Follow the Lamb wherever He goes (a little bit further)
Yesterday was a really special day at Renovatus. I always try to preach what I believe to be the word of God for our people in whatever moment or season we’re in, but there was something a little different while preaching. I have learned a lot about how the Spirit really does have words of exhortation or rebuke that I have a kind of loose stewardship over (and am certainly responsible for), but they are no less words not from me. While it comes through the filter of my own life, personality and experiences, I have an almost third person kind of detachment from this at times–just a real recognition that this is something other. It’s something between God and His people, so much so that I barely qualify as a low rung middleman. Yesterday I was so conscious of how he was working through the words in that way the Spirit does, and the response and prayer time that followed was so very beautiful. The stories I heard yesterday of how that word spoke specifically into people’s lives were just extraordinary.
I came home, and being in that weird state between preaching and whatever else my life is in the other moments, I went on a bit of a Twitter binge. I wasn’t trying to be obnoxious, I just needed to do something with what was still working/growing/moving inside of me (does this sound like a scene out of the first Alien yet?) that doesn’t shut off just because we’ve closed with the Lord’s Prayer and I’ve taken off my countryman mic.
All of what I shared came directly from the message. Yet there is that conciseness and clarity of 140 characters that challenges you to make a thing more compact (and then my writing here is like excess flesh overflowing from cut-off jean shorts. For that visual metaphor, you are welcome). So even though it may or may not make sense outside the context of the message itself, I haven’t been able to put any of this away–and thus wanted to share with you in bullet form. The rest of what I’ve got for you can wait–I don’t think God is done with any of this. And sometimes, perhaps it’s better to get the guts of a word God has for us without all the trimmings. There is only so far that nuance can take you.
- When life feels complex and overwhelming, it often means somewhere we are trying to assume God’s job.
- The job description of the witness (basically our ONLY job) is relatively simple: cling not to your own life even unto death.
- Being a judge and being a witness are mutually exclusive. You can’t do your job when you are still trying to do God’s.
- A good gauge of whether or not I am walking in God’s will is whether or not I’m clinging on too tightly. Too anything.
- Even good things become disruptive when we cling to them. We cling to Jesus; we must hold everything and everybody else loosely.
- The entire Christian life can be summed up in Revelation 14.4: “These follow the Lamb wherever He goes.”
- People who really follow Jesus don’t always know where they are going or how they are going to get there–they just “follow the Lamb wherever He goes.”
- I want my life to be so wrapped up in following the Lamb, that if asked where I’m headed I can only say “Who knows…ask him.”
- The test in our culture is rarely a gunman asking “Do you believe?,” but the Father asking “Will you give your Isaac over to me?” The test of our faith (in North America) is less whether we’ll be faithful in martyrdom, but whether we’ll be faithful in life.
- If I question God about most anybody else, I get some variety of John 21.22: …”what is that to you? You follow me.”
