Life Down Under

Reflections

It's funny how when we pray those 'dangerous prayers', we don't really think about the Lord actually holding us to them. "I'll go anywhere You call me to go." "I am Yours alone." "I'll leave it all behind." "I'll waste my life on You." What happens when He actually comes to us and reminds us of those? There is no question that our "yes" is accompanied by definite pain. It looks different in each of our lives, but as believers in Jesus, it's what we signed up for. After all, this is the essence of the Gospel. At the end of the day, it really is about losing our life for His sake, that we may find it. It really is about taking up our cross to follow Him. Without suffering, yea, death, there is no life. Isn't this the truth that Jesus came to the earth to proclaim?

I'm convinced that this pain we feel when we say yes to Him is in a strange way, a gift to us - it forces us to lean into Him. Otherwise, this weak human heart would grow over-confident and proud in its own ability to stand. I'm also convinced that it can be a gift to Him - an extravagant offering of a life poured out before Him.

Unless a seed falls to the ground and dies, it cannot bear fruit. So may my pain be counted in Your eyes as a form of death, that life may be the result. May the pain of a life lost somehow be turned into the beauty of an extravagant offering poured out at your feet. Pain is too costly to be wasted on bitterness that bears no good fruit.