New Beginnings for Some, But On-going Pursuits for Others. . .Like Me

For the past several years (except last year), we have spent New Year’s Day with friends of ours. I remember about four or five years ago, we stood in a circle, prayed, and then went around and said something about the previous year as well as what we were looking forward to in the new year. Well, I remembered going through a few things during the last few months of the previous year, and I felt compelled to share with everyone that I felt as though God wanted to teach me about humility, obedience, and perseverance. The thing about it is that I remember saying it as if God would give me a few situations in which to “practice” those things, graduate me, if you will, by December 31 of that year, and then move me on to something else I needed to learn. As if all I needed to know about humility, obedience, and perseverance or “HOP” in life would be wrapped up in a year’s time. What was I thinking??

Well, what I think was that I was hoping that was how things would be. After all, the New Year often symbolizes a new beginning, a chance to reflect on the previous year and re-focus on what is truly important in the New Year, or repair things in the New Year that were “broken” in the year before. The New Year was a new beginning for my church, for example. After seventeen years of leading our church, our Pastor left and on January 1, began a new job. As we seek a new Pastor and begin a New Year, the leadership team has sought to help us all re-focus by doing a sermon series based on our church’s purpose or mission statement (which, of course, is rooted in God’s Word). The first sermon of the series focused on the first part of the statement which is to follow Christ. This led me to ask, “Am I following Christ?” Are you following Christ? Had this question been posed four or five years ago, my answer would have been, “Yes. I read and study my Bible. I pray regularly, and I go to church every Sunday. I strive to give to those in need and to raise my children in the fear of the Lord.”

Well, the Transitional Senior Pastor dished out some pretty heavy Scriptures to make me re-think my answer. The one that made the biggest impact on me was Luke 14:33. It reads (NKJV):

So likewise, whoever of you does not forsake all that he has cannot be My disciple.

A disciple is a follower of Christ. After I read the same verse in my King James Study Bible, I immediately dropped down to the doctrinal footnotes at the bottom of the page. It simply said this:

Forsaketh means literally “renounce” or give up. Disciples must live in constant readiness to put their means at the disposal of the Lord’s ends.

Wow!! Today, I ran into a quote that I wrote down from Anne Graham Lotz’s latest book, “The Magnificent Obsession”. The book talks about how to live a God-filled life and is based upon the life of Abraham (see Genesis 12-25). This is what she said about him:

“Abraham had made the choice and left everything behind, kept the commitment and let everything go, satisfied the criteria and trusted everything completely, accepted the challenge and pursued everything patiently, resolved the conflict and cast everything out, and effectively communicated and lifted everything up, and he paid the cost and laid everything down. . .to embrace God”

I don’t know about you, but that’s pretty deep to me. All of this has caused me to re-examine my life as a professed follower of Christ. Have I really desired to know Him more or have I just wanted Him to do more for me? Have I really given up all I am and all I have? Have I renounced everything, or laid everything down for Him? Or, has it just been the “problem areas” of my life in which I have asked Him to interfere? To be quite honest, my answer is no, I have not surrendered everything to Him or for Him. So, in this New Year, January 2010, four or five years after making that initial statement, my journey toward true discipleship (which includes true humility, consistent obedience, and undying perseverance) continues. But. . .being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you (and me) will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ (Philippians 1:6 NKJV).