Just Dreaming?

Hey, Siestas! It's Bible study day and I don't have three minutes to spare but I had a thought I wanted to quickly share with you. I'm sitting at my breakfast room table with my Bible, books, and notes, putting the last few sentences on my message for tonight. (Can't sit outside because the wind is whipping so hard that I can't keep my notes on the table! It's nearly blowing the feathers off my blue jays!) Keith is out and about, leaving the house nice and quiet so I can prepare - which was going well until I got distracted by a particularly silly birddog.

Beanie is sound asleep on the couch but must be dreaming she's chasing a rabbit or a squirrel. She's barking in her sleep the way she does when she's chasing a critter and all four legs are going back and forth as if she's running like the wind. It's the funniest thing you've ever seen. She does it periodically so maybe one of these days after I master the camera, I can move to video and catch her in action.

Every time she does it I think the same thing: is that what we're doing? Are we just snoozing our way through (purposeful) life and day dreaming about how we're going to chase down what Christ chased us down for - or are we going to wake up and actively pursue what God has created us for - even when the path gets rough? I ask the question because I've faced the dilemma. See if you can go here with me a minute: We get some vision from God and get pretty jazzed about it then, as God leads, we start taking steps that direction and suddenly the path gets hard. Or LONG. We wanted to leap there. Not crawl there. Somehow we weren't expecting it to be like this. We were thinking it was going to be fun. Always fulfilling. And, for crying out loud, not so dad-blasted hard and irritating. We didn't want to have to learn it or live it. We just wanted to do it. NOW.

So we retreat and decide we dreamed it all up - just like Satan was hoping we would. We don't understand that the pressures we face getting to our places of full-throttle effectiveness in Christ are crucial for developing the muscle to sustain ministry there. He's developing the character the calling requires. The Apostle Paul knew better than anybody what the path to Christ-ordained effectiveness required. In 1 Corinthians 16:8-9, he told of a "great and effectual door" that God had opened for him in Ephesus and in the same breath mentioned the great opposition he faced there. Let me echo here on this blog again and again: Satan will never oppose us more than when he thinks we're onto our callings. Bet on that. As L.B. Cowman said in Streams in the Desert, "Both in the physical realm and spiritual realm, great pressure means great power." (p.9)

Read these words from Paul with a fresh application to your significant life:
"Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me...Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus." (Philippians 3:12-14)

Let nothing - no obstacle, opposition, pressure, PAST, or passage of time - stop you besides Christ Himself. And if HE does, stop immediately. It will be only for your good and your clarification. You will know the difference as you lie on your face before Him and ask Him. To double check that we ourselves have not inadvertently caused a delay, let's be sure and turn dramatically from pride and every hint of selfish ambition so that Christ can entrust us with power from on high...

"For the vision is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it shall speak, and not lie: though it tarry, wait for it; because it will surely come." Habakkuk 2:3

"Wake up, O sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you"! Eph. 5:14