it to the supplied cabins on top, though we wanted to experience everything along the way.  It was a fairly easy day's journey for Chris and I, as I remember it.  Along the way there was a steep part that we needed to use a rope to ensure we didn't slide backwards, we went through an overhang, and there were several parts that did not offer much foot space before you could be sliding down the side. We enjoyed the views, took pictures, I fed Nathaniel along the way and we had snack breaks and times to just reflect on the last leg of the journey (Wow, that was kinda scary!  Look, how beautiful!). There were several shelters along the way that a hiker could rest in for as long as they liked, or overnight.  All of these things we took note of, maybe paused for different amounts of time, but we kept going: our intent was to make it to the top where we would have an actual bed, dinner, and breakfast the next morning.  If we had decided to take shelter and make the next leg of the journey the next day, we would have missed our reservation and given up our meal, bed, and breakfast.  But we could have enjoyed an incredible view for a lot longer!  And we could also have had a meet-in with a bear!  We had an appointment to make, and we weren't going to linger too long at any resting point or view, because we believed what we could see and experience at the top would surmount any other along the way.  

 What about our journey in Christ?  Do you see that there is a point, a pinnacle in your relationship, in the adventure of knowing and serving Him?  Have you accepted Christ as your savior, and then decided it's great knowing I am saved, and camped out there?  Maybe you had an incredible miracle happen, and that's a part of your testimony, but then you set up camp there.  Maybe you are working in an area that you felt called to, and have been camping out there... it's become safe and the idea of stepping out to the next place God's calling you to is overwhelming.  You've set up camp, maybe in a good or great or much appointed place, but you've overstayed.  It's time to pack up and start moving again.  Experience God in a new way.  Leave behind some things you may have brought home that really don't belong, and trust God again to take you somewhere new.  We don't realize that in life, we are meant to keep moving, keep growing, meeting new challenges and exercising our faith muscles.

Every journey has a first step.  I can take you way back to my childhood, and my recognition of needing a Savior that also offered to be a friend- a much needed counselor in my confusing early years.  Or I could take you through my rebirth that began after a short spurt of rebellion.  But this leg of my journey I want to begin going back just a year.  I have come to see life as an Aaliyah- an ascent to meet our Lord- and too often I find a nice place along the way and decide to camp out.  In my time of figuratively camping out, though I might still be praising the Lord, I'm not actually doing what He's called me to do.  I begin to see faults in my time of complacency, usually in the people around me.  I am uncomfortable because I am supposed to keep moving.  My circumstances make me uncomfortable, yet I look at them as the fault instead of seeing that I need to move to "feel better".  

I have been blessed with back pain most of my life.  It's in a sense the thorn in my flesh that drives me daily.  I know that if I don't get up and start moving it will get worse.  So I've always been active, most mornings I get in some kind of movement or workout to start my day.  When my daughter was six months old I "broke my back" (annular tear in my lower lumbar) and had to be in the bed for a good month before I started physical therapy, and then had about a year of recovering.  My doctor told me I would always have to protect my back, but that movement was so important.  Keep up the exercises.  It is the same in our walk with the Lord, we must keep up the exercises.  We can't rely on someone else to make us strong.  It is up to us what we put in our bodies, and to do the training: physically and spiritually.

I hope that this book further encourages you to take the time to be physically, spiritually, and relationally "fit" for the work that the Lord lays before you.  He won't give you more than you can handle, but He will definitely allow challenges that will cause you to have to "all-in" engage.  If you've ever lifted weights or done a physically challenging exercise, you know that you get to a point that you want to quit, and it's the pushing past that builds the muscle.  So it is with our faith: we must push past the comfortable complacency of whatever has become our "norm".  Our normal routines, though good, though they may have gotten us to the next level of growth in Christ, are not meant to be our camping place.  Keep digging in the word, read a new devotional alongside the word, enter a new group of believers studying the word that will challenge you or uncover a new area you haven't submitted.  If I only did one workout for the rest of my life, my body would not stay in the same shape it was when I  first experienced my "victory"- it gets used to it and will start to backslide.  I have to, in the same way, continue to challenge my body with different exercises.

Paul says in 1 Coninthians 9:19-27, that the exercise we enter in Christ is for the victory of the Kingdom: to bring others to Christ.  Maybe the best question to ask ourselves is, what is my Kingdom impact?  Am I running alongside the weak to encourage them to Christ?  Am I also pushing myself in my own time and training in the Word to be able to run with those I see as strong- making a bigger impact?  Do I put myself in uncomfortable situations, when I feel Holy Spirit prodding, or avoid, saying "I can only do so much..."? Who really knows how much you can do?  For "I can do all things through Christ who stengthens me".  If I think I can't, I might be at the right place:  then He can show me how much more I need Him, and how much more in Christ I can be.  Trust Him to go to the next height.

Throughout this book I will especially reference "Hinds Feet in High Places" the devotional by Hannah Hurnard and Darien B Dooper, as well as "Created to be His Help Meet," by Debi Pearl.  I encourage you to pick up these books somewhere along your journey.  I studied simultaneously through them while also studying the book of Matthew with my Community Bible Study Group, and doing a "Freedom" study with a group in my church.  Yes, somehow I did all of that and homeschooled and fostered, and so many other things including starting up a non-profit, starting classes for investing with my husband, and preparing our house and family for a move. God will _____ when we do all things as unto the Lord.  As I look forward, to all that I'm feeling called to do, I can look back and realize, He will give me the strength.  I spend about 45 minutes 5 days a week doing a physical workout, and about an hour and a half in devotional time (with one or multiple of the aforementioned and writing).  Then it is off to wake up the kids and meet the challenges of the day.  Often I repeat some part of my devotional in morning time with the kids, and we have a great day, but too often I still falter and forget everything I was so excited about in the Lord.  I have not yet reached the pinnacle, but all along the way I want to encourage others, and never give up!  

I say with Paul in Philippians 2:14-18, "Work hard to show the results of your salvation, obeying God with deep reverence and fear.  For God is working in you, giving you the desire and the power to do what pleases Him.  Do everything without complaining and arguing, so that no one can criticize you.  Live clean, innocent lives as children of God, shining like bright lights in a world full of crooked and perverse people.  Hold firmly to the Word of life: then on the day of Christ's return, I will be proud that I did not run the race in vain and that my work was not useless.  But I will rejoice even if I lose my life, pouring it out like a liquid offering to God, just like your faithful service is an offering to God.  And I want all of you to share that joy.  Yes, you should rejoice, and I will share your joy." 

And in Philippians 3:12-14, "I don't mean to say that I have already achieved these things, or that I have already reached perfection.  But I press on to possess that perfection for which Christ Jesus first Possessed me.  No, dear brothers and sisters, I have not achieved it, but I focus on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the prize for which God, through Christ Jesus is calling us."

It is a journey we are on.  I hope that you will be challenged and encouraged as you enter this leg of what God is doing in you and will bring to your attention, whatever your life currently looks like and He is guiding you to next.